Editorial

Father Pfleger:

Chicago's Catholic Archdiocese Cross to Bear

David A. Lombardo

Father Michael Pfleger is at it again, targeting Chuck's Gun Shop in Riverdale. As of this writing Pfleger plans to once again picket Chuck's Gun Shop this weekend on Saturday and attempt to prevent customers from entering the store. You can pretty much sum up Pfleger's intelligence and social awareness by simply understanding he plans to stand between Chuck's Gun Shop and an armed group who want to go inside. What could possibly go wrong with that plan? Truth be told, pretty much nothing, as time and again, armed, law abiding citizens across the country have proven to show far greater restraint and judgment in dealing with such situations than the likes of Father Pfleger.

John Riggio, the gun store's owner, is a friend and used to advertise on On Target Radio. Riggio, a quiet, polite gentleman, commits the mortal sin of selling guns to law abiding citizens who happen to live in the Riverdale area. If you've never visited Riverdale, let me assure you that many law abiding residents feel the need to own a firearm to protect their families.

Riggio shouldn't take this personally. Pfleger, who is Catholicism's modern day Tomas de Torquemada, has resurrected the Spanish Inquisition over the Second Amendment. Perhaps more to the point, Pfleger has also made annoying and embarrassing the Chicago Archdiocese the focus of his 40-year career as a priest. A couple of years ago, I contacted the Archdiocese to inquire about Pfleger and why the church was allowing him to take such a strong, reactionary position against the Second Amendment. I was told the church wasn't taking any stand; it was solely Pfleger's opinion. When I inquired why the archdiocese didn't shut him down, the response I was given was Father Pfleger is a somewhat special circumstance. More like special needs, if you ask me.

Pfleger has been pastor of Saint Sabina Catholic Church in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood of Chicago since 1981. At age 31 Pfleger became the Chicago Archdiocese' youngest pastor, but where pastors normally serve for only six to twelve years at a given parish, Pfleger has been with the mostly African American parish since 1981. It's a little bit like having a 20-year career in the Army and retiring as a Private - something ain't kosher.

Pfleger has consistently been an embarrassment to the Catholic Church. If the Chicago Archdiocese were run by any of its many Chicago Outfit parishioners, Pfleger would have been trunk music decades ago. He pals around with the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the virulently anti-American Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who spewed fire and vitriol from the pulpit of Barack Obama's Chicago church.

Pfleger is an attack dog trying to kill the Jerry Springer show and a veritable pit bull that's locked its jaws on Howard Stern's leg. Love those two clowns or hate 'em, they have the right to air whatever show they wish and let the court of public opinion decide if they financially survive.

But nowhere does Pfleger shine as much as when he's harassing Chuck's Gun Shop. Like his buddy Jesse Jackson, Pfleger has never seen a news camera he didn't love. He postures and pontificates for the news' mass market while simultaneously preventing, to the best of his limited ability, customers from going into Chuck's.

This man of the cloth, the purveyor of the Christian ethic, a shepherd guiding his flock, a mentor teaching the young how to lead a Christian life of forgiveness and understanding, called for his mob to drag John Riggio out of the store and kill him in the street.

Oh, how Catholicism has changed since I was in school. In the 50s we only had to worry about the nuns whacking the backs of our hands with a ruler. Now you have a sociopathic priest who threatens to have you dragged out of your store and whacked in the street by a mob he himself has assembled.

Of course it would never occur to Pfleger to go into a gang-infested area, you know, where people are using guns to kill one another, call out gang members and threaten to kill them in the street. No, because like all bullies, Pfleger is a coward and would never actually stand up to someone that would turn him into a grease spot on the ground without so much as a second thought. He knows what everyone else knows: law abiding citizens with guns aren't the problem; they're just a safe target that gets you free television coverage.