Pointed comment from:

Emily Nielsen · Winnetka, Illinois

This is a disgraceful way to treat a man who has had a long and successful career in the priesthood.

The Archdiocese of Chicago should be celebrating and supporting priests who have turned parishes around and filled churches, as Fr. Phillips has most certainly done. [He revived a parish on its last legs and along the way started a religious congregation of Latin Mass priests.]

The lack of courtesy and respect being shown to him, his order and his parish does not speak well for the current Archdiocesan administration.

Ms. Nielsen is known for her Save the Shrine efforts as regards Woodlawn’s Shrine of Christ the King, which like St. John Cantius housed a Latin Mass parish existing under a pronounced anti-Latin-Mass archbishop.

This is Cardinal Blase Cupich, who in 2002 in his first bishopric, Rapid City, South Dakota, took a drastic step to prevent such a mass:

• While bishop of Rapid City, he physically locked members of the Latin Mass community out of their chapel during the Easter Triduum . . .   describing [the] measure as “an opportunity on an annual basis for us to all worship together, for one moment of unity as a Catholic church,” and accusing them of finding it “so difficult, on the day of the Lord’s death, to celebrate with their bishop, who is the sign of the Lord’s unity”.

This is speaking softly and carrying a big stick, church-style, a quite unusual my-way-or-highway approach to his role as shepherd of a flock. I can’t picture him doing this in Chicago. Indeed, by now he may know better, no matter where he is.

I must admit, however, that then and now, he shows a tendency to draw on an eternal accepted Christian formulation to justify steps taken in a tactical manner. That is to say, his governance philosophy seems to jump too quickly to the grand-statement reasoning, skipping over the hard parts — what to do when and how to do it.

He did this in a recent column in the archdiocesan newspaper, Chicago Catholic, in which he alarmingly and unconvincingly argues Francis’ and Benedict XVI’s similarities, citing high-spiritual phraseology used by both as cases in point.

In so doing he ignored both Benedict, who in 2007 expanded Latin Mass privileges beyond anyone else since post-Vatican 2 exclusions, and John Paul II, who paved the way for such liturgical libertarianism beginning at least in 1984.

It’s interesting also to note that the aggrieved Rapid City layman who spoke for the other 220 members of the locked-out congregation planned to bring his case to then Pope John Paul II, sensing that he had an ally in Rome if not in Rapid City.

It must be noted that at that time,  the Latin Mass had to be approved by the bishop in charge. So the law was on Cupich’s side. Five years later, under Benedict, it wouldn’t have been.

via Rev. C. Frank Phillips, Founder of Religious Order of Men, Removed for Improper Conduct With Men

Among articulate defenders of Fr. Frank Phillips is Parishioner Nick Chapello, a policeman of 20 years, who told Church Militant,

“I think that I am a better father to my family after watching [Fr. Phillips’] paternity as priest and pastor.”

Chapello, who has experience investigating sex crimes, continued, “I have been sued as a policeman five times, once as a  civilian. I have tried to forgive my accusers. I have tried to understand that they were desperate people. Many were motivated by vengeance and anger.”

“The only thing that I do know is Fr. Phillips is a man that I can trust with the care of my wife, my children and, yes, my very soul,” he added. “I don’t think that I can honestly say that about anyone else, kith or kin.

In a trial of any repute, ecclesiastical or not, one hopes that such testimony is taken into account.

Will Fr. P. meet his accuser or accusers? Or will the investigation and trial be shrouded in sacred secrecy? Faithful Catholics such as Chapello will want to know. The church itself is on trial in a sensational case like this.

via Chicago Priest Defends Himself Against Accusations

Desperate situations, in this case weak fund-raising due to weak message, calls for desperate measures, in this case their last resort, the courts.

Hoping for an Obama or Clinton appointee, are they?

Actually, it’s a rally in support of gun control. Anyhow, a high-school board member comments wistfully:

“What’s interesting is that 18 years after that, it feels like so little progress has been made,” [Matt] Baron said. “It sounds trite, but these children are our future elected officials. . . . “

I agree with Matt. It does sound trite.

via Oak Park students confront Columbine | Articles | News | OakPark.com

The Clinton people are not amused:

“The challenge on the campaign was that you had a reporter holding the Clintons to a higher standard through a lower standard of reporting,” the source told The Daily Beast. “Amy was not always an honest broker, and this book seems to be more of the same. It ridicules people with a smile, contributing little to the public discourse.”

By quoting them? Accuracy remains unchallenged.

via Washington Times

This is good.

An overwhelming majority of board members in Effingham County, Illinois, decided to “flip the script” this week and declare itself a “sanctuary” for gun owners.

Effingham County State’s Attorney Bryan Kibler and board member David Campbell called a barrage of gun-control bills working their way through the Illinois House and Senate a clear signal that it’s time to “take a stand.

Here they stand.

via Effingham County a ‘sanctuary’ for Illinois gun owners; citizens ‘tired of being pushed around’ – Washington Times

Not his early recommendations for living according to the duties of one’s state in life. I love that part. Not enough is said about it, in my opinion. It’s your vocation. Follow it.

I am reminded of a talk my father heard, almost certainly at a lunch-time meeting of the Downtown Chicago Serra Club, as long ago as the late 1940s. “Everybody’s got a vocation” was the message. He came home that night full of that idea. It was a day when vocation meant religious life, period. He was hearing something that warmed his heart.

And Francis’ reminder that none of us is perfect, which says nothing about fulfilling our vocation in life, is also something we might hear more of.

But then he gets to some needless, I would say harmful, negativity about religious life, as in this:

26.   It is not healthy to love silence while fleeing interaction with others, to want peace and quiet while avoiding activity, to seek prayer while disdaining service. Everything can be accepted and integrated into our life in this world, and become a part of our path to holiness. We are called to be contemplatives even in the midst of action, and to grow in holiness by responsibly and generously carrying out our proper mission. [Italics mine]

Contemplation in action is a worthy goal, “generously carrying out our proper mission.” But why the shot at contemplatives in monasteries and convents? What’s the point of that? “Not healthy,” he says. Who else says it? He comes out of left field with that one.

For one thing, there’s at least as much flight involved in poorly considered and badly motivated action as in the badly motivated contemplative, cloistered life.

Some need more, not less contemplation, largely as daily reminders of what we are about. “Disdaining service”? Hardly. Rather, keeping oneself on track.

— more more more on puzzlements in Gaudete et Exsultate. —

The Seinfeld of old, that is. If you dare find any of these episodes funny, just reading about them, then you are a racist, insensitive scum and should be ashamed of yourself.

Viewers of “Seinfeld” reruns today — and those who watched each new episode as it came out — are in a unique position. The show, which premiered in 1989 and ran through 1998, contains some storylines that many people in 2018 would consider highly controversial and/or politically incorrect.

Go ahead, I dare you.

via Slideshow: 17 ‘Seinfeld’ Episodes That Could Never Air Today

Without a notion of how that would happen.

Democrats and some concerned Republicans have been warning for months that firing special counsel Robert Mueller would be a point of no return for President Donald Trump.

That speculative frontier advanced even further over the weekend, after the New Yorker’s Adam Davidson declared that the Trump presidency has now entered its “end stages,” following a raid on the office and hotel room of Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen.

What these predictions rather conspicuously lack is any attempt to explain precisely the series of events that would be Trump’s formal undoing.

Poor souls wandering without a clue, gentlemen songsters off on a spree.

. . . poor little lambs
Who have lost our way.

Bah, bah, bah.

via Please stop predicting the end of Trump’s presidency.

Hard to imagine but no so hard as all that. But see how C-Burke references the issue when asked about it.

In his talk at the April 7 conference, Cardinal Burke referred to the writings of Cardinal Henry of Susa, called Hostiensis, a 13th-century canonist. “Apart from public admonition and prayer for divine intervention, (Hostiensis) does not offer a remedy for the (papal) abuse of the fullness of power,” said Cardinal Burke.

“If a member of the faithful believes in conscience that a particular exercise of the fullness of power is sinful and cannot bring his conscience to peace in the matter, ‘the pope must, as a duty, be disobeyed, and the consequences of disobedience be suffered in Christian patience.’”

More patience than most can muster, but see how far back the learned cardinal goes for his response. He’s been looking it up, we suppose.

And can you hear Francis and his allies chortling? The idea. Going back that far, when now is the hour when ideas fly best that are in tune with the latest thinking. Burke should get with the times, the Francis camp says.

More here via Cardinal Burke discusses possibility of excommunication by Pope Francis | News | LifeSite