Quit Moralizing

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The Working Catholic: Moralizing
Bill Droel

Name any social policy and there is sure to be a religious leader who has an opinion. The religious leader states his or her position in absolutes. For the religionist, the issue is a matter of high morality; no alternative position is acceptable. These religious leaders and the general public routinely fault the daily give-and-take in partisan politics for putting opportunism, gridlock, grandstanding, obstinacy and hypocrisy above moral principle.

The legislative process is a moral endeavor, says President John Kennedy (1917-1963) in Profiles in Courage (Harper Collins, 1956). An impatient public does not appreciate “the art of politics, the nature and necessity for compromise and balance,” he writes. The public is “too hasty in condemning all compromise as bad morals [when in fact] politics and legislation are not matters for inflexible principles or unattainable ideals.” Democracy is maintained by flawed people who are “engaged in the fine art of conciliating, balancing and interpreting the forces and factions of public opinion.”
Are principles then irrelevant to public life? Hardly. Though abiding principles do not come with specifics on each detailed proposal nor do they yield strategy or timing, principles give essential guidance. For an effective legislator, politics is a vocation about “compromises of issues, not of principles,” says Kennedy. A politician who “begins to compromise his [or her] principles on one issue after another,” he concludes, “has lost the very freedom of conscience which justifies his [or her] continuance in office.”
Profiles in Courage goes on to detail eight U.S. Senators who at a crucial moment put principles ahead of party loyalty and popularity. Yet even in those moments, Kennedy says, an assertion of high principle comes with calculation. Several examples in the book are about race relations, before and after the Civil War. An antebellum Southern senator decides that the principle of a United States is of higher value than the expectations of his constituents and his loyalty to his party. Introducing a pro-abolition bill, however, will be ineffective. Instead, he supports a mechanism that will delay war. He calculates that a decade’s worth of uneasy peace is worth the loss of his reputation. His principled stand, as it turns out, did not prevent the war but it bought time during which the North became stronger and the institution of slavery weaker. In other words a principled stand does not guarantee perfect outcomes; compromise is always in the mix.

There are many issues deserving attention from faith-inspired citizens: abortion, ecology, immigration, national defense, labor relations and more. With rare exception, religious leaders are advised not to take the shortcut of moralizing on these and other issues. Instead, here are alternative strategies:
1.) Support conscientious legislators. Host a support group or forum in one’s parish where politicians can explore the meaning of their work. Send along compliments when matters are resolved in an acceptable way.
2.) Be a strong, persistent voice in the public square. Over and over explain one’s religious position, using as much natural law or common good language as possible. Never stop asserting the whys and hows of pro-life or pro-planet or pro-civil rights. No matter how basic the explanation may be, there are many, many citizens and politicians who simply do not know why a religious person might oppose abortion or support unions or oppose pollution.
3.) Organize votes. Moralizing (like throwing around the threat of excommunication) likely hardens the position of politicians. Putting voting-blocks together gets attention. Bishops and other Church employees should not endorse candidates nor wade too deeply into the specifics of a piece of legislation. But lay members of any denomination can do retail organizing. Supporting an alternative Democrat in a blue district is better than hollow preaching. Supporting an alternative Republican in a red district will shake things up.
There are grifters in politics for sure. Here in Illinois some go to jail. But there are thousands of moral politicians in municipal, state and federal bodies that approach their work as a vocation. Do they ever hear their job framed in spiritual terms in their congregation, their synagogue, their mosque? There are hundreds of politicians who are capable of putting a moral principle ahead of a special interest, ahead of a party leader’s expectation, ahead of expediency. Not at every hour, on every issue. Not in big moralizing, grandstanding circumstances. But within the deliberative process of democracy, many politicians know how to frame a principle in reasonable terms and at times come away with a moral victory.

Droel edits a newsletter on faith and work, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)

M.L. King Day

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The Working Catholic
Bill Droel

This month’s celebration of Rev. Martin L. King (1929-1968) is of course about more than King. The civil rights era is about more than the Montgomery boycott that began in December 1955. It certainly includes Rosa Parks (1913-2005), who courageously refused to give up her seat on a bus. And, Parks’ disobedience was not a momentary reaction, but was the outcome of much preparation.
In recent times several scholars have drawn attention to “the longer civil rights movement.” Karen Johnson of Wheaton College is one of those scholars. Her book, One in Christ: Chicago Catholics and the Quest for Interracial Justice (Oxford University Press, 2018), details significant civil rights activity as early as 1930—not in the South but in Chicago. Her examples, perhaps surprisingly, are Catholic organizations.
Johnson’s thorough account in eight more-or-less chronological chapters plus 49 pages of valuable footnotes is “primarily a story about laypeople” who in addition to highlighting aspects of Catholic doctrine also challenged the notion that priests are above laypeople, that urban Catholicism is synonymous with intra-parish ministries and that Catholics acting as Catholics should keep their efforts separate from Protestants and Jews.
Arthur Falls (1901-2000), a pioneering black physician involved with Federated Colored Catholics and then with Catholic Worker movement, is prominent in the first four chapters and appears throughout the book. The fifth and sixth chapters feature Friendship House with Catherine de Hueck Doherty (1896-1985), Ellen Tarry (1906-2008) and Ann Harrigan Makletzoff (1910-1984); the seventh and eighth feature the Catholic Interracial Council with John McDermott (1926-1996) among others. Msgr. Dan Cantwell (1915-1996) and Ed Marciniak (1917-2004) appear in nearly all the chapters.
These Chicago Catholics were successful to a degree. They “helped enlarge America’s moral imagination,” Johnson explains. They showed that racial justice is more than a political matter. Due to these Chicago activists and also to many religious leaders in the South and around the nation, civil rights became a significant aspect of faith, both for blacks and for whites. Further, the Chicago Catholics—years before Vatican II (1962-1965)—taught others that individual salvation and personal transformation are not enough. They communicated, in words and more so by way of example, that full-time Christians must seek “the common good by reforming the institutions shaping the public sphere.”
A contagious esprit surrounded these dedicated Catholics. They nourished one another in several institutional spaces, Johnson emphasizes. They all knew that liturgical grace was essential to their efforts. They believed that the liturgy of the word continued out the church door as each of them did their part in the Mystical Body of Christ to live a liturgy of the world.
Johnson includes enough detail to dispel any suggestion of hyper-romanticism about these civil rights pioneers. These people were street savvy. They knew how to agitate and at the right moment what to compromise. They avoided getting personally bent out of shape as they necessarily engaged in sharp disagreements with one another over strategy: How to include Chicago’s bishop—if at all. Whether or not to include anti-poverty measures in efforts against racism. Whether or not to maneuver inside the Democratic Party, which in Chicago was the Daley Machine. Are discussion groups a waste of time? Can Catholics be militant?
Remarkably, most of these Catholic civil rights leaders remained Catholic their entire lives. It is remarkable because, as Johnson details in parts of two chapters, more than one bishop, some influential pastors and the Catholic system itself reinforced racial distinctions. For example, Falls once told me that the segregation that hurt him the most was on Saturday afternoons when he went to confession. Blacks had to stand in one line and wait until each person in the white line had received absolution.
Johnson writes a comprehensible story. This is an achievement because all her subjects died before she began. She thus scoured multiple libraries for newspapers, magazine articles, minutes of meetings and more. Johnson, by the way, is not Catholic. Yet the book flawlessly covers Chancery politics and points of theology.

A powerful 2% of young Catholics are once again interested in the social question–in race relations, in living wage campaigns, in the dignity of all life, in socially responsible business, in green technology, in mental health delivery, in criminal justice reform and immigration topics. One In Christ is an inspiring account of visionary Catholics who navigated the push-and-pull of public life, and had some fun along the way. As we rightly celebrate King Day, we can continue to learn from all the efforts in our country toward “liberty and justice for all.”

Droel of Chicago is a board member of National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629).

In Praise of Cash

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The Working Catholic:
Bill Droel

It says “legal tender for all debts private and public.” But cash is out. Indeed, some businesses now refuse cash, including a hair salon in Los Angeles, a few pretentious chain restaurants and several small shops. Visa has declared “a war on cash,” reports New York Times (12/6/18). Other credit companies are implicit allies in that war. Only 30% of transactions by one survey currently involve cash, says Wall St. Journal (12/30/18). Most cash transactions are in small amounts; 55% of them are for less than $10. The popular alternative to cash is called a credit card. However, cards are also out. Nowadays a purchaser obtains ready credit through an app on a mobile device. It is not swiped; it is tapped.
We crusty old-timers prefer cash. This is not only because a cashless economy further impoverishes those without access to credit. There are other troubling consequences of going cashless, ones that threaten middle-class families.
Number One. Cash is or was a nearly universal societal benefit. The trend these days is to allow private companies to own public life. The outcome of this trend is generally no good. Prime evidence here in Chicago is the expensive parking facilities in the Loop and elsewhere. Citizens do not benefit from the revenue; a private entity does. Likewise, the ubiquitous cameras that catch any and all minor traffic miscues would be annoying enough if the tickets’ revenue went to our city. But a private company has the contract. Prohibiting cash in favor of private currency is another destruction of the public realm.
Number Two. A cashless private economy is premised on automation. Working-class jobs at what were once called cash registers are disappearing. It is entirely possible to stock one’s grocery cart and put the produce, meat and bread in one’s car without dealing with a grocery clerk. The same impersonal approach is taking over in restaurants. Banks don’t have tellers.
Number Three. Another result of cyber-automation is increased violation of privacy. The private company that extends credit and the retailer join forces to develop one’s consumer profile. This is used by the retailer to pitch more products or it is sold to other private companies. Also, cyber-banking and cyber-transactions expose one’s cyber-wallet to thieves. The best robbers these days eschew cash; they prefer hacking.
Number Four. It is true that credit, wisely obtained and carefully managed, can be a form of wealth. A home mortgage obtained from a neighborhood bank or credit union is an investment. Credit perhaps leads to wealth in sophisticated margin trading in 90-day stock options. Right? Most credit obtained by working families, however, is basically usury. There is no credit app (formerly called a credit card) that comes without a line of credit and interest fees. The singular factor that hampers the financial standing of working class families is credit app/card debt.

Is it possible to manage a household without credit? It is possible, but it requires resistance to the new capitalism—a capital economy in which products are not that important but in which investment rules. How to manage without credit? Experts at Sambla advise you to get a checking account from a neighborhood bank or credit union. Don’t deal with Wells Fargo or other national entities. Do not accept any line of credit on the account. Don’t cyber-shop too much. Use the currency that comes with a picture of President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), President Ulysses Grant (1822-1885) or other notables. If you already have a credit card/app and you made only a partial payment last month, see a reputable, neighborhood-based finance advisor immediately.

Droel edits a free printed newsletter on faith and work, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)

Join the Catholic Labor Network at Catholic Social Ministry Gathering (CSMG)!

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Each February, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops invites Catholic social ministry leaders and social justice activists from across the country to Washington DC for several days of fellowship, learning, prayer, and activism – and the Catholic Labor Network, as a partner in the Catholic Social Ministry Gathering (CSMG), holds its annual meeting and luncheon. I hope you will join us for one or both of these events in February 2019 at the UNION Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington DC!

The Catholic Labor Network annual meeting opens at 8am on Saturday, February 2. In the morning, we’ll hear Catholic labor leaders, clergy and lay social justice activists share how their faith has informed their witness for the working poor and struggles to change society. Our special guest speakers will include United Airlines food service employees who waged a successful organizing campaign this fall to join the union UNITE HERE, and are bargaining with the airline for living wage jobs with health care coverage. We will also hear farmworker activists from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers tell us how they won a workplace code of conduct in Florida’s tomato fields. Afterward, at the luncheon, CLN will announce a major new initiative to connect labor leaders and Church leaders in order to promote worker justice and defend our immigrant neighbors.

CSMG 2019 will open that afternoon and continue through Tuesday, February 5. This year’s theme is Let Justice Flow (cf. Amos 5:24): A Call to Restore and Reconcile. Speakers and workshops will cover major topics in Catholic Social Teaching, from global peace to environmental protection to economic justice. (Our good friend Brian Corbin from Catholic Charities will be discussing Just Wages: Living Well from the Fruits of One’s Labor!) In a special conference highlight, Bishop Shelton J. Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux, Chair of the Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, will lead a panel discussion on Open Wide our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love (the bishops’ new pastoral letter against racism) and its implications for Church and society.

To register for either or both of these important events,

 

CLICK HERE

Advent Habit

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The Working Catholic: Advice on the Eucharist
by Bill Droel

Advice columns are exercises in deconstruction. Dear Abby and Ask Amy must intuit or impose a context for the short query. The newspaper reader, in turn, puts the question and answer into their own context—often comparing the situation to that of their dysfunctional relatives. Smile.
Advice columnists in Catholic newspapers or on Catholic websites (usually priests) must likewise deconstruct the question and the reader must imagine some applicable situation. A fair number of the questions are personal (Should I forgive my spouse for…?). A generic answer in a pastoral circumstance is not, in my opinion, a good idea. Some questions though can prompt a general lesson about the faith.
For example, a writer tells a Catholic News Service columnist that she or he, as a Eucharistic minister, is “bother[ed]” by the pause or separation between “body of Christ” and “blood of Christ” during the reception of communion. The writer believes that Christ is entirety present in each of the Eucharistic elements. The writer implies that each minister (of the host and of the cup) should say: “The body and blood of Christ.”
The priest/columnist affirms the writer’s belief but tempers any change in rubrics. He reminds the writer, in so many words, that Jesus paused or separated body and blood at what is called the Last Supper.

I’ve heard several Eucharistic ministers vary the correct phrase. Several say, “Receive the body of Christ.” Some say, “Take the blood of Christ.” One recently told me to “become transformed through this Eucharist.” At one church, while on vacation, I got a sermonette: “This is the real body of our Lord who died and rose that you…” That communion line moved slowly.
The correct phrase for the Eucharistic minister is intentionally vague or, better yet, inclusive by implication. No modifiers, no verbs. Even the article “the” is unnecessary. Just three words. Then the corresponding minister uses three words. The correct phrase applies to the consecrated bread and wine. Christ is fully, entirely and really present.
The seeming imprecision of the three words actually means that in addition to the elements Christ is really present in the communicant (John 6: 55-56). Plus, Christ is present in the collective worshipers, the congregation. And, Christ is really present in the church scattered after Mass, in the Mystical Body of Christ. Any additional words used by the Eucharistic minister only decrease the power of our dogma on Christ’s real presence.
Put it this way. If worshipers do not believe that Jesus is really present in their fellow humans, how can they really taste and see Jesus in the consecrated bread and wine? Street-level society is the Mystical Body of Christ, just as the ordinary elements and gestures at Mass are the real body and blood of Jesus Christ. Yes, it takes religious imagination to believe in the real presence within one’s hapless boss, one’s grouchy neighbor, one’s sullen teenager. But it is no different from the energy and creativity and persistence it takes to believe that the Owner of the Entire Universe is really present in a small piece of flat bread and a small amount of wine.

Here’s an Advent habit. Look at each worker you encounter this month and say to yourself: “Body of Christ; Blood of Christ.” The clerk at Walgreen’s, the student who arrives late to class, the orderly who complains about the patients, the snowplow driver, the postal worker, even the most clueless waitress who doesn’t know the difference between a stout and a porter. Smile.

Droel’s book Monday Eucharist is available from National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $7)

Ten Strikes

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The Working Catholic: Strikes
by Bill Droel

Not so long ago strikes were deemed counterproductive, says Commonweal magazine (3/26/18). That was until this past February when 20,000 teachers in West Virginia walked off the job. This job action, Commonweal notes, initially occurred “without collective bargaining powers or the legal right to go on strike.” Yet it was “well-executed [and] wide-scale… Its size and scope proved critical.” With visible public sympathy and sufficient solidarity, the West Virginia teachers were successful. Credit goes to “a decentralized rank-and-file made up mostly of women,” Commonweal concludes.

The West Virginia example does not mean that the strike tactic is back. Nor that it is a sure-fire remedy to income inequality. Strikes are still rare in our country–maybe a dozen notable ones per year. Further, strikes are often broken with no immediate improvement for our country’s workers.
The full positive results of a strike and of the union movement itself might only materialize some years after the event. That’s a conclusion to draw from A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis (The New Press, 2018).
The book’s first chapter centers on the “mill girls” of the early 19th century. A New England economy based entirely on farms and craft shops gave way in 1793 when Samuel Slater (1768-1835) opened a textile mill in Pawtucket, RI. Francis Cabot Lowell (1775-1817) thereafter opened another mill along the Charles River in Boston. His company expanded after his death, including a mill along the Merrimack River in a town renamed for Lowell. That town was nicknamed Spindle City because by the mid-1800s its 40 textile mills and 10,000 looms, operating six days a week, produced about 100million yards of cloth per year.
Instead of using child labor these mills recruited young women from area farms and elsewhere. The young workers, who were capable of operating somewhat complicated machines, lived in boarding houses and were encouraged to read and to attend cultural events. For some young women at the time, it was considered a great adventure to assert independence from their families. However, workdays were routinely 13 hours. The definition of young woman was really teenager. The workers paid for their company housing and their employer increased rent when the company wanted more discipline.
In 1834 and again in 1836 the town’s mills cut wages. In both cases a strike spread to several mills, but was crushed within a week. In 1845 the young women added a strategy: Documenting health and safety concerns and then testifying in favor of a state-mandated 10-hour workday. Only nearby New Hampshire legislated 10 hours, but its mills ignored the law with impunity.
Think about the struggle of these young workers come February 2019 when your donut shop hands you some change. You might see a quarter honoring Lowell National Historical Park (www.nps.gov/lowe). On the quarter is a woman toiling at a cotton loom and a clock tower in the background. Modernity requires increased public awareness of hours and minutes. Thus one town after another installed mechanical clock towers. The Boott Mill clock tower of 1835, as depicted on the new coin, symbolizes New England’s transition from a village economy to an industrial economy—for better and for worse.

Loomis anchors another chapter of Ten Strikes with autoworkers in Flint during December 1936-January 1937. As with the West Virginia teachers, these autoworkers were two steps ahead of their union leaders. Most strikes, of course, occur outdoors. They include picket lines, protest signs, maybe lawn chairs and maybe a huge inflatable rat. But the strike in Flint was different. The workers sat to conquer. That is, they stayed inside; commandeering in a sense all of General Motors’ expensive equipment. Again as in West Virginia, the women from town played the crucial role. With coordination they brought food and newspapers into the plant; they rallied citizen support, not only in Flint but in other locales.
The AFL at this time, Loomis explains, was focused on craft workers across lines of employers. The door was thus open for the United Mine Workers, the United Auto Workers and the CIO to organize all the workers of a single employer and then all the workers in a specified industry. The champion of this type of organizing was John L. Lewis (1880-1969), and he was a major factor in the Flint job action.
Loomis drives home one of his main themes in this chapter. There are three major players in the national economy: big business, organized families/workers and government. Workers cannot make headway, Loomis argues, without some support from government. In the Flint example, the workers’ ally was Governor Frank Murphy (1890-1949), who was later appointed to the Supreme Court. At a tense moment, Murphy sent the National Guard to the General Motors plant. But not—as was expected—to evict the workers. Murphy had the National Guard protect the workers. General Motors was soon ushered to the bargaining table where they gave recognition to Lewis and the United Auto Workers.

Ten Strikes is a good introduction to U.S. labor history. Loomis, however, trips on his rhetoric once or twice. Workers today must take back “our dignity from our employer,” he wrongly writes.
No employer can give a worker dignity. A job promotion does not confer dignity. An employee of the month award is not about dignity. Paternalism is incapable of adding to dignity. Likewise, no employer can take away an employee’s dignity. Harassment, for example, is a sin, but it does not diminish the essence of a person. No one loses an ounce of dignity if his or her hours are cut. Dignity is innate; it is God-given. This is important to believe. This is a truth about power. Each person—middle manager, owner, janitor, skilled engineer, clerk, receptionist and more—possesses as a gift from birth the power of one’s own dignity. It can’t be given away; it can’t be taken away. Don’t ever think that it can.

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a print newsletter on faith and work.

NC State Legislators Take Aim at Farmworkers’ Union

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Courts will decide fate of anti-union law

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) has achieved something remarkable in North Carolina: they have organized and won union contracts improving wages and working conditions for nearly 5,000 North Carolina farmworkers. This is remarkable because right-to-work North and South Carolina have the lowest union membership rates in the United States (roughly 3%). It’s remarkable because farmworkers don’t enjoy the legal protections of the National Labor Relations Act. Most of all it is remarkable because these union members are vulnerable guest workers from Mexico, in the United States at the pleasure of their employers.

In 2017, North Carolina state legislators moved to shut it all down.

In last-minute amendments to the state’s 2017 Farm Act, anti-union legislators inserted language prohibiting “dues checkoff,” the method most union members use to pay their dues. In a typical union workplace, new employees sign an authorization form permitting the employer to deduct their union dues from their paycheck, much the way they would authorize a payroll deduction for a 401k retirement plan or other employee benefit. The workers covered by FLOC contracts are spread across more than 500 farms in the state – in the absence of dues checkoff, FLOC’s small staff would have to set aside their real job of representing their members and instead spend all their time making site visits to collect dues.

The union and its allies have filed suit in federal court, arguing that the new law violates the farmworkers’ constitutional rights. If farmworkers want FLOC to be their voice on the job, authorizing dues deduction is an exercise of free speech. The law also arguably discriminates against workers based on their ethnicity (virtually all the affected workers are Latino) and immigration status (virtually all the affected workers are H2A visa holders).

The law is not currently being enforced, as this September the US Magistrate granted a preliminary injunction to preserve the farmworkers’ union representation while the litigation proceeds. The Catholic Labor Network will keep you informed as the case develops.

Bad Words

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The Working Catholic: Bad Words
by William Droel

Violent language keeps company with violent behavior. The former does not usually cause the latter directly, but in due time violence can follow. To be clear by way of an example, the rhetoric of Sarah Palin did not incite the January 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others, six of whom died. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2008, had an advertisement that put some Congressional districts (not individual candidates) in a mock crosshairs during the 2010 midterm campaign, including Giffords’ Arizona district. But those who said the shooting was a direct consequence of Palin’s violence-tinged electioneering (using slogans like “Don’t Retreat, Reload” and “Take Up Arms”) were jumping to a simplistic conclusion or, in her odd phrase, engaging in “blood libel.” Not to say that no relationship exists between violent metaphors or hateful rhetoric and physical attacks.
Violent language originates in and plays upon resentment. Though the hateful speaker appears tough and rugged, she or he is insecure. For example, Palin (now like President Donald Trump) has no public identity apart from the reaction of those who believe she is over the top. Her insecurity (like Trump’s) requires so-called enemies to fill her inner void by reacting to outrageous statements.

“The resentment felt today is the product of widespread feelings of powerlessness, writes Jeremy Engels in his important The Politics of Resentment: A Genealogy (Penn State Press, 2015). Those anger feelings are legitimate but become problematic when expressed with no context and directed at mistaken adversaries. Resentment is ineffective. Its expression soon enough turns back to the frustrated person, whose self-image becomes an inadequate victim. Resentment is all around these days because some of our “politicians and our sensationalized media seem intent on training citizens to be frightened, frustrated, apathetic, acquiescent and ultimately [more] resentful,” says Engels, who details the Palin-Giffords example. The politics of resentment is nefarious because it plays upon an honest desire for powerful reform but employs life-destroying strategies. Of course, some local, national and international figures play on resentment. Listen to them carefully: Their alternative to the status quo is always vague. They usually offer no lasting reform policy or improved organization and thus their promises only result in more alienation.
Resentment is like an addiction, which is why it seems like fun for awhile. However, it only pulls down. A resentful person, truth be told, has made herself or himself dependent on a larger force without being able to do anything about it.

The opposite of resentment is gratitude. Anyone who desires effective social reform must believe that the world and its environs is a gift. Maybe that belief is not explicitly stated upon awakening each morning. Maybe the word thanks is not used. But a person who is capable of improving his or her business or church or neighborhood or political party is a grateful person. Such a person knows that she or he is not self-made. He or she realizes that one’s interests have to be negotiated among the rights and wishes of others and that the beautiful gift of freedom implies care for one’s family, for society and to a degree for the world.
Let’s not get soft here. Politics is hardball. Business can be quite competitive. Civic groups can strike fierce poses. Specific interests must often be strongly asserted. Issues get sharply framed. Meetings get contentious. In democratic public life there are adversaries, opponents and perennial rivals. In a democracy, however, there are no enemies. Social change advocates and politicians who use that word betray the gift of our country. At a minimum they exhibit self-righteousness. Worse, they open a door to violence. In war there are enemies. In regular public life the word enemy, and other violent phrases, are not to be used.

Droel’s booklet, Public Friendship, is available from National Center for the Laity (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $5)

Misdirected Idealism

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The Working Catholic: Misdirected Idealism
Bill Droel

John McKnight directs Asset-Based Community Development Institute at DePaul University. He objects to the standard approach toward a neighborhood by urban planners, government officials, and bank executives, building inspectors, social workers, some police officers and even some teachers. Instead of projecting joy and enthusiasm, they give exclusive attention to a neighborhood’s defects (old buildings, broken curbs, high number of transients, roaming delinquents, dim street lights and more). The well-meaning prophets of doom sometimes propose cosmetic interventions (new basketball hoops and additional street sweeping) to buoy drooping spirits of families.
McKnight, contrary to standard understanding, thinks many seemingly good interventions are in fact disabling help. A forceful ideology, he details, assumes some people are not competent neighbors; they are instead clients with deficient parts. This ideology is apolitical. There is no need to radically address the economic or cultural environment. Service, sincerely delivered, is an unquestioned good. There is no compelling need to explain why our country has terrific medical discoveries and many improved medical instruments and yet poor health. Or why our country has lots of knowledge about food and great interest in culinary arts and yet poor nutrition. Or lots of new classroom technology and yet declining reading scores.

Anand Giridharadas applies this analysis to those who sincerely believe that by doing well they can do good. Idealistic students, enterprising tech engineers and many innovators in finance “declare themselves partisans of change,” he writes in Winners Take All: the Elite Charade of Changing the World (Knopf, 2018). Yet they selectively take on problems with projects they design, jumping over most of the people affected by the problem and quite often blocking government agencies from access to the problem. The goodwill of these educated and highly positioned do-gooders is insufficient, Giridharadas argues. In many cases it is harmful.
The tech entrepreneurs and the enterprising finance wizards, Giridharadas says, believe that “to change the world you must rely on the techniques, resources and personnel of capitalism.” The approach of these economic and cultural leaders is taught to students at big-name colleges. “The private push into world betterment,” he continues, sidelines “the older language of power, justice and rights.” Instead, the elite-style of social change uses phrases like leveraged data, social impact, and incubation of ideas, start-up venture, empowering endeavor, social enterprise club, impact investment and more.
The internet began in the mid-1960s, first among select engineers. It soon grew in scope and now is, of course, nearly universally used constantly by way of many types of devices. A philosophy came along with the hardware and the programs. The big tech players and their fans, says Giridharadas, believe in the leveling ability of technology. Everyone is entitled to access, they say, and extensive use of cyberspace, in and of itself, increases equality. (See for example The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman, Picador, 2007.)
Perhaps the tech giants are sincere. But their notion of change always includes a payoff for the tech entity and never addresses the basics of our economic system or our dominant culture. Keep in mind: Today’s tech industry is more concentrated than any other sector. A small number of people own the entire infrastructure. Their companies greatly add to wealth inequality.
Is it better then for tech leaders and for young adults who aspire to do good and do well to stifle their philanthropy and cease their forays into social problems? Might they simply put their excess wealth and lingering idealism back into their portfolio?

Catholic social doctrine has pertinent principles. According to subsidiarity, decisions should be made as close as possible to those affected by the decision. Maternalism or paternalism is a step or two removed from the scene. For example, says Catholicism, workers make the decision for or against a union without interference from management, even if management seemingly knows better. According to the principle of participation, a society increases in justice as more families have an increasing stake in the economy and the direction of culture. Catholicism favors private property and never requires exact material equality of income or wealth. It does insist, however, that all families have agency—usually by way of intermediate associations.
Context is a crucial difference between tech/finance philosophy and Catholicism. Individuals login and travel around the tech world as they please. In Catholicism, there is no such thing as a person without an environment; without family, friends, clubs, and more. A large portion of the social environment, Catholicism appreciates, is a gift.

Winners Take All is an important critique; one made by only a small number of other commentators like John McKnight in The Careless Society (Basic Books, 1995) and more recently by Thomas Frank in Listen Liberal (Henry Holt, 2016).

Droel is the author of Public Friendship (National Center for the Laity, PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $5)

Why organized labor is a Catholic cause

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Catholic News Agency’s Kevin Jones talks with Fr. Sinclair Oubre of the Catholic Labor Network

As part of last month’s Labor Day coverage, CNA reporter Kevin Jones interviewed Catholic Labor Network spiritual moderator Fr. Sinclair Oubre about what makes labor unions a Catholic cause.

Fr. Oubre is himself a union member, a mariner who belongs to the Seafarers International Union and periodically still serves on ships in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere. Besides serving as pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Orange, Texas, Oubre ministers to visiting seafarers in nearby Port Arthur as president of the Apostleship of the Sea. (An avid Harley fan, many also know him for the annual Blessing of the Bikes.)

Sinclair recalled how Catholic workers played no small role in creating the modern American labor movement in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. “They took to heart our Catholic social teaching, and tried to implement it in their workplace.” But today there seemed to be a disconnect between Catholics and organized labor.

Like in so many areas of our faith, the heresy of radical individualism, a lack of knowledge about why unions were formed, and a general ignorance of what options workers have, have led to many Catholics to either not realize that the Church has favored workers’ associations, or that the Church even has a teaching that has to do with the workplace.

Oubre urges Catholics who belong to labor unions to study that history and teaching, and to view unions as a site for evangelization. To read the full interview, “Why organized labor is (still) a Catholic cause,” CLICK HERE