Our Father, who art in Heaven, stop our governments from screwing up so bad

The political stink that has arisen over whether Patrick J. Conroy should be serving as chaplain for the House of Representatives makes me wonder what purpose truly is served by the prayers that many government entities feel compelled to have to begin the hearings at which they do their business.

CONROY: Soon to be replaced?

Conroy is a Jesuit priest who has held his Capitol Hill role since 2011.

HE’S THE GUY who was asked by soon-to-be former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to resign the post. Conroy initially complied with that request, but he has since rescinded his resignation – that was to take effect May 24.

News reports indicate that Ryan wanted to replace Conroy because his public prayers were taking on political overtones. As in perhaps he was implying that God was NOT on the side of the Republican majority that now runs Congress and tries to offer its support to the president in this Age of Trump that we’re now in.

For what it’s worth, the fact that members of Congress of both major political parties have been critical of replacing Conroy may well be a sign that the priest is doing something right in the way he handles his duties.

Which, in all honesty, are meant to get House sessions off to a pleasant start – as if in having a holy mood in place, the political people may wind up behaving in a less-cantankerous manner.

These are NOT holy shrines, ...

BUT FOR SOME people, they wind up causing even more offense. Some, because they want to believe only their particular religious denomination is worthy of being heard.

Meaning they’re going to find something worthy of personal offense in any prayer given by someone other than their own personal clergyman.

I think that having a prayer prior to a government meaning merely creates the opportunity for offending a vast majority of people. And also creates a false impression that the Lord somehow endorses government activity.

From having been a reporter-type person covering government activity at many levels throughout the years, I think much of their conduct borders on reprehensible. It makes me think that if there is an afterlife, it is the politicians who will wind up having to pay some form of penance. They’ll have to earn their way into Heaven for all the sinful acts they’re committing now.

... no matter how much some of us dream they are

AND AS FOR those who want their particular religious denomination dominating any public prayer, I’d say this is using religious belief as a way of playing partisan politics. An act I truly find offensive.

I’d like to think God doesn’t take sides on some of the stupid political battles that occur any more than he cared that the Chicago Cubs finally quit their inept ways to win the World Series two years ago.

I know from my experience of sitting through so many thousands of prayers prior to watching government business, I actually enjoyed the practices of suburban Lansing. The southern Cook County village has some two dozen churches in their municipality, and they rotated the prayer duty around equally.

Meaning that roughly every two years, each church would get its turn to have its head clergy on display.

I ALSO REMEMBER covering the Illinois General Assembly where the opening prayers were usually given by hometown clergy of the individual legislators; which created a sense of variety as some were entertaining while others were just so deadly dull.

RYAN: Talk about a government gaffe!

Or perhaps there’s the way of the Cook County Board, where I recall it was not uncommon to have two or three clergy at a board meeting on hand for the duty.

That would allow a variety of faiths and denominations to have a chance to express themselves in a moment of reflection to ask God to make sure our political people don’t screw everything up for us.

Which, if you come right down to it, is usually the theme of every prayer conducted right before a government hearing commences, regardless of where or when it is held.

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Is there nobody who’s safe any longer?

If ever there were people who had a degree of safety implied by their occupation, I’d have thought a judge and a priest would be amongst them.
 

MILES: Won't be presiding in Ct any longer

Yet the news reports out of Chicago – when not being cluttered with that passenger being forcibly removed from a United Airlines-affiliated flight or the spills in Lake Michigan contaminating the Indiana portion of its shoreline – have given us a judge and a priest who were crime victims.

WHILE THE PRIEST seems to be alive and well and grateful he wasn’t more seriously hurt, the same can’t be said for the judge.

Cook County Associate Judge Raymond Miles is now dead at age 66, following an altercation with an armed man who apparently was harassing his girlfriend outside his Chatham neighborhood home.

Police now say they doubt the armed man was that interested in the criminal division judge and was more interested in getting the woman – who also got shot during the Monday morning incident.

In fact, some news reports are indicating that the woman was intended as a robbery target, and got shot in the leg when she didn’t want to give up her purse. Hearing a scuffle caused Miles to come rushing out of his house to her aid, which then resulted in his getting shot as well.

THIS MAY MEAN we can put aside our original paranoias that said someone tried to have a judge killed to try to influence a case, or retribution for a negative legal ruling. Or whatnot.

Although police said they suspect the armed man had actually been following the woman for a couple of weeks to learn about her and try to figure out the best time and place to rob her.

Which means he likely had an idea that the woman had a connection to a judge, or someone working in the courts in some capacity. Which would still make this a case where someone thought along the lines of Rhett Butler (remember “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!”).

 

MOLYNEUX (and McDuff)

And we now have a deceased officer of the court. All because a would-be thief became upset when the woman whom he had targeted for his robbery, it seems, turned out to not have any money in the purse he had just robbed.

AS IT TURNS out, the Cook County sheriff’s police says it investigates an average of 10 death threats per year against judges. But the number of incidents of violence against judges is just too minimal.

Judge Miles is someone who’s going to stand out in the memory of the Cook County judicial system.

As may Rev. John Molyneux, a pastor at the Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in the South Chicago neighborhood. It seems that on Tuesday morning, he was walking his dog, McDuff, in the neighborhood streets near the church when a young man approached him at 91^st Street and Baltimore Avenue and expressed interest in the dog.

The man then asked for a dollar, which the priest handed over. The man then produced an object the priest took to be a pistol and demanded more money.

THE PRIEST TURNED over his wallet and the man ran off.

Molyneux told the Chicago Tribune he’s not angry about the incident, and said he wants to show compassion. “I really think the opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is fear and we cannot live in fear,” the priest said.

Although this may too be an incident where first impressions are misleading. There is some indication the priest was dressed casually, and the robber didn’t know he was targeting a priest.

Priest robbed w/in block of his church

But still, we have one man trying to defend his female companion, while another was walking his dog. Not exactly the images of people we’d presume ought to be targets for crime – particularly since the amounts gained by both robbers combined sounds like it was less than what I have in my wallet right now!

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Nobody silences Jeremiah Wright! Particularly those who try hardest

I couldn’t help but be amused when I learned Wednesday that the Chicago Teachers Union has thrown its lot in with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – the man whose rhetoric has offended ideologue America because he’s willing to call them out on their past sins against black people, rather than just let the past be the past.

WRIGHT: Obama's "kill" list??!?

The people who now go about accusing Wright of “reverse racism” are probably the grandchildren of those who would have referred to him as “uppity” in decades past for his oft-harsh rhetoric.

WHICH HE GAVE samples of on Wednesday.

For the teachers union held an event in the Roseland neighborhood meant to jump-start their political efforts concerning proposed changes in laws for special education class sizes. To help get the crowd aroused, they brought in Wright.

Whom the bulk of us remember as the pastor of the black-oriented church that Barack Obama and family attended when he was still a lowly state legislator and nowhere near a national political figure.

“God Damn America!,” is the phrase that the ideologues always want to stuff into Wright’s mouth. He did say it. But when you consider some of the things that have been done to black people throughout our nation’s history, it’s a wonder he didn’t say something even more harsh.

ON WEDNESDAY, HE told the union gathering (which also had many pastors of South Side black-oriented churches) that he wants to see a rejection of the “three-headed demon” of “racism, militarism and capitalism<’ which is what he thinks Western society has become about.

He even accused Obama (the man whose wedding to first lady Michelle he presided over) of planning peoples’ deaths. “Every Tuesday morning, there’s a kill list that the president decides who they’re going to kill this week,” said Wright, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. How much of a headache did the president have Wednesday night after learning about that line?

OBAMA: Reaching for aspirin bottle?

That part amused me because the notification I was sent by the teachers union (with instructions about where and when I needed to be in place if I wanted to cover the event) specifically said Wright’s speech was off-limits.

But someone as outspoken as Wright is just too loud to be ignored. What he has to say will come out. And what he still is – even though he’s now technically retired and the Trinity United Church of Christ is now being run by others – is someone who views our establishment critically.

AND FOR GOOD reason!

KING: Hated just as much in his own time

Personally, I find the rhetoric that we often get from the far right of our political spectrum to be more subversive in nature than anything Wright has ever said.

It also doesn’t help the ideologues attempts to sway me in that I have heard many black preachers speak throughout the years. There is a certain cadence to it, and a certain rhetorical flourish.

The trick to comprehending it is to realize how much of it is actually of substance, and now the bulk of it is for show – to ensure that the message sticks in the minds of the parishioners or other people in the audience.

GO SO OVER the top, and some of it might actually be remembered. The larger message might get through.

So personally, I’m not about to condemn the Chicago Teachers Union for associating with Rev. Wright. I’m sure there are some people who will do exactly that (I’ve already read some of their comments – anonymous, of course – on various Internet sites).

But then again, none of those people were ever going to vote for anything in line with what an organized labor union wanted. Heck, these are the people who probably think of the teachers’ union as being led by a loud-enough mouth herself in the form of Karen Lewis.

Of course, all of this was timed to coincide with the birthday anniversary of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (which is Wednesday, even though the officially-designated government holiday won’t come until Monday).

WHICH MAY HAVE some people try to claim that King was about peace and equality while Wright is about stirring up hatred and resentment.

Then again, I suspect the people saying this now were the same ones who, back when they were younger, were the ones who used “Communist agitator” as their label of choice to describe King.

That is, when they weren’t using their preferred slur for King, Wright, Obama and just about anyone else whose melanin level is more intense than their own.

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Flexing their muscle? Or separating selves when it comes to gay marriage?

Cardinal Francis George turned to some muscle to bolster the Catholic Church’s stance with regards to the legalization of marriage for gay couples – the clergy of African-American oriented churches.

GEORGE: Looking for support

For it was the Catholic Conference of Illinois that arranged for the head of the Catholic Archdiocese to meet Friday with several black clergy members. Those include James Meeks – the one-time state senator who gave up his political post last year to return to being merely the head of one of the largest congregations in Chicago.

IT IS AN impressive figure that Meeks can offer up – his Salem Baptist Church in the Roseland neighborhood can claim 10,000 members and often get that many people packed into their church for Sunday services.

Yet there are times when I wonder if the real truth is that he has about 10,000 people willing to listen to him – out of the many billions of people who live on Planet Earth!

A part of me has that thought reinforced by the notion that Meeks originally thought he was going to be a political powerbroker on the Springfield scene who would be able to offer his orders to other politicians.

Perhaps he thought he had the word of God within him?

HIS STINT IN the Illinois Senate wound up being more forgettable than anything else. Even though he always talked about himself as being the next governor or next mayor or whatever. Instead, he’s just a neighborhood preacher.

And no, it wouldn’t have made any difference if Meeks were still in the state Senate. For the legislator who replaced Meeks (state Sen. Napoleon Harris, D-Flossmoor) didn’t vote for the bill – but it still passed there back on Valentine’s Day.

MEEKS: Ego bigger than influence?

In fact, George met with several neighborhood preachers from across the South Side on Friday. I don’t doubt they have sway within their congregations. And that piecing those congregations could create a sizable group.

Yet this is an issue where I seriously wonder if the black-oriented churches are going to wind up cutting themselves off from the mainstream of thought – that is now seeing that this whole issue of who can marry and who cannot is really nothing more than a matter of letting all people have the same opportunity within life.

WHEN I HEAR of people making sayings that somehow imply their religion forbids this, it makes me think that they’re the types who want to use people’s religious faith to turn against others who aren’t exactly like them.

That thought bothers me more than anything. It almost seems like self-segregation – although I realize how “loaded” that phrase can be in this particular context.

Earlier this week while on duty for a suburban newspaper for which I write, I covered an event in which a political candidate who was African-American kept saying the only reason that people were paying so much attention to the concept of gay marriage these days was because of the gay rights lobby. (I’m not naming him because he’s a fringe candidate with no chance of Election Day success come Tuesday).

He said they’re simply better organized than the network of clergy and civil rights activists have become in the 21^st Century. As though there’s no way the issue could have any merits on its own.

THESE ARE THE same clergy, by the way, who are going about calling up Illinois General Assembly members to try to sway/pressure/intimidate them into not backing a gay marriage measure when it comes up for a vote this spring in the Illinois House of Representatives.

Now, we get the sight of the black clergy pairing up with the head of the Catholic church in Chicago – all to ratchet up the political pressure to get House members to vote “no.”

Back in the days of old, we used to get the sight of civil rights activists in protest marches, with a few white, Catholic priests at their side to show solidarity.

 

The modern-day pairing takes on a different ideological lean these days

 

It’s a shame that pairing has become so ideologically twisted that the two are now on the side of exclusion.

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