Sneed and her shots

God bless Miss Sneed for reporting Cardinal George’s broadside to the maximum leader, but these shots kill me:

† The upshot: The issue was resolved when . . . .

† The backshot: Cardinal George is now in Rome . . . .

† The buckshot: “The contraceptive mandate imposed on health plans . . . .

Deliver us, O Sneed, from this surfeit of neologisms and quirkish behavior in print.

via Cardinal George defies President Obama on birth control – Chicago Sun-Times.

Sister Rosemary in a perp walk

Is it Barbara Frietchie time in Chi?

“The contraceptive mandate imposed on health plans by the Department of Health and Human Services also violates freedom of conscience,” said a Catholic priest.

“Imagine the impact on a revered Chicago Catholic institution like Misericordia, which is a home to the mentally disabled.”


Barbara Frietchie retrieved the flag shot down by Johnny Reb as he marched through “Frederick town” and hurled her defiance at Stonewall Jackson’s Confederate soldiers:

‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,
But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.

At 90, she’d come by her gray hairs honestly.

Context: Cardinal George defies Obama, screams Sun-Times

 . . .

 

“We cannot — and will not — comply with this unjust law,” states the cardinal, who is vehemently opposed to the new Obama administration rule requiring religious organizations to include contraceptive health insurance coverage.

“People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens because of their religious beliefs. . . . Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights.”

 

. . . but nowhere runs his letter!  Left-wing hothouse, like most mainstream newsrooms.

Later: And what’s here comes after five days of nothing, reader Pat Hickey notes below!

Oak Park hockey night

Park District meeting tonight at conservatory on Garfield, next to Eisenhower Expy.  Was about plans for Ridgeland Common renovation.  Highly professional presentation by the architect went off w/out a hitch for maybe 20 minutes, easy listening with help of slides.  The park in question, at Ridgeland and Lake in the center of town, will be looking very good in a few years.  Work is to begin 2013 “after the ice show” and take 12–15 months, will cost $23.5 million.  Very assuring presentation.

However:  No year-’round swimming, which would add $2.5 million-plus to the $23 million, according to one of a dozen (at least) speakers following the presentation.  Now’s the time to enclose the pool, said the speaker.

Soccer and softball spokesmen were there too. 

But all but maybe three speakers were there tonight for ICE SKATING AND ICE HOCKEY.  Heck, there were a dozen speakers probably for ice alone.  Year-’round, please,  was the repeated cry.  Delivered with such articulation and reasonability as to make skating and hockey, a contact sport as we know, look like the cream of the crop as per politesse and attractiveness.

It was all in all a wonderful meeting.  Hockey parents never looked so good.  More later about this exercise in community involvement and communication. 

Selling religious life in Chicago

CAVA Chicago Archdiocesan Vocation Assoc.. Sister Elyse Marie Ramirez, O.P. heads this operation, talked last night at the Oak Park Serra Club  of the association’s work with women entering the sisterhoods.  

But mostly, as requested, she talked about her own vocation — in dramatic, even gripping terms, including her having to inform her affianced that she was going instead into the convent.  

He’d seen it coming and beat her to it in that moment of truth, pre-empting her announcement.  Quite a dynamic lady and a saleswoman of the first order.  Member 20-plus years of the Springfield (IL) Dominicans.