When Clergy Demonize Police and the GOP

John Minchillo/AP Photo
John Minchillo/AP Photo

Breitbart News’ Lee Stranahan reported Oct. 23 that, according to a New York Times story:

FBI director James Comey said Friday in a speech at University of Chicago Law School that the onslaught of criticism of law enforcement “may be the main reason for the recent increase in violent crime.”

Comey becomes America’s highest-ranking law enforcement to publicly raise a connection between ‘the Ferguson Effect’ of intense and aggressive scrutiny of police spurred on by radical anti-law enforcement activist group Black Lives Matter and data such the huge spike in murder rates in cities like Baltimore.

Here in the bloodbath known as Chicago, it certainly doesn’t help matters when someone like the politically-connected and local media darling Father Michael Pfleger accuses the police of genocide.

From a 2014 story in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Continuing a week of protest over the deaths of young black men at the hands of police, the Rev. Michael Pfleger on Sunday interrupted Mass — leading worshipers out of the pews at Saint Sabina Catholic Church and into the street…

“Our justice system is broken. Body cameras don’t make a difference if we can see it and still don’t convict anybody,” Pfleger said during the service, referring to the body-mounted cameras that some have suggested as a panacea to police-involved violence… At one point Pfleger led the group in chants of “Black Lives Matter” and “I can’t breathe.” Later, the crowd sang a rendition of “Amazing Grace”…

“People say what is… protesting going to do?,” Pfleger said. “All I know is people wearing pink made this country come to grips with breast cancer. If we can raise the consciousness of breast cancer, we can raise the consciousness of genocide.”

Pfleger’s boss, Archbishop Blase Cupich, isn’t nearly as loud, but he’s apparently of a similar mindset.

On Oct. 9, Cupich wrote in a Chicago Tribune op-ed:

Members of Congress stood late last month to applaud Pope Francis’ call for an end to the weapons industry that is motivated by ‘money that is drenched in blood,’ and to endorse his call ‘to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade.’

Surely America’s political leaders did not think the pope’s comments were limited to arms trade outside of America’s borders…. We must band together to call for gun-control legislation. We must act in ways that promote the dignity and value of human life. And we must do it now.

Prior to his Oct. 9 op-ed, Cupich wrote (again in the Chicago Tribune):

 [W]e should be … appalled by the indifference toward the thousands of people … who are denied rights by a broken immigration system and by racism; who suffer in hunger, joblessness and want; who pay the price of violence in gun-saturated neighborhoods; or who are executed by the state in the name of justice.

Reading between the lines, Cupich and Pfleger are basically saying, “Look around, everyone. The problems you see are the result of racist cops and the racist GOP. Just keep voting for liberal Democrats, and you’ll be OK.”

No thanks.

Matt C. Abbott is a Catholic commentator with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication, media and theatre from Northeastern Illinois University. He’s been interviewed on MSNBC, NPR, WLS-TV (ABC) in Chicago, WMTV (NBC) in Madison, Wis., and has been quoted in The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. He can be reached at mattcabbott@gmail.com.

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