The entirely preventable homo-priest eruption has taken a rather comical turn. On May 21, 2002 AP reported that Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George "said he's considering selling the mansion that has been home to Roman Catholic archbishops in Chicago for more than a century, and some of the profits could pay legal fees in priest sex-abuse cases."

        The story notes that "the three-story red brick building in Chicago's ritzy Gold Coast neighborhood was built in 1885 and has been visited by Pope John Paul II. It could bring millions of dollars to an archdiocese that faces new lawsuits over allegations of sexual abuse."

        Cardinal George says that while selling the mansion would help pay legal fees, his main reason was "the search for simplicity." As a priest, notes the AP story, "the archbishop took a vow of poverty. ‘I would like to conform my own life to a model that’s more simple,’ he said."

       While the Cardinal has realized that he never really needed that mansion anyway, it seems that "George could not make the decision on his own and would have to convince archdiocese Chancellor Jimmy Lago and the archdiocese finance committee." But Lago is a mere layman. Here we see how surreal the current situation of the Church has become: Cardinal George has to ask some guy named Jimmy Lago for permission to sell the Archdiocesan mansion, so that the Cardinal can engage in the "search for simplicity" - while he pays off the lawyers defending all the priest sex-abuse cases arising from all the crimes committed by "gay" priests who should never have been ordained in the first place. Are we dreaming?

       According to "luxury real estate specialist" Jim Kinney, the mansion, which has 19 chimneys, a carriage house and 10 city lots of landscaping, would sell for at least 12 million dollars. But 12 million dollars is a drop in the bucket when one is being billed for legal defense work by top Chicago firms and being forced to make payouts in multiple sex-abuse cases, any one of which could "hit" for tens of millions of dollars if it went to a jury.

       My advice? Keep the mansion. After all, it was the simple faithful whose donations paid for it. And if it’s simplicity the Cardinal is searching for, why not look for simplicity in the solution to his priestly sex-abuse problem: stop ordaining homosexuals, remove "gay" priests from their many positions of authority in the Archdiocese of Chicago, and stop supporting the "gay ministries" which help perpetuate the "gay subculture" in the Catholic clergy. Simple enough, isn’t it? But that kind of simplicity is not politically correct. Selling the mansion is. And so it goes in the springtime of Vatican II.