Fr. Andrew Greeley: Mindreader

Fr. Andrew Greeley long ago took up residence in looney-town. But in a new wrinkle, especially for a Catholic priest, he now believes he’s psychic. And he’s got an announcement: If you’re not voting for Obama you’re a racist. Shocking, I know.

One surprising thing is how these “radical thinkers,” are all so predictably boring. They think of themselves as singular minds speaking truth to power as they march in lockstep with the cultural elite. Instead of arguing, they mock. Rather than define terms they label their opponents. Here’s a snippet of Greeley’s latest column from the Chicago Sun Times:

‘South Pacific” is a morality play for our time. Sarah Palin is the Ensign Nellie Forbush — an All-American girl as racist, this time a racist with her eye on the White House. She can stir up crowds to shout “Kill him!” at the mention of the presidential candidate of the other party a couple of weeks before the national election.

In the restaurant, before I walked over to the theater, all the conversations were about the election — New Yorkers speak loudly in their noisy city for fear they will not be heard. The common opinion was that they didn’t know enough about Barack Obama to make a decision about him — as if there were not two books about his life. That plea implies that they don’t know enough about him to accept his strange name or his skin color. It is, of course, impossible that they could ever know enough. He isn’t one of us.

This kind of thing annoys me a little. A Catholic priest is calling Sarah Palin a racist without any evidence. Does that seem right to anyone? He overlooks Obama’s zealous advocacy of abortion and imagines racism in Sarah Palin. He’s quite simply a kook. And I don’t mind kooks. They’re out there. They do what kooks do. The problem is that this one wears a collar.