What’s the good of being a shepherd if you can’t zap a sheep when he gets out of line? Cardinal George, shepherd of all of us in Cook and Lake counties, spotted a sheep and zapped him.
He’s Tom Roeser, who gives new meaning to the term outspoken and has been first hinting at cardinalatial ignorance of current events and unseeming acquiescence in aides’ advice and more recently criticizing it directly. He had to be taught a lesson, and the cardinal wrote a letter — to the board of a Catholic organization of which Roeser has been belwether, to use a flock-like term, I mean the Catholic Citizens of Illinois.
To these worthy people, Catholic to a fault and conservative in all things political, his eminence urged getting Roeser to put a sock in it:
Would it be possible for you to use your role as advisor to Catholic Citizens of Illinois to put an end to the hate literature produced by the Chairman?
The chairman being Roeser and the hate literature being such critique of the cardinal as to wonder where he gets off demonstrating support (unconvincingly denied by an apparatchik, in R’s opinion) for ObamaCare except for its allowing federal expenditure for abortion-producing health care.
Yes. Read all about it at Roeser’s blog. See if the cardinal’s status among shepherds has not been diminished. We (editorially) think so.
Sincerely,
James Bowman, flock member in more or less good standing but moving very carefully
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From Reader Nancy, inexplicably blocked from comment mechanism:
No one could ever silence Tom Roeser. He is his own man who is confident and well-schooled in his Catholic religion and is not hesitant to tell those who think of themselves as figures of authority that they are not all-knowing or above criticism. Trouble arises when those in power attempt to tell practicing Catholics how to think and feel, especially about the social issues of abortion and illegal immigration when they become political issues, thereby over reaching and undermining the underlying fundamentals of the Catholic Church.”
Blithe Spirit 
Seems odd that a prudential matter is being turned over to the state rather than prudence.
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A lunch or a round of golf would be a more effective route to achieve an outcome than a letter.
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Card. G. limps from boyood polio, I suspect does not play golf. But he’s an intellectual, and if he wants to do more than scold, he can call Roeser up for lunch. But princes, of church or other, don’t do that. Instead, they claim lese majeste and (in our day) pull strings. It’s a shameful episode in the Chicago church.
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