In the Jesuit “America” magazine blog, Tom Beaudoin tells us that Fr. Pfleger (and Rev Wrights) “sermons in question were written and performed for a “local,” not “global,” audience. They are performances—of defiance, passion, exhortation, meditation”. Not racist, sacreligious, hateful, spiteful, menacing or any of 100 other accurate condemnations, rather a lively discussion, appropriate to context.

Fr. Pfleger plays the victim on St. Sabina’s website (though he certainly was the assailant) stating
“Hate me if you will. Hate my imperfect presentation. Hate my imperfect dramatization. Hate my imperfect articulation. I have never presumed to be anything but imperfect, but I pray I can still beat the drum of justice, even if sometimes I am off beat”, which is an odd way of apologizing by accusing anyone who might question Fr. Pfleger’s bizzare buffoonery of “hate”. Beating up on a recently rather hapless Park Ridge woman from the pulpit is not exactly beating the drum of justice.

On a positive note, Juan Williams does a fine job on ABC‘s Good Morning America of actually getting to important issues. Rather than allowing Chris Cuomo and Fr. Edward Beck (who worked with Fr. Pfleger for three years before being declared a religious expert by ABC) to prattle on with PR for the Obama campaign (Obama, “the Unity Candidate” per Cuomo), Williams obsevered “They are stirring people up, appealing to their most base, racist sentiments. What you saw from Father Pfleger the other day looked to me like a minstrel show being put on for black people and I thought that he was mocking. He was bitter. This is not speaking to ideas of lifting people up or speaking to the Christ in us all, black and white and speaking to us as brothers.” Amen.