St. Sabina protests Pfleger's fate

ARCHDIOCESE OF CHICAGO | Cardinal George imposes cooling-off period for firebrand priest while his parishioners turn out in droves to demand he remain at St. Sabina

BY LISA DONOVAN, KARA SPAK, CATHLEEN FALSANI, SHAMUS TOOMEY AND CAROL MARIN Staff Reporters

suntimes.com

Defiant St. Sabina parishioners demanded Cardinal Francis George reinstate their controversial pastor, the Rev. Michael Pfleger, just hours after he was removed Tuesday from his post against his wishes.

"We respectfully request the cardinal immediately reinstate Father Pfleger as full pastor of St. Sabina," Gerald Stewart, president of the parish council, told an estimated 2,000 people packed into the South Side church Tuesday evening. The group included longtime Pfleger friend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who has been blasted for his own controversial statements on race.

Stewart said parishioners wanted an immediate meeting with the cardinal to discuss "the future of the entire faith community of St. Sabina." Pfleger did not attend the prayer service, but was on the St. Sabina campus, said Randall Blakey, a parish Cabinet member. Pfleger and Wright went out to dinner after the service.

On Tuesday afternoon, George issued a statement saying he asked Pfleger to "step back" and take a "couple of weeks" of leave from St. Sabina.

"Father Pfleger does not believe this to be the right step at this time," the statement read. "While respecting his disagreement, I have nevertheless asked him to use this opportunity to reflect on his recent statements and actions in the light of the Church's regulations for all Catholic priests."

Church members are concerned that the leave could be more than a couple of weeks.

George's directive followed several turbulent days where video footage of Pfleger preaching at Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ surfaced on YouTube. In the sermon, Pfleger describes Hillary Clinton as tearing up at a campaign appearance upset because a black man, Barack Obama, was "stealing [her] show." Pfleger later apologized.

Outside St. Sabina Tuesday evening, a security detail stopped reporters from entering the church during the service for Pfleger. Many attending the service declined to speak to reporters, angry with media coverage they believed contributed to his removal. Reporters were allowed in for a press conference at the end of the service.

George said in the statement he hoped that life at St. Sabina would continue "in uninterrupted fashion" without Pfleger. Parishioners Tuesday said that couldn't happen.

About 15 members of a St. Sabina young adult group called Passing the Baton started a hunger strike in the church sanctuary Tuesday. Blair Matthews, 18, said the group planned to "fast and pray" inside the church until Pfleger is reinstated.

Another parishioner, Nicholas Wallace, had his own concerns.

"If he leaves, there's a lot of things that may just stop," said the 30-year-old who does maintenance work at the church. "There's a lot of people leaning on St. Sabina for financial support, mental support, spiritual support."

Wallace said people in the church and broader community rely on Pfleger for counseling, food and clothing. Pfleger also was active in ministerial duties like helping couples plan for their weddings, he said.

While the cardinal has forced Pfleger to take time off and appointed a temporary administrator in his place, Pfleger remains pastor of St. Sabina, said Susan Burritt, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese.

"It's not a canonical process. It is not a sanction. This was a request from the archbishop to his priest," she said. When asked whether Pfleger could remain in St. Sabina rectory during his leave, attend mass there or continue to have regular contact with his parishioners, Burritt said further details were not available.

"There are no real restrictions on Father," she said, "but certainly the cardinal hopes Father will spend that time away from the parish and use the time to reflect. ... The hope is that he can refocus and reflect during this time."

The Rev. William Vanecko, pastor of the much-smaller St. Kilian's parish located eight blocks from St. Sabina, will fill in as temporary administrator.

Vanecko, known to parishioners as "Father V," declined interviews, saying the archdiocese told him not to comment. Vanecko's brother, Robert Vanecko, is married to Mayor Daley's sister Mary Carol.

While Vanecko might not be seen leading an anti-gun protest through the Chicago streets, a typical Pfleger activity, neighbors and parishioners said he was committed to the neighborhood. He allowed the local block club to meet in the rectory basement, and served as president of the Illinois Hunger Coalition board.

"He's not an activist like Father Pfleger, but he's involved with a lot of causes," said Myron Crowe, 56, a former parishioner who left St. Kilian to start his own ministry. "He's a well-rounded person."

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his advisers said although they were troubled by Pfleger's remarks, they were saddened by his removal.

Obama "just heard that news and obviously events of the last week have been disturbing," said David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser. "I feel sad for him and for the church community. He's done good work in those neighborhoods. All you have to do is look around to see it."

Watch extended sermon

"I tell you, if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out." (Luke 19:40)

ACTION ALERT - Father Mike Pfleger - Removed from St. Sabina

Carnage from the Audacity to Speak

Father Michael L. Pfleger, one of the strongest supporters of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. and a 2009 Beautiful Are the Feet honoree, is now in the fight of his life for his thirty-three year ministry and his pastorate at The Faith Community of Saint Sabina. 

Francis Cardinal George, Archdiocese of Chicago, has stripped Father Pfleger of his pastoral leadership and authority for an indeterminate length of time.  Father Pfleger, affectionately called Father Mike, has been one of the most prophetic voices and activist advocates for the poor, the marginalized, the disenfranchised and for African Americans in Chicago and throughout the nation.  The decision by the Cardinal, and the manner in which it is being implemented, reflect total disregard and disrespect for Father Mike and The Faith Community of St. Sabina.

Father Mike was stripped of all pastoral authority.  He cannot preside over a previously scheduled funeral and wedding this week and was informed that another priest, yet to be named, will perform both ceremonies. The funeral is one of a longtime member, and the wedding is that of a couple who had been estranged from the Catholic Church until invigorated by Father Mike's prophetic teachings and moved to join St. Sabina.

Father Mike was told mid-morning on Tuesday, June 3rd, that he was on administrative leave, effective immediately. He was ordered to vacate the premises by evening. He protested and was allowed to stay just one night. He had to find new accommodations by June 4th.  This order was given after the Cardinal first asked Father Mike to request a leave under the guise of "stress" because his father is dying.  While Father Mike is indeed dealing with his father's physical illness and journey, he declined to participate in this convenient charade.

A priest from a languishing nearby parish has been assigned as interim administrator despite qualified and experienced pastoral and lay leadership who are already in place at St. Sabina and have frequently functioned in Father Mike's absence. 

This gross disregard for the welfare of Father Mike and The Faith Community of St. Sabina appears as one more sign that the agenda afoot is to silence, marginalize and vilify prophetic voices for justice in this nation.

The manner in which the Cardinal has acted, effectively rendering Father Mike homeless with less than 24-hour notice and sending in an interim administrator, is unwarranted and unprecedented.  The Cardinal has shown more tolerance and compassion for priests accused and convicted of pedophilia, than he has shown to Father Mike and the faithful parishioners of Saint Sabina.

A prayer vigil was held on the evening of June 3rd at the church. Please click here for a statement from the leadership of Saint Sabina for you.  We need a national response.  Please email or call the archdiocese and voice your concerns.

The Cardinal's email address is vocations@archchicago.org .  The phone number is (312) 751-8230.

Please hold The Faith Community of Saint Sabina and Father Mike in your prayers.  Feel free to stay in contact with us as we share this journey.

Dr. Iva E. Carruthers
General Secretary

Remember...

First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.
[Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984)]

"In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends." (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

By Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds

From now on in his campaign or if he wins the White House, Senator Barack Obama should not set foot in a black church, except those anointed by the prelates and potentates of CNN or Fox News.

Finally the dangerous media magpies have written the final script for the senator to dislodge himself from Chicago ’s Trinity United Church of Christ, whose former pastor Jeremiah Wright has performed his wedding, baptized his children and provided the inspiration for his best-selling book, the Audacity of Hope. .

The media have given their approval to the Pastor Joel Osteen kind of cotton-candy religion and the mega-church "claim it and grab it" crowd. But those disciplines or denominations that preach truth to power and crusade against oppression and corporate evil are denounced or set up for divide-and-conquer tactics.
And the tragedy of it all is that church leaders who are saying nothing as this demonic act plays out will not be protected by their silence or reluctance to get involved. Sooner or later the censorship will touch them too.

First, corporate media crucified Wright through selective out- of -context video snippets that initiated the first breach between Wright and Obama. And now media fits over the controversial priest Rev. Michael L. Pfleger’s rant against white privilege and mocking Sen. Hillary Clinton from Trinity’s pulpit provided the final act for Obama to exit his church of 20 years.

Never have I seen such violation of the First Amendment doctrine of separation of church and state, which until now media establishments held sacred.

Presently things have deteriorated to a point-- unless church leaders stand up to this outrage—that the only way for Obama to avoid future scandal is for his advance people to get letters of acceptable churches from the media papacy.

In a similar fashion of how Secret Service police sweep the church to protect candidates from harm, Secret Spiritual police should sweep the church for any harmful, provocative, controversial literature, including Biblical references and interview pastors to ensure no sermons, remarks, prayers, hymns that could be disrespectful to the ruling elites would be uttered in their hallowed sanctuaries.

Furthermore—and it will surely come to pass—Obama’s advance people should also get a list of those black groups that are uncontrollable and therefore unacceptable to mainstream media- besides the Nation of Islam, so Obama can avoid them too.

I have been a reporter, editor and executive in mainstream newsrooms for more than 30 years and I well understand their core values are the protection of white power, property and privilege. Anyone who poses a threat to those values is in grave danger of character assassination at the very least.

In 1967 after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against the Vietnam War and addressed the evils of American imperialism, militarism, and capitalism the media and their cohorts savaged him. He was banned from Lyndon Johnson's White House. The New York Times condemned his speech and U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater condemned King as treasonous.

Today, “divide and conquer” tactics are winning in the trumped up separation of Obama from Wright. It is a warning that Obama had better run from any association with progressive ideals that may harm white core values and that Obama must always prove he is white enough if he wants to gain the presidency and stay there.

In my association with Wright, both in public and in private, I have never heard Wright say anything negative about Sen. Obama. In fact I first met the Senator through Wright’s group, the Samuel Proctor Conference, a network for social justice, which Wright organized.

I am disgusted by the mischaracterization of members of Trinity as some crazy cult, when they are dedicated churchgoers who work tirelessly to help Katrina victims and to give help and hope in their communities and the nation.

Now because of negative press, Wright and Trinity Church are receiving bomb threats and Trinity churchgoers are being harassed. Why isn’t the press investigating who or what is behind the threats and attempted silencing of Wright, Trinity and their inspiring new leader, Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, who are the most effective progressive wing of the black church?

The media have ordained themselves a secular papacy that can dictate what is acceptable in black churches. Getting your praise on, providing photo- ops for candidates to drive through before election, personal salvation, certain community building, fighting private sin, while ignoring public sins-- they say are politically correct.

Wright hits the establishment for creating a pipeline from the cradle to the grave, where millions of blacks are being pushed into the prison industrial system and for ignoring the continued agony of those suffering from Katrina and for corporate greed. And the prelates in the secular pulpit scream, “crucify him.”

So far, media elites have won the propaganda war of creating a breach between Wright and Obama, but we do not have to play their game and choose between the two leaders. Courageous leaders like Wright helped push the doors open for the brilliant saga of Obama and it will come to pass that Obama –like LBJ needed Dr. King-- will need people like Wright to say the things that he can not say.

(Rev. Dr. Barbara A. Reynolds is an author of five books, a religion columnist for the National Newspapers Publishers Association and a lecturer at many colleges, including the Howard University School of Divinity).

By STEVEN GRAY/CHICAGO

time.com

All Fred Pope wanted to do was get to Trinity United Church of Christ's 11 a.m. Sunday service. Instead, he was bombarded by reporters seeking his reaction to Sen. Barack Obama's decision to leave the South Side church after nearly two decades. "It's a deeply personal decision," Pope said simply, clutching a Bible in his left hand, walking along 95th Street toward the massive brown sanctuary. Then, Pope stopped, looked to the clear sky, and added, "I'd be disappointed if he stopped believing in God."

Pope's statement about Obama's announcement was more than many other Trinity members were willing to divulge. For much of the year, since Obama emerged as a leading presidential candidate, and since clips of longtime Trinity pastor Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s sermons appeared on YouTube, the church has weathered unprecedented scrutiny. There have been bomb threats. Reporters have brazenly called ailing Trinity members at hospices. So it's understandable that many members shooed away reporters — often by raising a hand, as if to say, "Don't even go there." In one incident Sunday, an 18-year-old in baggy black jeans, a white tee-shirt and a black bag strapped across his chest told a group of reporters gathered outside the church, on 95th Street, "It's a family there, and all this publicity has been tearing the family apart." When a reporter asked the man's name and how long he'd been a Trinity member, he clarified, "I'm just visiting." Just then, a 50-something man — later identified as a Trinity deacon — dressed in a sharply-cut black suit walked by, and shouted, in front of cameras, "Man, what the hell are you doing? You're not even a member, and you don't know what we're going through."

Inside the church, Wright's successor, Rev. Otis Moss III, didn't directly mention the Obama episode during his morning sermons. In fact his only oblique reference to Obama came during the call to prayer at the altar: "Every Christian is part of our family. Whether they're physically with us or not — they're part of our family."

In the end, Obama claimed that allowing Trinity to get back to tending to its family was a key part of why he was resigning his membership — as much as what his association with the church was doing to his presidential aspirations. After all, Obama's stunning rise to the brink of being the Democratic presidential nominee has cast an unusually harsh light on his place of worship. Trinity's roughly 8,500 members makes it among the largest congregations in Chicago — and the largest in the United Church of Christ, a predominately white protestant denomination. When Wright assumed leadership of Trinity in 1972, it barely had 90 members. He steered it toward Black Liberation Theology, which had emerged in the late-1960s largely in response to the Black Power Movement and the Nation of Islam — both of which questioned whether one could be black and Christian.

"Blacks coming out of the '60s were no longer ashamed of being black people, nor did they have to apologize for being Christian. Because many persons in the African-American community were teasing us, Christians, of being a white man's religion," Wright told PBS' Bill Moyers earlier this year.

With his charismatic leadership, and unapologetic (sometimes angry) rhetoric, Wright struck a chord with many of this city's growing black middle class. One of them, a young, relatively unknown community organizer named Barack Obama, joined Trinity in the mid-1980s, finding both a spiritual home and a useful entree into Chicago's black political elite. Obama soon came to view Wright as something of a father figure. Wright ended up consecrating Obama's wedding to Michelle Robinson, baptizing the couple's children, and even provided the title to his best-selling memoir, The Audacity of Hope.

But in the heat of the campaign, Wright became too much of a liability for the man hoping to become the country's first African-American president. Wright's remarks declaring "God damn America!" and calling 9/11 a case of "America's chickens ... coming home to roost" were roundly denounced. The YouTube-ed clips are partly what prompted Obama to deliver his much-praised March speech on race in America. Following that Philadelphia speech, Obama never again attended Trinity, and many of its members hoped the scrutiny would die.

To some degree, it did. Obama won kudos from many within the black community, and certainly beyond it, for not immediately and entirely distancing himself from Trinity. Then came Wright's April speech and defiant question-and-answer session at the National Press Club, in Washington, during which he defended Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and claimed the U.S. government introduced AIDS into the black community. Obama had to distance himself again from Wright. But the scrutiny of Trinity only deepened. After the May 25 speech by Father Michael Pfleger at Trinity, in which the controversial white Chicago priest derided Sen. Hillary Clinton as a white elitist who felt entitled the Democratic nomination for the presidency, it seemed only a matter of time before Obama had to make a clean break.

On Friday, Obama and his wife, Michelle, wrote a letter to Trinity's new pastor, Moss, announcing their resignation from the church. On Saturday, in a question-and-answer session with reporters in Aberdeen, SD, Sen. Obama explained that in the wake of Wright's NPC appearance, he and his wife had prayed for guidance on how to handle their relationship with Trinity. Obama told reporters he suspected that "it was going to be very difficult to continue our membership there as long as I was running for president. The recent episode with Father Pfleger," he continued, "just reinforced the view that we don't want to have to answer for everything that's stated in a church. On the other hand, we also don't want a church subjected to the scrutiny that a presidential campaign legitimately undergoes."

Obama also said his family would not join another church until after the November general elections. He even seemed to suggest that it's a bit disingenuous for a political candidate to feel compelled to choose a congregation based on a political, rather than purely spiritual, calculus. Should he choose to join a predominately black church, it's highly possible that what's delivered from the pulpit could, again, shock people unfamiliar with the nuances, cadences — and occasionally harsh rhetoric — of the black American church experience. "I do think there is a cultural and a stylistic gap that has come into play on this issue," Obama said Saturday. "I haven't figured out exactly how this is managed ... But I am confident that we are going to be able to find a church we feel comfortable with and that will reflect our concerns and values."

The whole episode has stunned many Trinity members, but its ultimate conclusion was not that much of a surprise to some. Dwight N. Hopkins, an authority on Black Liberation Theology at the University of Chicago's Divinity School, as well as a longtime Trinity member, recalls watching a clip of Pfleger's comments. "I thought, given that this is a presidential season, and that Sen. Obama is a member of the church, there was going to be some type of fall out. I didn't know the exact nature of it," Hopkins says. In the wake of the Obamas' departure, he adds, "People are saddened and confused — some people might be a little angry."

Wright's retirement, which became official today, had been planned for years. It's highly possible the Obamas may have found a more kindred spirit in Moss. He is 37, educated at Morehouse and Yale. His delivery is silky smooth, not nearly as bluntly political as the 66-year-old Wright's. But it is no less of a performance: He often pops the microphone between his hands during a sermon, so as to free the other hand to chop the air to emphasize words.

Moss' sermon on early Sunday seemed to suggest the church was trying hard to focus hard on its business and away from the controversy of the past several months. Several members seemed to agree. "The congregation isn't caught up in that larger debate — it's a distraction," says Hopkins, the University of Chicago professor. "We've still got to teach Bible class. None of this is going to impact the work of our ministries, or the scholarships we give to black colleges."

http://cbs2chicago.com/

Pamela Jones

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Sunday, Father Michael Pfleger addressed his congregation about the controversy surrounding his sermon for the first time. He told the congregation he's received more than 3,000 threatening emails – some calling for his death.

The messages caused the church to beef up security for Sunday's services, as CBS 2's Pamela Jones reports.

"YouTube and headlines and soundbites can now and have now become an instrument that creates the story rather than tells the story," said St. Sabina Church's Father Michael Pfleger.

Pfleger sounded off giving a sermon entitled "Beyond YouTube," chiding the media and the Web site, saying the clip of his sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ did not convey the meaning of his message.

"If you are not willing to withhold judgment until you gather information, then you are never going to know the real story," he said.

Sunday's mass had all of the singing and dancing of a normal Sunday mass at St. Sabina, plus Father Pfleger's first talk with his congregation since the debated sermon hit the Web.

"I apologize for the words that I chose. I apologize for my dramatization that was for many who do not know me simply typical dramatics that I use all the time in sermons," Pfleger said.

And even before heating those words, parishioners CBS 2 talked to say they're fully supporting their pastor.

"I'm with him, what he said, 100 percent," said parishioner Erma Sims said.

"I'm standing with my pastor. Because I love him and he's truthful," said parishioner Gladys Haynes.

Father Phleger told those listening he's unsure of what the future holds for him right now. He's already been in talks with Cardinal Francis George on that subject. He acknowledged the hatred that he says surrounds him right now and also recognized what he called his own imperfections.

Father Pfleger also said that the last few days have been more painful than the murder of his foster son. In addition to the sermon controversy, he says he had surgery last week and was supposed to stay in bed. Pfleger told the crown he's not racist or sexist and called on the nation to deal with those biases.

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by Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou

ForPeace.net

When I was 8 years old, my grandfather, Elder James Thomas, whispered in my ears the words whispered in his ear by his father. "You are of a royal priesthood. You are the heir of a rich tradition, born in the heat of slave, breed in the backwoods, go and preach the word given to your fathers and make your people free!" I have whispered these words in the ears of my five children with the hope that they will continue the prophetic preaching tradition.

While I am a third-generation ordained Pentecostal clergyperson, my work has been both ecumenical and interfaith with progressive orientation. I hold credentials in the National Baptist Convention (licensed minister) the Church of God in Christ (Ordained Elder), and in-care with a local United Church of Christ, where I serve as Senior Community Minister. I was privileged to serve as the founding National Coordinator of Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq. I spend so much time in one Mosque that the "brothers" there call me the Imam's Pastor. That Imam, my dear friend and brother, El Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, once commented publicly, "I do not know if a Rev. Sekou is a preacher posing an Imam or an Imam posing a preacher."

Equally, I have spent a lot of time at the Hebrew College's Rabbinical School. In dialog with Associate Dean Rabbi Or Rose and his students, I have come to more fully appreciate the contribution of Judaism to Christianity and its gift of the prophetic tradition to the Abrahamic faith. At the same time, I am part of a generation who has opted out and at times been put out of and put off by the Abrahamic faiths' religious guardians for various reasons. It seems that most members of "Generation X" and beyond see themselves as "spiritual but not religious."

So what does it mean to organize in a truly authentic way an interfaith movement for peace and justice?

While I was raised in the Christian church and have worked in its ministry for nearly two decades, I am ecumenical in my orientation and interfaith in observation. I make no claims about "the Christian way" as the only way. The question that I pose to all religions and secular ideologies is "Where are the least of these in your project?"

If they, "the least of these" are primary, then religious and non-religious creatures can engage in a critical partnership to end human misery. With "the least of these" litmus test, I "test the spirits" of all religions and ideologies. This trans-religious criterion hold space for the religious and non-religious alike. There is even room for that great atheist Albert Camus who claims, "The artist must never side with those who are the makers of history but rather the victims of it." This statement bears a striking resemblance to Jesus' proclamation concerning "the least of these."

As Jim Wallis has noted in The Great Awakening, there are two great hungers in our nation: one for spirituality and the other is for social justice. As FOR's resident "JuBu" (born Jewish, practicing Buddhism) reminds me often, the language of prayer and theology do not ring true for her or the members of her "fellowship." But the quests for spiritual nurture and social justice are central to her way of life. Hence, "the least of these" model that considers the spiritual life of a community in its quest for social justice opens out a new space of interfaith organizing. This mode of being as interfaith organizers may serve to tamp down the inherent interfaith feuding and bring a new generation of faith folks grounded in their traditions into a tent of hope, peace, and justice.

--

Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love"here not merely in the personal sense but as state of being, or a state of grace. . .

-James Baldwin

By Rev. Heber Brown, III