Alinsky: "Bishop or priest? Choose."

I decided over the weekend to pick up and read Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals," to gain more insight into Barack Obama's mindset and methods. Obama trained under and worked for followers of the Chicago community organizer, who died in 1972. I'm about halfway through it, and I have to say it's a brilliant work of practical wisdom. I say this in the same sense I would recognize the greatness of Machiavelli: not as a guide to how one should behave, but as a guide for how someone unsentimental (that is, amoral) about the acquisition and use of power should approach the acquisition of same.

Anyway, when I finish the book, I'll be blogging on Alinsky's apparent influence on Obama's political methods -- Obama's rhetoric paying respect to conservative cultural values while actually voting left on issues having to do with those values is classic Alinsky. But early in the text is a great passage that tells a blunt truth about religious life, at least within a hierarchical church. I thought of Fr. John Peck's dilemma when I read it. I also thought of Catholic priests I know who have chosen their calling over careerism. Here's Alinsky:

Each year, for a number of years, the activists in the graduating class from a major Catholic seminary near Chicago would visit me for a day just before their ordination, with questions about values, revolutionary tactics, and such. Once, at the end of such a day, one of the seminarians said, "Mr. Alinsky, before we came here we met and agreed that there was one questions we particularly wanted to put to you. We're going to be ordained, and then we'll be assigned to different parishes, as assistants to -- frankly -- stuffy, reactionary old pastors. They will disapprove of a lot of what you and we believe in, and w will be put into a killing routine. Our question is: how do we keep our faith in true Christian values, everything we hope to do to change the system?"

That was easy, I answered. "When you go out that door, just make your own personal decision about whether you want to be a bishop or a priest, and everything else will follow."

Wise words, even if they come from the mouth (or the pen) of Alinsky, who dedicated "Rules for Radicals" to "the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom -- Lucifer."