Black Loyola Academy student expelled for flashing pic of half-naked girl friend, millions march, father prepares to sue.  Kid did bad, says dad, but not that bad.  School says he disturbed the “safe” learning atmosphere.  The safe part I don’t get.

Not millions but a few anyhow, from Farrakhan’s Million Man March, plus some from his Nation of Islam, which if they had a school and were true to their puritanism would have sent the kid packing.

Can Itchy Feet Pfleger be far behind these demonstrators at the Loyola Wilmette campus?  Will he call for the snuffing of some poor Jesuit?  More to the point, will Jesuits fold?

Comment by blogger: Canning the kid or not depends on how serious you think it is (plus of course who knows what else they have on him), how much tone matters in a school.  What to do about crudity.  It’s a cultural issue.

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Also today, yet another disqualified candidate for this blog’s Cure of Ars award for caring, feeling pastor is Rev. Luis Alfredo Rios, of St. Thomas the Apostle Church, in Crystal Lake, IL, who put a curse on a parishioner who questioned his sermonizing.  This pastor takes no prisoners. 

Again, I use exaggeration for effect: not a curse but a taking to task from the pulpit (where he’s miked and his listeners were not) and asking whether the complainer, present for this sermon, should be sent to hell or another parish.

One is reminded (at least one) of the St. Luke, River Forest pastor, in the 80s who denounced the veteran, church-loyal Sun-Times reporter (also present with wife, who taught in the parish school, and kids) for his role in the S-T series exposing Cardinal Cody as apparent diverter of church funds in support of suspected wife and son.

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Finally, we have the Sun-Times editorial that defends the anti-abortion demonstrators in Aurora but more significantly takes Planned [Non-] Parenthood to task for trying to put one over on them and the rest of us with their disguised building permit application, calling Aurora’s citizens “unfairly gagged” by the maneuver. 

There’s no denying that it was an end run around public dialogue. And that is wrong. Even though this newspaper is pro-choice, we are also big promoters of freedom of speech. In this case, those two causes collided.

It’s stuff like that which brings readers back to see what this paper is saying.