Column: As institutions fade, a key question: ‘Who charts Chicago’s future and what does it look like?’
For many decades, Chicago has been a Catholic town, through its politically influential congregations and colleges. In almost every neighborhood you’re bound to find a steeple, a crucifix, a symbol of the church’s presence.
But some of those institutions — Catholic and otherwise — are fading as Chicago and Illinois lose economic and civic vitality through a massive drop in population and jobs.
Which is why this column involves the Rev. Michael Pfleger, Chicago’s activist priest, and the sexual abuse accusations against him.
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He, too, is part of an institution now facing the dimmer switch. And what’s happening to institutional power in Chicago is critical to looking forward.
Sexual abuse by priests has undercut the church’s moral authority across the world, and the Catholic church reels now, again, in Chicago, over new accusations that Pfleger, the lefty pastor of St. Sabina parish, abused two boys some 40 years ago.
Two brothers who grew up on the West Side have alleged they were abused by Pfleger beginning when they were preteens. They said they were susceptible to grooming because of their own fear of Chicago gang violence and the worry they couldn’t protect themselves. Their mother insisted they go to church to keep them out of trouble. And Pfleger made the church a second home for them.
“Getting that attention, good or bad, was still better than being out on the street. I was scared to death of the street,” said the older brother, a former police officer, from his lawyer’s office.
Pfleger has not been charged with any crime, but he did step away from his duties pending an investigation. In a statement, his lawyers dismissed the allegations as purely mercenary:
“Father Pfleger has never abused them or anybody else. These allegations are false and are simply being made for money. This is a shakedown.”
The Chicago Tribune’s Christy Gutowski reported that the younger brother confirmed he’d asked Pfleger for $20,000, but he said he planned to use the request as proof he’d been a victim. And, he said, if his motivation had been only about money, then he would have acted years ago when he was fighting drug addiction. He said he has been sober for more than a decade.
Though I disagree with Father Mike’s politics, he deserves the presumption of innocence. And I appreciate his commitment to giving voice to the voiceless, by fighting gang violence and racism.
Many of his parishioners still support him, although doubts are increasing.
And many of you may want to confine Pfleger’s story to the allegations against him.
But the other morning, I sat in with Dan Proft, a Roman Catholic and conservative, on his radio show “The Morning Answer” on AM 560.
Proft asked the broader question.
He put Pfleger and the church in the context of fading institutional power:
The ousted Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, the indicted Ald. Edward Burke, Chicago’s business leaders now retired or moved off to other states, and the establishment media that doesn’t have the reach it once had.
“Many of our ‘heroes’ have fallen, Madigan, Burke, the CEOs, old media, Pfleger as representative of the church,” Proft said sarcastically.
“So, who charts Chicago’s future and what does it look like?” Proft asked.
Not the church. It’s trying to hold on. Even if Pfleger is found to be innocent of all this, he’ll never have the political influence he once had.
Neither will Madigan and Burke, representatives of the old line of Catholics in Chicago politics that began decades ago in the Kelly-Nash machine and was reinforced under both Daley regimes.
Madigan has not been charged with any crime, but Burke has been indicted. They’re both trying to stay ahead of the U.S. attorney.
Can Mayor Lori Lightfoot chart the future?
She rolled into office without political experience, but on an anti-corruption platform that got her votes, since the city finally understood that political corruption was at the heart of the rot.
But Lightfoot can’t get a handle on the city’s skyrocketing violent crime rate. She can’t talk much about all the carjacking going on — by young males, many in their early teens — without talking about the fact that she can’t open the schools, because she can’t get the Chicago Teachers Union back to work.
The CTU leadership proves that they, and not Lightfoot, run the public schools.
And now the COVID-19 lockdowns that she and Gov. J.B. Pritzker supported have made open states more tantalizing to those considering fleeing.
It would be one thing if the institutions were crumbling and the people still had enough faith in their political leadership to remain.
But that seems to be gone. The quarter of a million people who’ve left Illinois over the past decade understood that political and other institutions were wavering. Last year, some 79,000 moved off.
They’ve taken their vitality and their tax dollars with them to other states.
Years ago, the city’s oligarchs, institutions unto themselves, entered into an unholy marriage with the Democratic machine. They, too, now are gone.
Political power abhors a vacuum. And as the institutions fade, who charts the future of Chicago?
The public workers unions, elements of the various bureaucracies, and whichever political warlords remain.
As they grab for the levers of government power in Chicago, they’ll think:
“Where’s mine?”
Yet without strong religious, civic and political institutions to temper them, it just might be “Where’s mine” on steroids.
Listen to “The Chicago Way” podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin — at www.wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/thechicagoway.
Twitter @John_Kass
