-By Warner Todd Huston
Chicago’s most famous anti-gun Catholic priest was just hit with some embarrassing news when his bodyguard was arrested for illegally carrying a gun.
Loudmouth priest Father Michael Pfleger found the unwelcome news late in May when his bodyguard, Henry Eugene Hale, 35, was arrested outside the Father’s church. Police found that Hale did not have an Illinois firearm card or a concealed carry license and was therefore carrying the gun illegally.
A spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department told Chicago City Wire that officers confronted Hale at the church at 1200 W. 78th Place when “they saw him holding a firearm.”
Illinois records show that Hale allowed his Firearms Identification Card (FOID) expire last year and did not renew it. He was also a certified security guard in the state, but allowing his FOID to lapse put that certification in jeopardy. According to his employment record he was once disciplined, but there are no details as to why.
A local policeman’s blog noted that Hale has been a member of Pfleger’s security team for quite sometime. The unnamed police officer who runs the blog also noted that “Pfleger and his minions called 006th district nonstop to try to get the guy out of arrest.”
A number of photos on the troublesome priest’s website shows Hale lurking in the background at numerous events.
City Wire contacted Pfleger’s church:
When asked about Hale’s relationship with the 68-year-old Pfleger, a church secretary told Chicago City Wire only that Hale was not a bodyguard. He deferred further questions to Pfleger, who did not return a call to clarify whether he employed Hale as private security and whether he called CPD asking for Hale’s release.
Susan Thomas, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Chicago, wrote in an email that “Fr. Pfleger does not have armed security and to our knowledge, neither does any other priest.”
Another account of the incident by BearingArms.com asserts that Hale didn’t just let his FOID card lapse. “Hale didn’t renew his FOID, but more that he couldn’t. It seems he’s had some difficulty paying his child support,” the site said.
But, the fact of the matter is, the citizens of Illinois do not have any Second Amendment rights. The government says who is allowed and who is not allowed to have firearms and they need no legitimate reasons to cancel those rights.
Just for instance, one Chicago suburb recently passed a law banning firearms within its city limits. This ban is wholly unconstitutional, but no one in Illinois really cares about the constitution. The state has taken no action and it falls to common citizens to take the city to court.
The Second Amendment Foundation has also filed suit against the city of Deerfield to have the ban canceled on grounds that it violates Illinois’ preemption law. But it’s anybody’s guess if the effort will bear any fruit at all.
Anyway, what we have here is yet another example of a left-wing activist (Pfleger is no priest. He’s purely a left-wing politico) who runs around attacking America’s Second Amendment rights all the while hiding behind armed bodyguards. He’s just another “for me, but not for thee” left-winger.
Pfleger has a long and disgusting history of making hate-filled comments and working to eliminate the Second Amendment.
He has, for instance, repeatedly come to the support of fellow Chicagoans Reverend Jesse Jackson, in his many crusades and shakedowns, and racist Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The priest has also made himself such a thorn in the side of the Church that in 2011 he was suspended as Pastor as St. Sabina’s while Cardinal George assessed whether to remove him completely from dealing with parishioners. Sadly, Chicago’s top Catholic official failed to fire Pflager even though the priest has made a career out of attacking the policies of his own church.
Then there was Pfleger’s outrageous “sermon” where he screamed from the pulpit in 2008 where he mockingly said that Hillary Clinton was a “privileged white person” and accused anyone that would vote against Barack Obama of being a racist.
Also, back in 2007, Pfleger once threatened the life of a suburban gun shop owner saying the merchant should be “snuffed out” for daring to legally sell firearms.
Here is what this rabble-rouser actually said about a fellow human being:
He’s the owner of Chuck’s, John Riggio, R-i-g-g-i-o. We’re going to find you and snuff you out. You can’t keep hiding because you’re afraid. Obviously, you know you’re doing something wrong. You wouldn’t have your business in a truck. You wouldn’t have a truck pulled in front of your door, because you know you’ve got to hide. Like a rat, you’re going to hide, but like a rat we’re going to catch you and pull you out. We are not going to allow you to continue to hide when we’re here.
This is a supposed Catholic priest, folks. Calling someone a “rat” and hoping that he would be murdered. All for engaging in legal commerce.
Pfleger even came out in support of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism. A Chicago Sun-Times article in 1994 reported that the priest said that Nation of Islam leader, “raised serious questions regarding Jewish power, Jewish influence, that people do not want to ask or answer, in particular Jewish power in the media, and with racism and white people and what’s been done.”
Michael Pfleger is simply a hatemonger who pushes lunatic left-wingery in place of Catholicism. Pfleger is an activist, not a priest.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, YoungConservatives.com, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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