STONE PARK, Ill. – A determined convent of nuns in Chicago have filed suit against a strip club they say plays disturbing music while they try to pray.
The nuns of St. Charles have named Club Allure Chicago and the village of Stone Park in their suit which was filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court.
According to the suit, the sisters have seen “public violence, drunkenness and litter, including empty whiskey and beer bottles, discarded contraceptive packages and products and even used condoms,”. The lawsuit also mentions the “pulsating and rhythmic staccato-beat noise and flashing neon and or strobe lights” that disturb the nuns.
“Our sisters’ sacred space has been invaded,” according to Sister Noemia Silva. “At night now they hear the music when they’re praying. That’s uncalled for.”
According to attorney Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society, a Chicago-based public interest law firm representing the convent, the sisters have a right to pray and work peacefully without interference.
However the Stone Park Village Attorney Dean Krone states that the village has acted legally and reasonably and the club manager, Robert Itzkow says that the nuns are not being very neighborly. In speaking with WMAQ-TV he states “We spent an awful lot of money to make sure that this kind of thing would not occur,”… “The whole thing is just a question of `we don’t like you; you don’t conform to our religious beliefs.”‘
Itzkow stated the club’s dancers “aren’t monsters. They’re daughters; they’re mothers, and some of them are Catholics too.”