EXTRA: St. Sabina marches on MI Av.

The protest. Photograph provided by Faith Community of St. Sabina

The Faithful of St. Sabina parish on the South Side came to the Magnificent Mile on Saturday to try to force all of Chicago to address the reality of the number of homicides, which the Chicago Sun-Times reported as totaling 778 but could increase in coming days if a last-minute incident results in fatalities.

EXTRA: He’s back!!!!!!

It already is starting on the Internet. Cardinal Francis George of the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese blinked.

He caved in. He surrendered to the priest they were hoping to dump – the Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Parish in the Gresham neighborhood.

THE CARDINAL ON Friday said  he was reinstating Pfleger as pastor of the parish that Pfleger has led for three decades, and has made it clear he doesn’t want to leave. Pfleger will be back behind the pulpit and delivering a sermon come Sunday services, and I’m sure his gregarious personality will run amok on that day.

Such stability at a Catholic parish officially is regarded as a bad thing. The church likes to have its priests move about from church to church throughout their pastoral careers, believing they can effectively influence many more people through the church if they don’t become too attached to any one parish.

A priest lasting more than a decade at any one church is a rarity. For Pfleger to have remained in the same parish since the early 1980s is a miracle nearly as significant as the good works done by former Pope John Paul II that may make him an official Catholic saint someday.

What has enabled Pfleger to remain at St. Sabiina is that he is that rare breed of white person who is not uncomfortable among black people. And St. Sabina is a parish in a neighborhood that most definitely has changed to a heavy African-American character.

THE PEOPLE WHO are most offended by Pfleger’s conduct throughout the years are those who have their own racial hang-ups to work through, and who wish that the Catholic church could somehow reinforce those hang-ups.

The reason that St. Sabina is a thriving parish on the South Side is because it has adapted in character to its neighborhood. Critics would say it has been tainted. I would say it has adapted to its parishioners – which is what a church ought to do.

What good is a church if the people who live in its parish don’t find it relevant?

That is why I am pleased to learn that Pfleger will continue to have a role at St. Sabina. I know full-well that if Cardinal George’s suspension of the priest had evolved into a permanent removal, it would have been taken as a sign by the people with the hang-ups that the Catholic church was taking up their cause.

THAT WOULD NOT have been a good thing – even though I fully appreciate from my contact with Pfleger as a reporter-type person throughout the years that the man does have an ego. He’s not a bashful type.

His personality can be overbearing.

Yet that would not justify his removal – particularly since I don’t think the Catholic archdiocese would be able to find a replacement who could continue to keep that parish intact.

In short, there are lessons that the Catholic church could learn from people like Pfleger when it comes to appealing to the masses and remaining relevant as we work our way deeper into the 21^st Century.

  -30-

EXTRA: Pfleger in limbo?

I’m sure there are those Catholics who are about to take offense, but it seems that the church’s Chicago Archdiocese just went ahead and put Rev. Michael Pfleger in limbo.

In purely theological terms, limbo is that place where souls that are not completely clean of sin go to wait until the day they can be admitted to Heaven. It’s not Hell, but they’re in between – with an uncertain status.

I CAN’T HELP but think that is what the church is doing to Pfleger by telling him on Wednesday that he’s still the pastor of St. Sabina Church, BUT he is suspended and cannot perform any of his duties in running the Gresham neighborhood church.

The church, in the form of Cardinal Francis George, sent Pfleger a letter telling him of his new, uncertain status,  while also telling him that his status is purely his own fault. To make sure that no one tried spinning the issue differently, they also posted a copy of it on the Archdiocese’s own website.

It seems that the Catholic Church is upset that the speculation about Pfleger’s future with the church has gone public. So they’re looking for a way to punish him, perhaps even hoping that he decides on his own to quit.

“This conflict is not between you and me; it’s between you and the Church that ordained you as a priest, between you and the faith that introduced you to Christ and gives you the right to preach and pastor in his name,” George wrote. “If you now formally leave the Catholic Church and her priesthood, it’s your choice and no one else’s.

“YOU ARE NOT a victim of anyone or anything other than your own statements,” George wrote.

Definitely not the words of someone who is looking for a way to keep Pfleger happily ensconced somewhere within the Archdiocese.

So now, we have to wait to see what Pfleger’s next move will be. Will he try to fight to keep the post that he has held for three decades and doesn’t seem to want to give up (and which the parish doesn’t seem to want him to give up)?

Or will he decide that it’s time to do something else with his life, and that perhaps the Catholic Church has become too restrictive to let him minister to the urban communities that he seems most interested in.

PERSONALLY, THERE WAS one part of George’s letter that most caught my attention – the notion that the church is upset about the talk that Pfleger is being “removed” from St. Sabina instead of being “reassigned.”

The difference, according to George, that being “removed” implies sexual or financial malfeasance by the priest, while being “reassigned” is a part of a typical priest’s working life.

Yet no one should think that Pfleger is a typical priest – in large part because of his willingness to take the church into African-American communities and make it relevant even though he’s a white guy.

Both photographs provided by St. Sabina parish



I can’t help but think that the people who are most disgusted with Pfleger are the ones who wish that he would conduct himself in such a manner that his parish would have withered away decades ago because the neighborhood residents would have found it to be irrelevant to their daily lives.

THAT WILLINGNESS TO adapt is something I have always respected about Pfleger – even if I’ll be the first to admit his rhetoric at times can get ridiculously over the top.

Which is why I fear that the people who will most enjoy the “hard line” being taken by George against Pfleger in his letter on Wednesday are going to be individuals whose own motivations are less than noble, if not downright despicable.

  -30-

Is St. Sabina worth Pfleger ego?

In the ongoing dispute in the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago about what to do with Rev. Michael Pfleger, I will be the first to admit that the St. Sabina parish in the South Side’s Gresham neighborhood probably would wither away and die if Pfleger were to be removed as pastor.

Yet a part of me wonders if that is a good enough reason to justify keeping Father Pfleger at St. Sabina – where he has served for three decades, significantly longer than the six years (12 maximum) that priests usually serve in an individual parish.

PERHAPS IT JUST is the reality that the particular parish Pfleger kept from withering away many decades ago when the white people left the neighborhood and it became predominantly African-American isn’t meant to last forever.

Because I do believe that if Cardinal Francis George takes the hard-line and insists that Pfleger move on, that the many people who currently attend St. Sabina will follow him to whatever church he becomes a part of.

It almost sounds like a cult of personality for Father Pfleger, which is a scary concept for any religious leader.

But I also have to admit that Pfleger deserves some credit for keeping the St. Sabina parish relevant in its changing neighborhood. Too many of the people who are quick to trash Pfleger are really upset because they think he has been too accommodating to the racial change --  rather than trying to take some hard-line such as many of them did when they moved out of the city into the suburbs (a trend that continues with many white people leaving the inner suburbs of Cook County for the outer suburbs of places like Will County, which had the largest percentage increase of population for the entire state in the latest Census Bureau results).

PERSONALLY, I THINK the clock is ticking for St. Sabina, which is a shame. Because it is a story that should be praised, even though too many want to focus on Pfleger’s alleged gaffes throughout the years (which mostly amount to speaking out against injustices that many people would prefer to ignore because they take place in a neighborhood they no longer care about).

Pfleger is popping up in the news a lot in recent days because of the plot that was conceived by officials in the Archdiocese that would have shifted the priest out of St. Sabina as pastor, but would have kept him in the same neighborhood by putting him in charge of Leo High School.

I’m sure someone thinks that is a wonderful compromise that pleases everybody, even though I see it as a purely political deal that will appease nobody.

The Chicago Sun-Times went so far as to send a reporter-type person to St. Sabina last Sunday, where Pfleger was boastful during his sermon, saying he remains in place at the church – where parishioners have made it clear in letters to the archdiocese that they want him to remain indefinitely.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE on Thursday found Cardinal George in west suburban Westchester, where he would only say that no final decision has been made yet concerning Pfleger’s fate.

So where do we go from here?

What I find interesting is the idea that Pfleger is now 61, a fact I find hard to phathom because I have written about his antics on so many issues throughout the years that I will always think of him as a youthful man with vigor and energy.

In short, when he was the youngest full pastor in Chicago. A part of me is shaken up that he could be approaching an age where his retirement altogether could become an issue.

WHICH MEANS ST. Sabina officials ought to be thinking of the day when Pfleger moves on, and who they want to replace him as pastor. I understand there is a priest in place who theoretically is being groomed by Pfleger to someday take over St. Sabina – but that someday is still a few years away.

Whereas George seems to want to give in to those Catholics who want to view Pfleger as an embarrassment and move him along now, and NOT on his own terms.

I fear this situation will turn out badly. Everybody is going to wind up being upset and feeling neglected, regardless of what decision is ultimately made.

Because I’m now wondering if the ultimate legacy of Father Pfleger is going to be that he merely deferred the closing of St. Sabina (a parish that easily could have died in the 1970s due to “white flight”) for a few decades.

HE POSTPONED THE inevitable. I’d hope that doesn’t overshadow his legacy.

I’d rather remember him as the Catholic priest who was willing to take on the tobacco industry for their advertisements in his neighborhood targeting black people or willing to stand up to the street gang influences – even if it means we also have to remember his “brain cramp” moment when he offended Hillary Clinton during her ’08 presidential aspirations.

  -30-