So what is at stake here? Once again, here is the Sun-Times report: He said he missed the flag, during that search through the parish’s closets. Soon after Kalchik arrived at the parish, he burned the parish’s Bernardin-era rainbow liturgical vestments worn by priests. Kalchik - who says he was sexually abused by a neighbor as a child, and again by a priest when he began working for the church at 19 - says the sex-abuse crisis plaguing the church is “definitely a gay thing.” Cupich has rejected a connection between the scandal and gay priests but has drawn criticism in recent weeks for comments claiming the church should focus on other priorities instead of being “distracted” by the sex-abuse crisis.
Why is this priest so upset about this liturgical symbolism? This leads to a crucial fact about Kalchik that REALLY should have been included in the NBC report. It also helps to know that Cupich plays a key role in the dramas surrounding ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who has been accused of abusing young boys and, for several decades, seminarians. The current leader in Chicago, with whom Kalchik is clashing, is Cardinal Blase Cupich - a hero on the Catholic left who is closely associated with Pope Francis. However, anyone who looks up the Chicago Sun-Times story about this event will quickly realize that there are crucial facts that needed to be added into this fiery mix.įor example, Kalchik was ordained in 2007 by the late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago - a heroic figure among doctrinally conservative Catholics. I have seen this NBC story posted in several places and a reader also sent me the URL. "It was cut into seven pieces, so it was burned over stages in the same fire pit that we used for the Easter vigil mass.”
“So in a quiet way we took matters into our own hands and said a prayer of exorcism over this thing," he said. Kalchik said that the archdiocese had told him not to burn the flag in front of the church, as planned. To use the image of the cross as anything other than a “reminder of our Lord’s passion and death,” he said, “is what we consider a sacrilege.” “We put an end to a depiction of our Lord's cross that was profane,” he added, noting the flag had a cross and a rainbow intertwined.
“It’s our full right to destroy it, and we did so privately because the archdiocese was breathing on our back.” “We did so in a private way, a quiet way, so as not to bring the ire of the gay community down upon this parish,” Kalchik said in a lengthy interview Monday with NBC News. The flag, for example, was prominently displayed during a Mass led by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, a leader whose memory is cherished by gay and progressive Catholics.Ĭlearly, times have changed at this parish.
“On Saturday, September 29, the Feast of Saint Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, we will burn, in front of the church, the rainbow flag that was unfortunately hanging in our sanctuary during the ceremonial first Mass as Resurrection parish,” Kalchik, who joined the church 11 years ago, wrote.Ī footnote on his announcement stated, “US Church homosexual scandal is a sequel to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.”Ī bit of translation: Obviously, at one point in its history, this parish was on the left side of the American Catholic spectrum. Paul Kalchik, a Roman Catholic priest at Resurrection Parish in Chicago, announced that he would burn a rainbow pride flag that had once been prominently displayed at the church. In a church bulletin posted this month, the Rev. So let’s look at a few key sections of this story. This particular flag combined the LGBTQ symbolism with a cross - a move that raised the theological stakes much higher. One other thing about that headline: It’s crucial to know that this is more than a rainbow flag. So parish leaders burned it privately, without a public media show. According to parish leaders, the archdiocese ordered the church not to burn the rainbow flag in a ceremony in front of the sanctuary. Just to give you a hint of how complicated this case is, that headline actually jumps the gun and settles one of the issues that is in dispute. Take a look at this headline atop the report at : “ Parishioners defy Chicago Archdiocese, burn rainbow flag in 'exorcism' ceremony.” Well, here is a hot-button story if I’ve ever seen one.