With passage of same-sex marriage legislation in Illinois, differences between the beliefs of the Catholic Church and the Democratic Party became glaringly obvious. Now, the question needs to be asked, how did Catholic politicians end up working against the very Church in which they claim membership?

Many Catholics came to Chicago as part of the immigration waves in the 18th and 19th centuries. There were German Catholics and Polish Catholics. There were also Italian Catholics and Lithuanian Catholics, but over time it was Irish Catholics who took a firm hold on Chicago politics.

Because of this firm hold, Chicago has inherited a political machine that has its roots in the immigrant experience of mostly Irish Catholics. Onto these roots would be grafted the dark blossom that is the progressive Democratic Party, today.

It wasn't always this way. Early on, many Irish Catholics were conservative and anti-communist. Chicago's anti-communists took their lead from Samuel Cardinal Stritch, who headed the Chicago Archdiocese.

"The son of Irish immigrants, he became the youngest member of the United States hierarchy when named bishop of Toledo in 1921... (in 1939, he came to Chicago and was named a cardinal in 1946). Stritch led Chicago Catholics until his appointment to a Vatican post in 1958. He died that same year."

"At least two things about Stritch influenced the way in which he and Chicago Catholics acted during the Cold War. First, there was his legendary cautiousness, which intensified with age. Second, Stritch considered communism primarily as an offshoot of secularism, and he therefore focused on attacking the latter rather than the former."

Dd Marxist influence, after Cardinal Stritch, infiltrate the Catholic Church in Chicago and Illinois, making it possible for the Church to offer only token resistance to same-sex marriage years later? Some think so.

In her article, "Bishops Betraying the Catholic Church," Mary Jo Anderson writes, "The modernists were in lock step with American culture. Worse, they adopted Marxist strategies to achieve their goals. Msgr. Jack Egan, Chicago icon of liberalism in the '60s and '70s, befriended Marxist Saul Alinsky, author of "Rules for Radicals..."

"These rules were promoted as 'liberation' and applied to major issues in the Church, such as 'liberating' women from 'patriarchy' or 'liberating' homosexuality from homophobic old men in the Vatican."

In the 60s, under Mayor Daley the First, Democratic Party control of the city was threatened. The Civil Rights movement, born from The Great Migration (1940-60) had to be contained. Catholic politicians realized they needed to do something to stay in power.

These politicians devised policies that preserved segregation in Chicago but looked, instead, like integration. This has been their political strategy with minorities ever since.

They told voters they were planting a rose, but instead they planted what in fifty years would become a thistle.

The building of the Dan Ryan expressway is a good example. At the time, the expressway was claimed to be a civic improvement. It was really a determined effort to contain the black ghetto and prevent its spread westward into the white, ethnic neighborhoods, where Democrats had a bloc of mostly Catholic voters.

Over time, Catholics in Chicago saw the Democratic Party evolve into a party that opposed the Catholic Church on many issues. Nevertheless, a mutual coexistence grew up, something like the Catholic Church in Poland under communism. Yet, unlike the Democrats in Chicago, the communists in Poland "failed in their attempt to suppress and control the Polish Church"

"The Catholic Church in Poland provided strong resistance to the communist regime and Poland itself had a long history of dissent to foreign rule. The Polish nation rallied to the Church...which made it more difficult for the regime to impose its antireligious policies in the same fashion as it had in the USSR..."

The Catholic Church in Chicago offered little resistance to the Democrats. Governor Quinn of Illinois, like other Catholic politicians, matured in an atmosphere where the Catholic religion, distorted by misunderstandings of Vatican II, became a partner with the Democratic Party's progressive politics.

Writing about the misunderstood reforms of Vatican II, the Canadian author Michael Coren says it, "...was supposed to open up some metaphorical windows of the Church but instead was used by some people to smash every piece of stained glass they could find."

Quinn and other Catholic politicians in Chicago went along with those who broke the metaphorical windows. They never seemed to have learned about the Catholic resistance to communism. The easy relationship of the Democratic Machine with the Archdiocese of Chicago has created an environment in many Catholic churches, today, where "Welcome, Brother," has become "Welcome, Comrade."

This relationship came to fruition with the election of Barack Obama by Catholic Democrats, first to the U.S. Senate from Illinois, and then to the U.S. Presidency. Catholic Democrats had now elected to the highest office in the land the most anti-Catholic politician in the history of the Republic; a man some say is out to destroy the authority of the Catholic Church in the United States.

Obama may succeed in this destruction with the help of Catholic bishops and clergy. Paul Kengor thinks it's possible and says so in his article, "Obama's Catholic Church Gambit: Lessons from American Communists."

The present day Catholic Church in Chicago is so much in lockstep with Democrats that it could offer only token resistance to same-sex marriage. Bishop Paprochi's exorcism in Springfield has not led to the excommunication of one professed Catholic politician in Chicago who supported same-sex marriage.

By joining with the Democrats, many Chicago Catholics, both laymen and clergy, also have knowingly or unknowingly joined forces with liars. The 2013 Politifact "Lie of the Year," was our president's now infamous line: 'If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.' Now all Americans are realizing... President Barack Obama is a master of deception."

"Lest people forget, passage of the Affordable Care Act happened in part because Obama struck a deal with a single Catholic holdout: Bart Stupak, D-Michigan. Stupak agreed to vote for the bill in exchange for an executive order protecting conscience rights and preserving the Hyde Amendment's ban on the use of federal funds for abortion. Stupak had insisted on an amendment. Instead, he took the President's (lying) word."

Nowadays, being Catholic and Democrat in Chicago is a form of political addiction. Catholic Democrats in Illinois, with the help of heretical bishops and clergy, press on with their addiction and their progressive agenda, unable to be converted by reason or experience. Because of this addiction, same-sex marriage is not the end of the line.

Consider the words of the TV announcer who says, "But wait, there's more!" There is the lie of "comprehensive immigration reform."

Because illegal immigration is as much contra naturam as same-sex marriage, who would have guessed fifty years ago that a Catholic bishop in the United States would say that by furthering the sin of illegal immigration we have a "win-win situation for both immigrant... and U.S. citizens?" Yet, this is what Catholics in Chicago hear today.

With amnesty for illegal aliens next on the agenda after same-sex marriage, Catholic politicians in Illinois will finish selling out not only the Church, but the nation as well, all in the name of the Democratic Party. Welcome, Comrades, to Babylon by the Lake.