Andrew Hertzberg
The term “thoughts and prayers” has been used so frequently by politicians after tragedies that it’s hard to read the phrase as anything but a parody of itself at this point.
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As many have pointed out on social media already, the latest mass shooting in the United States took place at a church, the epicenter of “thoughts and prayers.”
Now Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich has weighed in on the issue: thoughts and prayers are “not enough.”
“We need to take action. We need to tell our legislators that we need to ban these high-powered weapons,” Cupich said at the University of Chicago on Monday.
Cupich himself is an avid hunter and has previously supported both hunter’s rights and tougher gun laws. And he is not naive about why these laws aren’t being changed.
“This is a money issue,” he said. “It’s nothing about the Second Amendment. It’s about people who want to make money on these weapons and really don’t care about the human cost.”
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Earlier this year, the Cupich signed a policy that banned guns from Chicago churches and church-associated buildings, citing “churches, schools and administrative facilities are intended to be sites where people can gather to pray and worship in safety and in peace.”
