history from the beginning. . . >> thank you for being here on a rare beautiful day in chicago, so we appreciate you being here. i'm monya and i cover religion

at the "chicago tribune," and i've been there for eight years, and i've covered writers for that amount of time and sagas that surrounded the church on the city's south side. he's really become a national catholic icon who really represents social justice, but other things as well in the catholic church beside social justice, especially how priests, how clergy, how churches can really communicate and deal with the media, i would say in positive and negative ways. he has been, i would say, a model of both, but the real expert is seated to my right, and this is robert mcclurry and bob and i have known each

other for awhile because we taught together at northwestern's school of journalism and taught students how to cover religion. that's how i got to know bob best, and then he came out with this biography, and so i wanted to interview bob in front of you today, and, you know, my first question would be why father michael flagger? why is he the perfect subject for a biography? >> well, i've asked myself that same question since i started on the book, but actually there's a pretty good reason. before i got into reporting, i was a chicago catholic priest, and my second assignment as a priest was as a pastor at st. sibina church on the south side of chicago, and that was in

1964. anybody here from there? >> my grandmother was. >> your grandmother, oh, good. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> probably was, yeah. what was her name? >> mary jennings. >> yeah, i remember the jennings part. anyhow, when i got there, the church was one of the largest catholic churches in the city. over 3500 families. it was a going operation and had been almost since its beginning back in 1916 or so, and i knew right away that it wasn't going to be just a normal assignment because the neighborhood was beginning to change. the coming of the black population as you know if you lived anywhere on the south side, you know there was a slow deliberate migration from the

ghetto just south of the loop beginning in the 50s and moving, moving steadily, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and in 1964, the first black families had just moved into the neighborhood so the people were in a considerable state of alarm because they had seen what had happened in so many of the other neighborhoods, but there was a difference at the church, and that was the pastor, your grandmother would have known him well, senior john mcmahon decided we're not just going to pick up and run because the blacks are moving in. we'll turn this into the first integrated neighborhood into chicago, and he put a lot of money, some say, there's no official number, but something

like $800,000 of per rich money into the formation of a community organization that might, might create an integrated neighborhood. it was an organization under the leadership of sol, and some of you would know him well. he, himself, is one of the most controversial people in the history of chicago, a great community organizer, and he sent his men into the end of the neighborhood to try to organize, and when i got there, this was a booming per paish. we had an upstairs church and a downstairs church. some masses were going on at the same time upstairs and downstairs. we had seven priests running in and running out and saying mass,

and it was very, very busy place, but there was this concern, this fear, and the fear was the thing if we had to fight against was the terrible, terrible overwhelming work of the real estate people who saw that there were profits in this neighborhood as there had been in all the neighborhoods north and east of us, and they did a job. they would come down block ablock and ring your doorbell and say, have you thought about selling your house? somebody would say no, we've been here for ten years, and we're going to stay. that's all right, you stay. i'll offer you today, $60,000, but i can guarantee it today, but i can't guarantee it next

week. did you know that a black family just moved in at the end of the block. did you know that? well, this would go on. this was continuing, and we were really hopeful that it would work. there were signs that it might work. eventually, we came to face reality. it wouldn't work. the real estate power was too great. fear was too great, and everything was exacerbated in 1967 when a bunch of st. sabina kids were standing in front of the community center and a few black kids appeared on the other side of the street with a gun and shot several times into the crowd. one bullet struck a girl in the leg. another bullet struck frank kelly, 17 years old in the heart, and he died immediately.

well, you could see that was -- if anything was a climatic turning point, that was it. if people don't have a sign outside for sale before, now they did. the move now was a crescendo, and everybody was gone. they were moving out. a lot of people, you know, they wanted to support mcmahon. they knew she he was a good man with his hart in the right place. not everybody knew that, but it was too much, and you couldn't blame them. they had to take the money while they could because they knew they were up against the organization called the -- the organization for the southwest community. that was the group, and they did a tremendous -- it was a tremendous effort, but it was tragic. in 1960 -- by 1969, the number

families in the perrish had gone down from 3500 to about 600. now, there were new black catholic families moving in who had hoped that this would be an integrated neighborhood and who themselves were very active in the osc, the organization, along with a lot of very good minded white folks who lived in that perrish, but it didn't work. 600. i left in 1971 and it was probably down to 350 families, half black, and half still catholic who were staying there, and i left, you know, kind of heart sick because i knew what an effort had gone forth by so many well-meaninged people, and

i field there's no way this -- i felt there's no way this huge complex -- st. sabina has one of the largest institutions on the south side with this great big church and this huge community center, one of the best in the city, a con vent, a school, several that could hold seven to nine priests comfortably and several buildings across the street we owned. we owned it. sabina ran it, and there was no way they could keep that up. the costs were too much. i left heart sick knowing what happened to sabina would be the same thing that happened to many, many of the churches that already experienced the racial transition, and that is it might be sold to a baptist community,

a bannist church, or in many cases, they tear it down. it's too costly to keep up. i left feeling this is not going to work. this is really too bad. that's -- now, i didn't get to the question. [laughter] >> but it was pretty interesting,ed background. 1971 i want to point out that someone else had that year in common, is that when father phleger showed up on the scene?

christmas of 1981, father paylor

was eating breakfast, and he dropped dead. now, you're not supposed to laugh at that. [laughter] it was the will of god obviously, and it was sudden, unexpected. he had had a couple heart attacks previous to that, but nobody expected that, so at that point, mike phleger was the only other priest in the place, so cardinal cody appointed him as temporary administer which is the normal thing to do so mike was feeling a certain amount of oh, maybe i can do something in this very short time, a short window before they appoint a pastor. he was 31 years old at the time, couldn't do much, and he tried to. i could tell you a number of stories that happened at

father's funeral, but i'm not going to say that. already it's in the book. [laughter] the book covers all the things that i'm not telling you, and they are more interesting than what i'm telling you. the book is out there at the bookstore, and they got a lot of copies. [laughter] well, it was decided then that sabina needed a new pastor, a veteran pastor, and the people by then, the black population, as i say it was small, but, you know, it was substantial. they had maybe 250-300 families, catholic black families, who had been working with father phleger during that time, so as was the custom, the priest personnel board scheduled a meeting at the perrish, and open house meeting, and the members of the perrish

council told father phleger, do not come to the meeting, we do not want you there at this meeting, so he being a man who wanted to cooperate with the people, he didn't come, and they said he learned later that the lower, what used to be the lower church was packed. it's a very sizable place itself, just packed that night. never saw it packed like that with people coming in from all over the south side, and the priest personnel board members got up and said, now, here's what we want to do. we want to ask you what characteristics would you want in a new pastor? what are the problems you have in this perrish that a preers would need to be able to handle, and what are the positive things here? the people sat there.

somebody raised his hand and said, we don't want to talk about no characteristics. we want father phleger, phleger, phleger -- the whole church stood up and said, we want father phleger, and the personnel board was unable to continue the meeting. [laughter] they went home -- they went home. now, ordinarily, that would have been a very -- it certainly was a strange thing to have such a unanimous recommendation, and cardinal cody, some of you will remember cardinal cody, he had just closed down a number of black parrishs on the south side, and he was fearful if he got in trouble with the people at sabina even though it was a small group at that time that it would be trouble, so he appointed father phleger as

temporary pastor. now, there is -- there's no such title in cannon law, but he was appointed pastor and became then the acting pastor for -- i mean, after cardinal came for awhile, he was no longer temporary, but acted from day one like he was permanent, and that is 30 years ago, so that explains how he got there and how he got to be pastor. the youngest pastor at the age of 31. >> so what were the characteristics that phleger brought to st. sabina that they wanted so badly? >> those were not the characteristics they were thinking of. [laughter] >> that the priest personnel board was thinking of? >> yeah. ability to work with the people and keep them calm and have a

school, to be able to pay the bills which were astronomical, and the church at that time was getting a heavy -- a lot of money just to keep going. father paylor tried to fund a lot of the parrish at his time with bingo. as soon as phleger was there, he canceled bingo. he said it's the worse thing you can do taking money from little old ladies, and it's not worth the trouble you have to go through. what were the characteristics they were working for is that he would be a hard working pastor is many pastors in black parrishs were and are. the characteristics though that the people were looking for were somewhat different because they had experienced things about

phleger that were different from what they got from the ordinary parrish pastor. phleger was saying let's look at this neighborhood. the people who moved in here, these are good people. these are not, you know, gang bangers. these are good family people, but look at the condition of the streets, the streets at 79th, a business area. all of the business when the whites left, the businesses had left so there was deserted streets, broken windows, and trash and a great gathering place at night for dope selling and prostitution. he was saying to the people we got to get them out of there, not by calling the police, and, of course, they did as most other parrishs did, but he was thinking along the lines of we have to do something, and he was

urging them to think along the lines of dr. martin luther king. as many of you may know if you know anything about phleger, dr. luther king was mike's boyhood hero. he had seen -- phleger as a high school kid, had seen martin marching through the park in 1966, and he had been stunned because he was raised in st. thomas moore parrish, two miles west of st. sabina. he saw king hen as entourage marching through streets and people were shouting and throwing rocks, and they were our own people, kids i knew. he said, i can't believe it. he said, this man, king, was

walking totally erect, totally unbothered, seemingly unbothered, and he said what is the strength in that man that he can walk through hell as it were and keep himself together. he was moved by that experience to go and read up on martin luther king and he has been a great fan of his, so he started to teach the people the tactics of defense -- what am i thinking of? nonviolent protest, nonviolent dissent, and it -- the people were beginning to, for the first time, thinking along the lines of what can we do? what can we do, we parrishs? they saw in mike a kind of

leader they had never seen before, and those were some of the things. they also saw his genuine interest in black literacy, his respect for their culture. mike plays the piano excellently, and he nows music, so he knew the kind of people he needed to lead the black khoir -- choir and the dancers, and they saw him as they said a white man with a black man inside, reverse oreo is sometimes they said. [laughter] >> when i go to services at st. sabina, and when i tell people to go there, i tell everyone you haven't lived until you go to a service at st. sabina. just reserve three or four hours of your day to do it, but when you hear him preach, you close your eyes, and you can't believe

there's a blond blue-eyed guy standing in the pulpit. >> yeah. >> he's adopted this candence in his speech. have you talked to him and how his delivery style evolved? >> he said he didn't evolve any style of preaching. he simply spent his whole time with black people and listened to black preachers and said i don't try to preach like a black preacher, but he does. when you talk to him, there's a little bit of a black style even when i'm sitting talking, and he's not trying to give a sermon or anything. he's -- but he has so absorbed that, and i find it's interesting. white people often get upset about that. what's he doing imitating black

preaching. you ask black people around there and they say we have no probably with that. he can talk any way he wants when he talks because he makes sense, and that's what we're looking for. he won't admit he's ever really tried to use black cadences and black rhetoric, but he's seen so much of it and it's in his talk. a lot of people who became active members at st. sabina saying i stopped in the church one day, sat there, and i didn't know much about it, and i heard a black preacher up there just going at it. afterwards i want the to see what he looked like, and i said, what? what? [laughter] i've never seen a white person do that, and that's very irritating i think to white people and the black people who come to sabina have no problem whatsoever with it. >> so let's go back to those

qualities you talk about. you talked about the priest personnel board looking for loyalty in a priest, someone who could keep the people calm, and those two qualities i must admit i raised my eyebrows, and i'm wondering how, if father phleger, tell me how father phleger reflects those qualities, perhaps differently than the priest personnel board had in mind. >> yes, somewhat differently. he said, look, your loyalty first is to god, and the loyalty is to people whom you serve, and he did not think that it was his duty to keep the people calm and quiet. it was his duty to rows the people up -- rouse people up because there were evils in the neighborhood, and it was up to them to do what they could about it. that was part and parcel of his

agenda from day one so they began very quietly -- they noticed one of the first things they noticed is that the mom and pop stores which were about the only grocery stores, you know, places where you could get pop and bread and peanut butter. there were few of them. they were still there in the neighborhood, but they also featured right out in front of everything the drug pair fee nail ya, you know, papers and pipes and pouches, everything you need for your marijuana stash or your heroin stash, and he didn't like that. he didn't like that so instead of -- he talked about it from the pulpit, and then he started going into the stores saying we don't think this is a good idea. the guy said, hey, it's not a good idea for some people, but for the owner, it is.

we make a lot of money on this stuff. he'd leave, and then come back in a week with 150 people who would stand there in the store and outside the store and say, we want this stuff gone. it would take awhile, and there there would be marchs and the community threatened they would not buy from that store, and eventually, it started to work a little bit, a little bit. those were some of the first and earliest moves in the direction of action. now, you say loyalty? you know, he sees loyalty a little bit differently than the cardinal. there's an interesting way -- there's a lot of ways at looking at church whether you're a cat lick or not. there's a book called images of the church which speaks of five

images, not five ways of looking at church, and the first image is church as institution, and that's the way if somebody says what comes to your mind when i say church, and people say, oh, yeah, the church i go to or a big church with a steeple. the church as institution is just one way, and churches' institution consistents of structures all over the world, and in the case of the catholic church, it consists of a man on the top over in rome, and the whole line of people under him, cardinals, arch bishops, priests, and down blow, lay people, normal, i'm ordinary people -- i mean, ordinary people, and you think of laws, rules, and regulations. that's a lot of the ways

cardinals think of church first, as institution. another way to look at church is community, not with some people having control over other people, but a community of equals. ..

advertising everything, but we are limited to cigarettes and liquor. they were told, no, we take our -- we advertise according to regulations that we have worked out. we go where it works. so he goes to the cigarette distributors. same thing. could get nowhere. he goes to city hall and talks to the alderman and to people in the mayor's office. they say, we can do anything about free speech. billboards are free speech. he went to washington. he got nowhere. but he said, well, we have to do something. so one night, one night a car left at about 1130 and drove down the street a couple blocks to a billboard ban. they opened the trunk.

four men get out and pulled out a large can of red paint and a large brush with an extension and the talk to the brush and painted the billboard read. then he went home. and then next few nights later they went out again and painted to more. then cars went by. nobody seemed to notice. they started painting. one of my associates began calling downtown, downtown to the tv stations and radio stations. i live on the south side. billboards in our neighborhood are all being damaged by red paint. nothing. nothing is more appealing to the tv people looking for a story that a picture of a damaged billboard. so they would come out and take

a picture. they say, who is doing this? nobody knows. this continued for quite a while over a long time. they got better at it. one of my associates learned that you can do it better if he makes the red paint with mineral water. it will stick better instead of just kind of running down and dropping on the ground. he also had the idea that if he take the back -- vacuum can't let exterminators use to kill bugs, they have a little hose on them that you can square stuff out and high-pressure. so they got two of these and filled them with red paint. with these they could simply take the cannister out of the car and came the little short hose up and shoot the red. up on to the billboards.

so that a lot of the people were doing this. a lot of the parishioners got involved in this. it became known that obviously the people in the neighborhood are upset about the billboards. one night they were going down the street, and the police car came and stopped. the cops got out. they thought, oh, this is it. , and said, what are you doing. repenting billboards because they don't like cigarettes and alcohol. they get back in their car and drove off. the sell side became aware of what was going on. his top assistant was buying extraordinary amounts of red paint from a local pet store. the owner asked him one day. what are you doing with all this? he said kamal or painting over

billboards. come and see. the guy said, oh, your the ones doing it. after that the owner gave them a big discount on their red paint. >> but eventually he was arrested for civil disobedience. >> he was caught red handed. but the owner of the billboard company. one night when they were painting the gang had been held looking for them. he get very mad. they had an argument. somehow red paint cuts by step on his pant leg. he said, i'm going to get you. he went to the police station. the police then filed charges. he was charged with damaging property. and a year later he went on trial for damaging private property. they could have settled for a

fine, but he did not want to. he wanted to go on trial and explain why he was doing it. his lawyer used something called the necessity defense. it is a defense sometimes used by civil rights people when they break the law. we had tried to do the right then. we could find no other way, and so we broke the law. that was the defense they used when he went to court. it doesn't always work. it depends on the judge, and it depends on the jury. the jury. i went to the trial. the jury was out for one hour. i should have said mike testified. before everyone he told exactly what they had done. they had marked up about 750

billboards over a 67 month timeframe. not only in their area, but they started going downtown. they did one along the kennedy expressway that people see every day. they have expanded the work. he honestly said, we did it. here's why. we tried to do the right thing. we went to the proper authorities. everybody said no. so we took matters into our own hands. the prosecution said, you can't do that. that's terrible. that is the slippery slope. the jury was out one hour, and they came back and voted not guilty not guilty. he was guilty. they accepted the defense.

the judge said don't do this anymore. he did it. now, he got no support from the cardinal on this. can you imagine. very upset about what he had been doing. he did. that is the kind of thing that brings you into conflict with your authorities, your superiors. he says, you know, this was an issue that was just perfectly clear to me and the people. that was, that was the beginning of a lot of things that you can read about in the book. >> now, cardinal francis george came to chicago. snc has been at the helm of the archdiocese, michael has been suspended twice. >> suspended twice. >> temporarily suspended. >> and threatened maybe two

dozen times. >> for matters of civil disobedience? >> well, yes. not really. he was -- in 2002 the cardinal said the have been there long enough. you know, the rule in the diocese. and it is just a will. there is nothing divine about it. it is not in the bible. the rule in chicago was that you were a pastor for six years. if you do a decent job you get six more years. twelve years is considered the normal amount of time by 2002 might have been in the pastor for 21 years. the cardinal wanted him to go. he said, not through here. there is much more work to be done. the back and forth. and very hot and heavy. there were meetings, and

eventually the cardinal to slap him go. legend state. and then in 2008 he was suspended after he made fun of hillary clinton. many of the rubber the famous you to comment that was on television news, particularly fox news where he was giving a sermon. he started to make fun of hillary clinton. it was about the time. he almost broke down and cried at a news conference. it was a time when people said she was putting it on. she was just -- it was a pretend cry. he got up and said, no, it wasn't pretend. she was really getting mad because she thought to herself, i am bill's wife.

i have an excellent record. i am entitled to be the president. now here is this black man stealing my show. he took out a handkerchief and started wiping his eyes. well, it wasn't in good taste obviously. it was very insulting to hillary. mike says he thought he was only doing it in that church before that crowd to win, in fact, it was found and it got out into an international audience. the cardinal suspended him part two weeks for insulting hello replan. >> about, getting involved in politics. >> yes. >> he was also an adviser. >> yes. >> i believe the cardinal ashton to resign that position as well. >> says, he did. he had already finished campaigning by that time. >> all right. >> he will, if pushed to the

limit, abate. as long as he has any energy he will fight you, and he is a very, very stubborn man. >> most recent he just pennies of rather substantial lows recently house. and he'd talk about of a high above the earth? >> it is not too complicated. the cardinal decided how. apparently he had an elimination. he thought we could get him out by appointing him as president of leo high-school which is a small all black high-school. he thought that would be good. he can stay in the neighborhood, and he could then take over. unfortunately he announce that without telling the current president and principal that he was doing that. so when the reporters ran over to see what the reaction was they said, we didn't know

anything about this. so that wasn't good. that wasn't good. the cardinal said he wanted to go. he said, i don't want to go. i'm not an educator in that sense. i am not -- and i don't want to be. that led to a kind of standoff. the cardinal wanted to go. he didn't. the thing that broke the back was that on -- he had been interviewing on public radio. it is national. on that show he said that if he was pushed to the age he very well might have to find ministry in another church, and non catholic church. well, that blew the cardinal. when he heard that he went completely insane. he suspended him because of that

, not because of high. he did not mention that had started the whole problem. >> he had interpreted it as a threat to leave the church. he came back and said, i'm sorry that those comments were misinterpreted. that is not my intention. >> and there is away. if you really par's what he said in paris with the cardinal said, they weren't seeing the same thing. the fact is, he did threaten to leave the church. he said he was sorry and had no intention to leave the church. the cardinal reinstated him with a provision which was that by december 1st the cardinal is to have in his hand a transition plan for st. so by no.

what that would be we do not know. it is up to him to work it out. i asked him what he would do. he said, i haven't the foggiest. you can bet that he is going to confer with the parishioners and other people he knows. very good friends of his. and he is determined. he is determined that the ministry will go on. and what it could be that he will ask to stay on for your were stay on for two years maybe until he is 65. he is 62 now. there is a priest in the parish, a south african priest has been there for a year-and-a-half who was asked to come. the people love him.

he has some of the characteristics, but by no means all. after a year-and-a-half no one is sure that he is the one who would be best suited to fit tissues. there is nobody, nobody that can fit his shoes that i know of. it would have to be a very, very unique kind of person. >> there are huge shoes to fill. the book is called a radical disciple. i had hoped to reserve some time for questions, but we are out of time. if you have some we will remain up here to speak with you 1-on-1.