A week after the Julian meeting, the senator announced another, this one of his own devising, about fixing the Eisenhower expressway. It was to be held at another middle school, Gwendolyn Brooks, a few blocks down Washington Boulevard from Julian.

Chief among state officials to be on hand — and with others, held up for admiration — was to be the state’s secretary of transportation and as such director of the Illinois Department of Transportation, the formidable IDOT, the senator announced in a release.

This was Ann Schneider, who was to resign under a cloud a scant nine months later, thanked tersely by the governor for “years of hard work and dedication.”

He did not thank her for drawing down on him accusations of “perpetuating [Gov.] Blagojevich-era practices” by hiring and promoting without apparent cause her stepdaughter and hundreds of others, as charged by the Better Government Association, thus “tainting” her leadership.

He introduced her replacement as…

A church to remember here, per its web site.

Mere blocks from Bryn Mawr red line stop, arguably more Catholic than the Pope.

Play that “Hail, holy Queen,” a.k.a Salve Regina, on this page, and be returned, all ye Romans of a certain age, to the religious experience of your youth.

And be introduced, you others of any past experience, to classical beauty in a sacred place.

Yes, he could (and get away it), and yes, he did.

Note also this at end of story:

Meanwhile, a Catholic school in Macon, Ga., is facing a federal discrimination lawsuit from a former teacher whose employment was terminated in 2014 after the school found that he would be legally marrying his same-sex partner, the Cardinal Newman Society reported.

When gummint comes knocking, don’t open your door. Maybe you’ll get away with it, but probably not.

. . . at a press conference on June 18, when the encyclical was announced.

This is a watershed moment for the church, for humanity and for the planet, which Pope Francis calls our common home. It’s time for the church to be bold — to speak about major issues — and to achieve a new level of relevance in people’s lives.

Missed this at the time, but wow. Second only to the coming Day of the Lord.

That “new level of relevance” too. Higher and higher with our relevance factor.

— Note: It’s how public people talk that gets me, as in my coming book, Illinois Blues: How Oak Park-based state office-holders talk to people. — 

Received Catholic Press Assn. award posthumously at recent convention.

1. 

   Editor of Catholic New World in Chicago receives CPA’s Bishop John England Award on behalf of late Cardinal George

   Joyce Duriga, editor of the Catholic New World in Chicago, receives the annual Bishop John England Award June 24 from Timothy Walter, executive director of the Catholic Press Association, on behalf of the late Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago. The cardinal, who died earlier this year, was recognized “for distinguished service in exercising and defending the First Amendment rights of Catholic newspapers,” during the 2015 Catholic Media Conference in Buffalo, N.Y. (CNS photo/Karen Callaway, Catholic New World)

He was praised by the CPA awards committee:

He regularly addressed issues of religious freedom in his column for the Catholic New World. These columns were often reprinted in diocesan newspapers around the country and regularly received more than 10,000 page views on…