On the ice and in the pulpit, Bishop Thomas Paprocki takes hard shots

PROFILE | Bruce Rushton

The office of Bishop Thomas John Paprocki is a veritable shrine to hockey.

On a table sits a miniature Stanley Cup, next to a photo of him posing on the ice with members of his beloved Chicago Blackhawks. In the office foyer hangs a photograph of Paprocki posing with the cup itself, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Gov. Pat Quinn.

“Those were in happier times,” quips the bishop, who castigated the governor a year ago, when Quinn, a Catholic, said that his faith prompted him to sign a bill allowing civil unions.

They call him the Holy Goalie, the bishop who saves goals and saves souls. He is, according to Jeff Rocco, director of the Sacred Heart- Griffin hockey squad, the real deal in the net – you’d never know that he didn’t take up ice hockey until the late 1990s, when he was closing in on 50.

What possesses a man in mid-life to become a puck target?

“Why do you want to play goalie – it’s like, why do you want to be a priest?” answers Paprocki, who also runs marathons. “Part of it, I guess, is being at the center of the action. Being a goalie is like being a bishop: You’re at the center of the action.”

Really, Paprocki says, it isn’t much different than playing goal in floor hockey, which he did back in the eighth grade while growing up on Chicago’s south side. There were no ice rinks, and so his six brothers and their friends played in a basement beneath his father’s pharmacy.

“The basic principle is, you play the angles,” he says. “You just want to position yourself in a way so the puck hits you.”

Plenty of pucks have hit Paprocki since his arrival in Springfield 18 months ago. He doesn’t shy from strong statements, which has earned him critics who call him divisive, arrogant, inflammatory – and worse.

The final straw for Maryam Moustoufi came last Christmas Eve. During midnight mass, Paprocki ripped airport security personnel for not profiling Arabs and warned that Muslims could impose Islamist values in the United States if they keep moving here until they reach a majority. He also gave a history lesson about a failed invasion of Europe by Muslim soldiers.

“The commander of the defeated Ottoman army, Kara Mustafa Pasha, was executed in Belgrade on Dec. 25, 1683,” Paprocki preached. “Merry Christmas!” The homily shocked many. “I had a number of calls from people who were apologizing for his homily, and that included priests within this very diocese,” says Mostoufi, a Muslim who is a member of the Greater Springfield Interfaith Association. “He’s advocating a religious war. It’s nothing short of fear mongering.”

Paprocki didn’t back down when Corey Brost, a priest and a high school teacher in Arlington Heights, wrote an opinion piece published in the State Journal-Register, saying that Paprocki had given an inaccurate portrayal of Islam, invited fear and advocated unconstitutional human rights abuses.

In a response published in the diocesan newspaper, Paprocki mocked Brost for writing that there is no modern onslaught of Muslims attacking Christians.

“Oh, really?” Paprocki wrote. “That’s easy to say from the calm and peaceful security of Arlington Heights, Illinois.”

Nearly a year later, Paprocki says he didn’t expect the negative reaction and repeats his defense, saying that he had intended to focus on the plight of Christians in Iraq, where observances had been canceled for fear of violence.

“It would have been almost hypocritical for us to be sitting here and having this nice, joyful feeling about Christmas when I know that fellow Christians in another part of the world are not able to share that sentiment,” Paprocki says. “So that was really the main focus.”

The homily was vintage Paprocki, a man known for damning torpedoes. In 2007, Paprocki told a group of judges and lawyers in Michigan that monetary awards to victims of sexual abuse by priests were excessive and that the legal system needed reform.

“Today in North America and elsewhere, the law is being used to undermine the charitable works and the religious freedom of the Church,” Paprocki said four years ago. “This attack is particularly directed against bishops and priests, since the most effective way to scatter the flock is to attack the shepherd. We must also use our religious discernment to recognize that the principal force behind these attacks is none other than the devil.”

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