The indomitable Micheal Pfleger, the priest I know
Cathleen Falsan/Religion News Service
Issue date: 6/22/08 Section: Divine Intervention
One of the most vivid, and perhaps most telling, memories I have of the Rev. Michael Pfleger is the image of him standing on top of - not in front of or behind - the wooden altar that's shaped like an African drum inside the gothic sanctuary of his South Side parish, St. Sabina's.
Pfleger, in robes trimmed with Kente-patterned cloth, is sweating and shouting into a microphone as about 200 people, many of them addicts in various stages of recovery, ring the altar where he is perched and pelt him with packs of cigarettes.
"Come on, give 'em up!" Pfleger, once a three-pack-a-day smoker, shouts at the group assembled in the sanctuary, with its enormous mural of a Black Jesus with outstretched hands adorning the back wall. "God didn't deliver you from cocaine and alcohol so you could be addicted to nicotine!
"God loves you, God loves you," Pfleger cries, reaching out to gently pat the head of one worshiper. "Some of you haven't heard it in a long time, that someone loves you."
Pfleger, 59, has spent the 33 years of his priesthood among the impoverished Black community on Chicago's South Side creating a ministry that's based in equal parts on a thoroughly Catholic understanding of the social gospel and its notion of God's preferential option for the poor, and the not-so-Catholic belief in salvation by grace, through faith - period.
At the same time, Pfleger, who said he became a born-again Christian more than 30 years ago, also has built a public reputation for being a loudmouth rebel (some say renegade) - a rabble-rousing, bishop-defying troublemaker.
Over the years, he's been arrested more than three dozen times for civil disobedience, including citations for scaling and defacing billboards for alcohol and tobacco products that he said are unfairly marketed to poor blacks.
Along his unique spiritual journey, Pfleger has made a lot of enemies and acquired a few interesting traveling companions, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, poet Maya Angelou, actor and singer Harry Belafonte, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Black liberation icon James Cone.
Pfleger, in robes trimmed with Kente-patterned cloth, is sweating and shouting into a microphone as about 200 people, many of them addicts in various stages of recovery, ring the altar where he is perched and pelt him with packs of cigarettes.
"Come on, give 'em up!" Pfleger, once a three-pack-a-day smoker, shouts at the group assembled in the sanctuary, with its enormous mural of a Black Jesus with outstretched hands adorning the back wall. "God didn't deliver you from cocaine and alcohol so you could be addicted to nicotine!
"God loves you, God loves you," Pfleger cries, reaching out to gently pat the head of one worshiper. "Some of you haven't heard it in a long time, that someone loves you."
Pfleger, 59, has spent the 33 years of his priesthood among the impoverished Black community on Chicago's South Side creating a ministry that's based in equal parts on a thoroughly Catholic understanding of the social gospel and its notion of God's preferential option for the poor, and the not-so-Catholic belief in salvation by grace, through faith - period.
At the same time, Pfleger, who said he became a born-again Christian more than 30 years ago, also has built a public reputation for being a loudmouth rebel (some say renegade) - a rabble-rousing, bishop-defying troublemaker.
Over the years, he's been arrested more than three dozen times for civil disobedience, including citations for scaling and defacing billboards for alcohol and tobacco products that he said are unfairly marketed to poor blacks.
Along his unique spiritual journey, Pfleger has made a lot of enemies and acquired a few interesting traveling companions, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, poet Maya Angelou, actor and singer Harry Belafonte, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Black liberation icon James Cone.
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