Kadner: George vs. Pfleger ignores true fight

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

I was going to start this column with a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas warning against obedience to church superiors “in all things.”

But I am neither a theologian nor a Catholic, so I’d better leave debates about religious dogma to those who know it better than I.

What I do know something about are the problems facing Chicago neighborhoods.

Crime. Unemployment. Drugs.

I have been writing about those things, or more accurately their consequences, for more than three decades now.

And that’s why I understand a little bit about the battles that have been fought by Michael Pfleger, the pastor of St. Sabina Parish on the South Side.

Pfleger is in a different kind of battle now. He’s in a fight with his church leader, Cardinal Francis George, who suspended Pfleger from his pastoral duties and temporarily replaced him as pastor.

The church congregation is in open rebellion and earlier this week took out a full-page ad in the Chicago Sun-Times to make its case for retaining Pfleger as pastor.

Pfleger has been a lightning rod for criticism. He also has been at odds with cardinals of the Chicago Archdiocese for nearly 30 years.

I have called Pfleger a “good man” in the past and stand by that description.

But he is not a perfect man. I have not met any of those in my lifetime. All of us are flawed.

He is different than most other men I have met in that he refuses to accept the human condition as it exists. He believes you don’t have to wait for the afterlife for things to get better and that through faith in God, people can create miracles here on earth.

And he has built a congregation at St. Sabina that believes in social justice as much as it believes in religious doctrine. In fact, the two are inseparable at St. Sabina, as some might contend they are in the New Testament.

The parish has a school to educate neighborhood children, has launched a program to retrain people for jobs, has an economic development arm to attract merchants and has developed and cultivated leadership skills among members of its congregation.

Pfleger has organized campaigns against street gangs and drug dealers. He has cultivated friendships with key Chicago political leaders and even developed a few of them within his parish. He has also railed repeatedly against racism.

All of that has made him the target of hate mail and death threats.

Still, he has built a congregation that once numbered a few hundred into thousands. St. Sabina, once on the verge of economic collapse, is now financially self-sufficient.

But Cardinal George claims that Pfleger lied to him. He contends that during a private discussion, the priest indicated he was ready to step aside as pastor and take another position.

Pfleger was offered the presidency of Leo High School, a Catholic school that is financially failing.

A short time later, Pfleger appeared on a radio show and said he might consider leaving the Catholic Church if he could no longer be shepherd to his flock, implying that he was being forced to leave.

George felt this was a public betrayal and distortion of their private conversation.

Pfleger would later let it be known that George was the one who distorted their discussion and what he said during his radio interview.

In a letter to George, released by the lay leadership of St. Sabina, Pfleger had apparently offered to take control of Leo if it were placed under the authority of his church and called St. Sabina’s Leo High School.

Pfleger, it turns out, has been planning to step aside as pastor of St. Sabina and even recruited a South African priest to take his place in a few years.

Feelings have been hurt. The St. Sabina congregation feels betrayed because Cardinal George never consulted them about any change in leadership. He has refused to meet with them.

Pfleger obviously feels he has been set up by the cardinal, who wanted to replace him.

A new priest has moved into the rectory, and St. Sabina parishioners tell me the event was treated as some sort of celebration by him.

The cardinal feels his authority has been publicly challenged and that he was double-crossed.

The church is not a democracy. Its leadership does not have to answer questions.

But the cardinal is also a shepherd. The flock of St. Sabina does not feel protected but deserted and left to fend for itself.

St. Sabina is an island of hope in a neighborhood where man-made tsunamis of trouble are a constant threat.

George needs to help his people. Being a dictator is easy. Being a leader, that’s hard.