Chicago’s archbishop, Cardinal Blaise Cupich, was forced to apologize to the city’s Jewish community after controversial priest, Fr. Michael Pfleger, invited the virulently anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, to deliver a speech from the pulpit of St. Sabina church.
Fr. Pfleger, who is often at the center of controversy, and well-known for his outspokenness on social justice issues, says he invited Farrakhan after Farrakhan was booted from Facebook as a way of demonstrating his commitment to preserving the freedom of speech. The idea was to allow Farrakhan to refute allegations that he preaches hatred against the Jewish people.
Pfleger praised himself for extending the invitation ahead of the event Thursday night, labeling himself a “defender of free speech.”
But Farrakhan’s address was far from unifying. As he ascended the platform at St. Sabina’s last week, Farrakhan railed against “Satanic Jews” and referenced the sorting of Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz into lines destined for Nazi work camps and those those destined for gas chambers. Farrakhan claimed that he was imbued with the divine right to label some Jews “good” and some bad.
“I stand on God’s word,” Farrakhan told the crowd according to Haaretz, adding that he knows “the truth,” and that his mission is to “separate the good Jews from the Satanic Jews.”
After complaints from the Catholic and Jewish communities alike, the Archdiocese released a vague statement on Friday, distancing themselves from Pfleger’s event and insisting that Pfleger neither consulted with nor informed Archdiocesan official before inviting Farrakhan to speak. The Archdiocese also condemned “hatred,” though without referencing anti-Semitism directly — similar to the way the Women’s March avoided any mention of anti-Semitism after its leadership was accused of its own cozy relationship with the nation of Islam.
The event involving Minister Louis Farrakhan at St. Sabina Parish is not sponsored by the Archdiocese of Chicago. Cardinal Cupich was not consulted before Fr. Pfleger announced the event.
The framers of our Constitution included freedom of speech in the First Amendment because they knew that it was essential to a healthy democracy. Without this sacred right, injustice goes unchecked. This is precisely why it must never be abused.
There is no place in American life for discriminatory rhetoric of any kind. At a time when hate crimes are on the rise, when religious believers are murdered in their places of worship, we cannot countenance any speech that dehumanizes persons on the basis of ethnicity, religious belief, economic status or country of origin. We are all part of the human family, and we owe it to one another, our children — and our creator — to act that way.
Cardinal Cupich, who is typically tolerant of Fr. Pfleger’s antics, being heavily involved in social justice issues himself, appeared to notice that the Archdiocese statement was unsatisfying to Pfleger’s critics and issued one of his own late Friday night, condemning Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism in no uncertain terms.
Continue reading here.
[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Emily Zanotti and originally published at the DailyWire. Title changed by P&P.]
