BREAKING: Archdiocese of Chicago once reimbursed Barack Obama for a flight to a community-organizing conference.
Run by a group founded by — wait for it — Saul Alinsky. For a grand total of $196. Twenty-six years ago.
I hope you were sitting down, because Catholic Culture, via The Blaze, is about to blow your mind. Apparently, when Obama was working with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development — the U.S. bishops’ domestic anti-poverty program — he flew to a conference and was reimbursed for the cost of his tickets. Predictably, the conservative Catholic blogo-chamber has been reverberating with this thrilling expose since it broke Monday. The irony is thick, isn’t it? The Archdiocese of Chicago covers airfare for a twenty-five-year-old community organizer who would go on to institute a policy as president over which several dioceses would eventually sue. Wait. The Archdiocese of Chicago itself is not party to those suits. And you know where Alinsky was born and raised, don’t you? What could it mean?
Of course, we’re all commies here.
Alinsky, Obama, Bernardin, CCHD – it really is the perfect storm.
Makes a girl proud.
OMIGOSH, We were in Chicago for a wedding on the 14-15 of July. We stayed at the hotel where we honeymooned more than 26 years ago. A lot more than 26 years ago. (It had changed.) But here is the problem: We spotted indications of Chicago Cubs cells everywhere — caps, shirts, shorts, bracelets, underwear (I’m guessing about the last). But we failed to detect any sign of Saul Alinsky, and this is despite the fact that we went to Mass at the Cathedral on Sunday. How blind could we be? Where can we get absolution? CAN we get it?
Money well spent!! I remember the special collection for this at St. Ita’s.
From the link to Catholic Culture provided in this post:
“In 1986, Barack Obama, then a community organizer in Chicago, attended training offered by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) with funds provided by the Archdiocese of Chicago, according to putative archdiocesan archival documents given to Phyllis Schlafly and George Neumayr and printed in their new book, No Higher Power.”
Ah, Phyllis Schafley, our Catholic Michelle Bachmann.
Putative? One would think that archival documents would either be or not be. But that, I guess, is the question.
I’m a proud alumna of a Church-sponsored Alinsky-style organizing group: the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (founded by some Fordham Jesuits and grads during the time the Bronx was burning).
Not only were the Catholic parishes the backbone of our Coalition, but a core supporter of the group, when I worked there, was CCHD.
Up the people.
The church plants the seeds of its own destruction. Obama is a classic sleeper cell. Call Jack Bauer…
Geez – and I attended class at DePaul Univ. and also was reimbursed for trainings with Alinsky. Does this mean that my classes with Alinsky’s good friend, Msgr. Egan, were evil? Does DePaul University have to remove Egan’s statue from the student center porch?
“Does DePaul University have to remove Egan’s statue from the student center porch?”
Only if he has one finger raised in victory.
Not only Msgr Egan. Cardinal Meyer — of whom there reminders all through the diocese — once let Alinsky address the graduates of Mundelein Seminary. Oh, the rot goes deep, I say deep in Chicago. Where is Mrs. O’Leary when the church and nation need her?
$196 can’t be right. It isn’t divisble by 30.
John Prior: According to my calculations, 30 shekels in first-century Palestine are EXACTLY equivalent to $196 in 1986 dollars. Amazing, I know. But that’s a true fact.
The Archdiocese could have saved its pennies by suggesting to Obama that he not fly to Los Angeles but rather stay in Hyde Park and talk to Milton Friedman, ”the architect of the most successful social welfare program of all time,” from whom he could learn about effective anti-poverty policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit and education vouchers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html
Tom Blackburn:
Surely, you jest. I, for one, wish we had more like Cardinal Meyer in our U.S. hierarchy today.
Omigod! Can Armaggedon be far away? Repent! Parishes will perish. Milton Friedman will reveal Saul Obama to be the anti-Christ, and he’ll do it from the dead, live on Fox TV with Bill O’Really!
Helen, Of course I jest. Now that Milton Friedman has been raised to the altars as Patron of the Poor Folks, anything but jesting is impossible.
Irene is right. Catholic fingerprints are all over the Alinsky- style conspiracies that have sought to provide attractive, “green,” affordable housing in the Northwest Bronx. The Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation emerged from quarters in the aptly-named Our Lady of Refuge Church. Since the troubled 70′s, the Corporation has managed to acquire or construct 95 buildings with 2700 apartments of affordable and senior housing– including three attractive structures tucked in among the lawns and trees of my alma mater, The Academy of Mt. St. Ursula. The Ursulines were eager co-conspirators on that project. You can never tell what those radical nuns will get up to.
Susan –
Yes!! The Ursulines!! Watch out!!!! They formed the original Communist cells in the American Catholic Church when they were big supporters of Archbishop Rummell back in the 30s-40s-50s when he was known to be a Communist sympathizer (wanted to integrate the schoos, if you can imagine it, even said *in public* that segregation was a sin!) and one of his main lieutenants was a Jesuit, Fr. John Toomey, who was an actual Communist, or so everybody said so it must have been true. Some people say that some of Fr. Toomey’s *fellow Jesuits* called him a Communist right *from the pulpit* of Holy Name of Jesus Church on St. Charles Avenue!!! You KNOW that’s got to be TRUE!!! Hmmm. Yes, those Ursulines are born mischief makers. I’ve heard that their *real* patron saint is Santa Claus, who gave all that money to poor girls for their dowries, sort of like the Ursulines who helped those casket girls back in the 1700s. They’re trying to make Santa Clause patron saint of the Democratic Party, but Barack won’t let them.
Wow, so this is what Commonweal has become in the last 30 years. A sarcastic snark-fest of the self-satisfied pseudo-intelligentsia. I remember when it had something important and vaguely Igantian to say to a larger culture that it wasn’t fully enamored with. Now it’s Salon or Slate for folks who used to go to mass. Sad, really.
What is this “Catholic Culture” website? The Blaze, I know, is just an extreme right wing mouthpiece for Glenn Beck & Co. But what is Catholic Culture, are they affiliated?
Last year, I received a blast e-mail from the NY Archdiocesan education office recommending that I look at the Catholic Culture resource section to teach my children about saints (I think it was saints). The e-mail recommended some other sites, too, that were pretty mainstream.
So I went to catholicculture.org and it provided these just crazy ratings of the “fidelity” of websites operated by various Catholic institutions. The site not only condemned a whole slew of websites hosted by religious orders serving in the Archdiocese (these were the orders’ homepages, mind you, not any kind of teaching platform, so I guess the orders themselves are supposed to be questionable).
The kicker was, this crazy website also condemned the religion textbook that the Archdiocese is using in our parochial schools. And the person making these judgments on Catholic Culture isn’t any kind of official churchman, it’s just a random person with a PhD.
I e-mailed back the Archdiocese telling them I found the site not only really disturbing, but also confusing. The people teaching my kids religion are directing me to a website which tells me not to trust the materials these same people are using to teach my kids religion. So which is it?
I am actually a little concerned that our Archdiocese, which has made Catholic identity a plank of our school system’s strategic plan, that it is looking at something as troublesome as this “Catholic Culture” as way to reinforce our identity.
Susan- I toured Serviam Residences at Mt St Ursula last week, it really is gorgeous and the Sisters and FBHC should be extremely proud of that senior housing. (My 1st organzing job was at the Fordham Bedford Community Coalition, which had its office out of OLR’s parish center).
@Michael Jarman (7/25, 8:44 pm) I think some of what you’re seeing in this thread reflects what many American Catholics have experienced over the past several decades—that for all of Alinsky’s bluster, bravado and intentionally provocative language, there are deep connections between much of his thinking, and his actions, and the thinking (and actions) of both the Catholic Church in this country and around the world.
That’s not surprising. Alinsky had a long and close intellectual friendship with Jacques Maritain. As others have noted above, in addition to noted socialist Marshall Fields (I jest), Alinsky relied heavily on Cardinal Meyer, Msgr. Egan and other Catholics from the Chicago Archdiocese throughout his career. By now there must be thousands of Catholic parishes around the country that participate, or have participated in “Alinsky-style” organizations. (Most are affiliated with one of several networks of community organizations, e.g, IAF, Gamaliel, PICO, DART, IVP.)
Naturally, those parishes have had a range of experiences, from highly positive to highly negative, with their particular encounter with Alinsky and his intellectual/social/political descendants.
But the whole notion that there’s something sinister about a remote association with Alinsky—who died 14 years before the Archdiocese of Chicago apparently reimbursed a legitimate travel expense for the 25 year old Barack Obama—is, for many, laughable.
Michael Jarman: smile, the Wanderer and EWTN love you.
“Salon or Slate for folks who used to go to mass.”
A very palpable hit :-)