This may have been reported, but I missed it.  Fr. Pfleger getting wild?

A gun rights advocate wants the Justice Department to investigate a Catholic priest who during a weekend anti-gun rally threatened to “snuff out” a Chicago gun store owner.

As Cybercast News Service reported earlier, Rev. Michael Pfleger said Saturday in comments aimed at Chuck’s Gun Shop owner John Riggio, “we’re going to find out and snuff you out.”

Pfleger, pastor of St. Sabina’s Church in Chicago, told the crowd “we’re going to snuff out John Riggio, we’re going to snuff out legislators that are voting … against our gun laws and we’re coming for you because we are not going to sit idly.”

To “snuff” can mean to sniff, inhale, or extinguish. It is also commonly used as a slang term for “to kill.”

I would say so.  Once on the West Side, I was “fingered” by black activist Chester Robinson, who has since gone to his reward.  Friends told me to lie low, said wherever I go, be sure to wear my Roman collar.  This was in the mid-60s, when the street would catch on to what a leader said.

Pfleger doesn’t mean it that way, I’m sure.  But how will he be taken and how far need he go to keep his audience?

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Later, email comment:

I don’t listen to rap or Jay Leno, but “snuff out” means “blow away” or “kill” in my street lexicon. And street jargon is Pfleger’s stock in trade.

Now he’s had his effect, and got his headlines, and he’ll play dumb and innocent.

 

And cardinal George will let the civil authorities deal with him. When did he resign from being cardinal to Fr. Pfleger? No longer his boss?

I do believe the cardinal is in over his head with Chicago.  He’s a bookish fellow, ready to duke it out from podium or pulpit, but not able to deal with the shrewd likes of Pfleger, who is as clever a rascal as has arisen in the archdiocese for many years.