Posted September 12, 2013 Book: Alley in Chicago: The Ministry of a City Priest Author: Margery Frisbie Sheed and Ward, Kansas City, MO. 1991. Pp. 298 An Excerpt from the Jacket: Besides recounting the exemplary life of Msgr. John Joseph Egan, An Alley in Chicago briefs us on the firebrand priests and lay people who radiated the power and elan that made Catholics across the country look to the heartland, to Chicago's Catholics moment. They sought leadership in marriage, education, in neighborhood empowerment, in urban apostolates, in ecumenism, in race relations, in community organizing, from these infatigable leaders --- and they got it! An Excerpt from the Book: A great part of an organizer's skill is putting aside any such conventional wisdom as the notion at poor neighborhood doesn't have its own leaders. A good organizer seeks out the leaders who are there. She or he also encourages potentially unifying issues to rise to the surface like air bobbles through an aquarium. . . .Cardinal Suenen said, "It is the duty of pastors to listen carefully and with an open heart to laymen and repeatedly to engage in a living dialogue with them. For each and every layman has been given his own gifts and charisms, and more often than not has greater experience than the clergy in daily life in the world. Table of Contents: 1. I was a very friendly little guy 2. I think the only thing I was good at was working 3. To serve God and be of some use to people 4. I had disappointed my father 5. What would Jesus do in this situation? 6. Selling God, he got us 7. I am myself 8. What do you think of the Rosenberg case? 9. You have to fight injustice wherever you find it 10. He was the only guy to stand up to the university and City Hall 11. God knows they finessed us! 20. how can they survive without the Eucharist? 21. The weak were not meant by some divine decree to remain week.