Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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Rob
Sherman Advocacy
Click on either picture for larger image and picture description.
"Fighting injustice, one victory at a time."
Today is the day that two atheist residents of Chicago will be filing suit against the City of Chicago with the assistance of Rob Sherman Advocacy. The suit will seek to stop Mayor Daley's Office of Special Events from orchestrating a religious service on Wednesday to commemorate the crimes that religious people perpetrated against America last year on September 11th. Meanwhile, the contents of the Chicago Prayer of Hope, Unity and Remembrance remains a closely guarded secret.
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I called the Office of Special Events, yesterday, to seek answers to several questions. The Office of Special Events is the city agency that is organizing and producing the prayer service that is scheduled to take place next Wednesday. Here are the questions that I sought to have answered:
Just who are the "prominent religious leaders" that the City retained to compose the official prayer of city government?
How were these religious leaders selected?
Who selected them?
How many tax dollars were paid to these guys to write the government prayer?
Just what does the prayer say?
Naturally, the Office of Special Events wasn't talking, because they know that what they are doing is blatantly unconstitutional. I was, as usual, sent off to somebody's voice mail, where, of course, no return phone call was ever made. In fact, of the dozens of voice mail messages that I left during the past week at the Mayor's office and at the Office of Special Events trying to resolve this dispute administratively, not one phone call was ever returned, despite the promise of "I'll get back to you" at the end of each outgoing message.
Since I couldn't get information from the many at Mayor Daley's office who promised to return phone calls but didn't, I decided to change tactics. Who could I call? Who would know the mystery answers to my questions about the City's unconstitutional behavior? Why, the nice people at the Archdiocese of Chicago would surely know!
So I called them.
I called the general telephone number of the Archdiocese of Chicago at (312) 751-8200. There's an irony to their telephone number situation. It's only one digit off from that of another Chicago institution: the world headquarters of Playboy Enterprises, whose phone number is (312) 751-8000. Was it a fluke, or was it God's way of saying, "Bless you, Hugh Hefner, for providing the world with all those wonderful, beautiful pictures that have glorified woman, dramatically improved their self-esteem and elevated their status from second class citizen to that of goddess."
Anyway, if you're done looking at the pictures at Hef's web site, back to the municipal prayer issue. When I called the Archdiocese, I was immediately connected to a very nice Christian woman named Diane Dunagan, who is Francis Cardinal George's Assistant Manager of Communication Services. No fooling around. I got connected, immediately, to Miss Dunagan at (312) 751-8238, without having to play voice mail games, and was provided with answers promptly, pleasantly and with great courteous. In fact, Diane Dunagan is one of the nicest people that I've ever dealt with on the phone, so for all you atheists out there who were wondering, there are nice Christians out there.
I asked Miss Dunagan if she knew the answers to any of those questions. While she didn't have an answer to most of the questions, she did know all about the Chicago government prayer. As she explained it to me, Cardinal George (who goes by the nickname His Eminence -- that's quite an ego), was shown the government prayer, but was told it was a big secret. He was required to promise that he wouldn't tell a soul what the prayer said and that he wouldn't let anybody else, anybody at all, see a copy of the prayer. As Miss Dunagan related to me, "I don't understand what all the secrecy is all about. After all, this is a time of prayer, and all the city is doing is conducting a quiet prayer service." But could she find a copy of the prayer and fax it to me? The answer was no. "No copy will be made available to anybody until the City conducts its prayer service," she said.
Perhaps, when I file suit during the day, today, I'll subpoena a copy of the prayer, even if Da Mayor calls me, "Hey, you!" rather than "His Almost Eminence" or "His Not Really Eminent at All but Still a Nice Guy."
Rob Sherman P. O. Box
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E-mail: rob followed by the at symbol followed by robsherman dot com