Being the product of a relatively sequestered New Jersey Catholicism, I wasn’t aware that men like Father Michael Pfleger existed. Silly me. Power Line points us to video of Fr. Pfleger preaching—not at a Catholic church, it seems—about the duty white Americans have to make reparations for slavery. His tone—red-faced, screaming—is not something I’m accustomed to seeing from the more staid priests in my orbit.
Nor is his message, which seems to be that white people are all the beneficiaries of slavery and that we must abandon our 401K funds, throw away our trust funds, and leave the jobs which we were handed by the old boys’ network in order to atone for “what our ancestors did.” He rails against “white entitlement” and “supremacy.”
It may come as little surprise that Fr. Pfleger is a supporter of, and friend of , Barack Obama. Or that Fr. Pfleger invited Rev. Wright to deliver a blessing from his church, Saint Sabina, in March, during the height of the controversy over Wright’s bizarre and hateful racism. He uses “damn” as an expletive in the course of charging Hillary Clinton with being a racist.
If only the Catholic Church really was the conservative, absolutist organization that its liberal critics charge it with being . . .
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…