The candidate I voted for, now mayor, looking more like the one I did not vote for in the pre-runoff election because of her hopping on the anti-cop bandwagon.

We opened the conversation by asking Lightfoot about statements she made last month during a “Chicago Newsroom” interview, in which she referenced a rumor she’d heard but not verified that the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police told cops to take no action over Memorial Day weekend. In that May 30 interview, Lightfoot says the FOP told cops, “‘If you see some criminal activity, just lay back, do nothing.’”

We asked her to clarify.

“What I said then and what I’ll repeat now was ‘I hope that’s not true,’” Lightfoot told Schutz on Monday. “. . . my point in bringing it up was to simply say, ‘I heard this but I hope it’s not true.’ Unfortunately, the second part is the piece that hasn’t been reported.”

No. Unfortunately the second part does nothing to change her passing on a rumor without the slightest effort to shoot it down.

Hot off the Religion News Service desk.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) — Speaking at a black church Sunday (June 9) in a city that is nearly 75% percent African American, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, J.D. Greear, said white Christians who are racially insensitive are disregarding the gospel.

Actually, I heard that very thought quite a while ago.

I love the way he punches back, missing some times but scoring enough to make it worth his (and our) while.

President Trump compared his record to that of former President Barack Obama while defending his new deal with Mexico to reduce illegal immigration, and in Trump’s opinion, it’s no contest.

Right. What’s he supposed to say? It’s a pretty good deal, with all its flaws? Come on. He’s in a no-holds-barred daily battle with his enemies. Great show, as usual calling out his opponents:

“If President Obama made the deals that I have made, both at the Border and for the Economy, the Corrupt Media would be hailing them as Incredible, & a National Holiday would be immediately declared,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “With me, despite our record setting Economy and all that I have done, no credit!”

Again, what’s he supposed to say? “I’m in disagreement with my friends in the New York Times”? Or “The ladies and gentlemen of the press see it their way, I see it mine”? With a stoical shrug? No thank you.

Latest? Said ladies and gents have a gotcha moment that warms hearts of their fans:

The comment came after Trump lashed out at the New York Times in a series of tweets for casting doubt on the breakthrough he claimed for his deal with Mexico to avoid tariffs and “stem the tide” of migrants on their way to the U.S. southern border. The Times disputed the credit he said he deserved, reporting that aspects of the agreement had already been agreed upon months before the president’s tariff threat.

High-fives in the news room. One step ahead, fellows and gals, one step ahead. Catch him wherever possible. Catch-and-release in next day’s paper team? What’s on for tomorrow? We owe it to our readers, eager for talking points.

Newsies yearn for their papier-mâché man Obama? So cool you wonder if he’s even alive — who stiffed them time and again, to the irritation of the DC press corps, but so what?

Now they have Trump out there for all to see, a real human being, and should be grateful.

Pell became a marked man when he exposed Vatican Bank’s huge hidden cache of cash:

In April 2016, without consulting Pell, the Vatican Secretary of State suspends an external audit of Vatican finances. The National Catholic Register quotes an unnamed source as saying that officials are afraid of what the audit will find, and want to get rid of Pell.  A year later, Pell was charged in Melbourne with sexual abuse. And that was the end of the Pell threat to the Vatican Bank insiders.

This mafia thing, it could all be a coincidence, and in any case, there are other factors in play in the persecution of George Pell, who was widely hated by Australian anti-clericalists. But it’s curious all the same. George Pell was the No. 1 enemy of the ‘Ndrangheta in the Vatican, and he showed early on in his tenure, when he uncovered all the hidden euros, that he meant business. Now George Pell sits in solitary confinement in a prison cell in Melbourne, convicted on pathetically shabby charges. The old guard in the Vatican won. The world is as it always was.

But his recently completed appeal seems to have hit the mark. If it did — it takes months for the decision — he might get back in the Vatican saddle.

Female victims multiply, males and gay priests decline.

Male victimization and homosexual priests rose together through the 1980s and have since fallen together. These twin waves have largely receded. Female victimization has not fallen, persisting today at roughly the same level as in the 1980s. See the figure below.

Key Findings:

• Overall, clergy sexual abuse of minors is recently rising: The priest sexual abuse of children dropped to an all-time low just after 2002 but has since disturbingly risen, though it remains well below its peak in the 1980s. Reports of current abuse averaged 7.0 per year from 2005-09, rising to 8.2 per year from 2010-14, a 17% increase. In the 1980s, there were an average 26.2 reports of current abuse per year. (See Figures 2 and 6 in the main report.)

FYI, Ruth Institute is on the no-fly list of the wild ‘n wooly Southern Poverty Law Center. Pay yr money, take your choice. Mine’s on Ruth, especially in view of the SPLC’s long-over-due fall from grace or at least its fall from unquestioning credibility.

I was in the middle of this story some years back, not about bishop as abuser and high-liver but as greedy for land owned by some aged sisters in which project he was bucked by the Jesuit president of Wheeling Jesuit university, deposed by his board wary of offending the good man in charge, who looked bad then and looks worse now.

He’d come to the job after years as head man at the Immaculate Conception Basilica in Wash DC, which high-income position he held at some part of the eminent McCarrick and the deposed Wuerl incumbencies.

The webs they wove.

How was I in this bishop’s story? By blogging incessantly about the drama of the deposed Jesuit and his hardy defenders, all at

The Great West Virginia President Firing

When Julio Giulietti was shot off his horse

Issue will be aired.

Some qq I would have: Will they become 2nd-class citizens in a celibate-dominated church? Will they receive 1st-class education, as in theology, bible study, and above all, preaching? Will celibacy continue to be respected etc.?

Call me suspicious.

Actually, Kasper is saying the right things (as if my endorsement carried weight):

“Personally, I’m very much in favor of maintaining celibacy as an obligatory way of life with a commitment to the cause of Jesus Christ, but this doesn’t exclude that a married man can carry a priestly service in special situations,” Kasper said.

In any case, the article touches many bases, including those marked by your faithful servant, Mr. Suspicious.

In this case in re: same-sex marriages and how (not) to minister to them. Advice sent to his priests and his rebuttal of comments by well-known gay-rights promoter Fr. James Martin SJ, who argued against such advice.

First, Fr. Martin, who

. .  . posted my decree on Twitter and said in a series of tweets, “If bishops ban members of same-sex couples from funeral rites, they must also ban divorced and remarried Catholics without annulments . . . women who have children out of wedlock, members of straight couples living together before marriage, anyone using birth control . . . members of straight couples living together before marriage, anyone using birth control. . . . To focus only on LGBT people, even those in same-sex marriages, without a similar focus on the sexual or moral behavior of straight people is in the words of the ‘Catechism’ a ‘sign of unjust discrimination.”

The bishop:

Father Martin gets a lot wrong in those tweets, since canon law prohibits ecclesiastical funeral rites only in cases of “manifest sinners” which gives “public scandal,” and something such as using birth control is a private matter that is usually not manifest or made public.

Moreover, my decree does not focus on “LGBT people,” but on so-called same-sex marriage, which is a public legal status. No one is ever denied the sacraments or Christian burial for simply having a homosexual orientation. Even someone who had entered into a same-sex “marriage” can receive the sacraments and be given ecclesiastical funeral rites if they repent and renounce their “marriage.

Boiler-plate stuff which Fr. Martin has to know. What he seems not to know is that he is going head-to-head with a very wise lawyer, both civil and church, who respects the law and expounds it with strength and clarity. And teaches at Notre Dame, by the way.

More that Fr. Martin should know:

Father Martin also misses the key phrase in the decree that ecclesiastical funeral rites are to be denied to persons in same-sex marriages “unless they have given some signs of repentance before their death.” This is a direct quote from canon 1184 of the Code of Canon Law, which is intended as a call to repentance. Jesus began his public ministry proclaiming the Gospel of God with these words: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).

In other words, those living openly in same-sex marriage, like other manifest sinners who give public scandal, can receive ecclesiastical funeral rites if they gave some sign of repentance. This does not mean that unrepentant manifest sinners will simply be refused or turned away. Even in those cases where a public Mass of Christian Burial in church cannot be celebrated because the deceased person was unrepentant and there would be public scandal, the priest or deacon may conduct a private funeral service, for example, at the funeral home.

The issue, once again, being the public part and scandal, that is, not horror (!) at this or that transgression, but giving witness that condones it and leads people to think the church has changed its teaching. The teaching being what bishops as church leaders are supposed to preserve and protect, not flout.

This bishop has more to say as to private obligations in the matter, as regards the individual and the bishop, whoever he might be.

Read it at the link given above.

In for a dime, in for a dollar. What’s a church good for, anyhow? Or a bishop. What’s he supposed to do, wink?

The Bishop of Springfield, Illinois, has decreed that state legislative leaders may not be admitted to Holy Communion within his diocese, because of their work to pass the state Reproductive Health Act.

[He] also directed that Catholic legislators who have voted for legislation promoting abortion should not present themselves to receive Holy Communion until they have first gone to confession.

In detail:

“In accord with canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law…Illinois Senate President John Cullerton and Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan, who facilitated the passage of the Act Concerning Abortion of 2017 (House Bill 40) as well as the Reproductive Health Act of 2019 (Senate Bill 25), are not to be admitted to Holy Communion in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois because they have obstinately persisted in promoting the abominable crime and very grave sin of abortion as evidenced by the influence they exerted in their leadership roles and their repeated votes and obdurate public support for abortion rights over an extended period of time,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki wrote in a June 2 decree.

The latter offense, Reproductive Health Act, 2019, surely prompted the bishop of the capital city to make this public statement. It’s something that carves into legislative stone the fanaticism of the pro-aborts, declaring it to be a “fundamental right” and putting dragon’s teeth into a truly draconian law.

Among . . . provisions that the bill would remove are regulations for abortion clinics, required waiting periods to obtain an abortion, and a ban on partial-birth abortion. In addition, it would lift criminal penalties for performing abortions and would prevent any further state regulation of abortion.

The legislation would require all private health insurance plans to cover elective abortions, and eliminate reporting requirements as well as regulations requiring the investigation of maternal deaths due to abortion.

Open season on unborn, if not (because of the no-go-zone declared for investigation) the newly born who are not wanted.

Note: Durbin had already received notice from the bishop, in February, 2018, also with reference to Canon 915.