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54 T I K K U N W W W. T I K K U N . O R G S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 AP PHOTO Rethinking Religion I t’s Labor Day Weekend already, the end of summer , back to school. What does Labor Day have to do with labor? And why should we talk about it in church? When you get back to school, take a look at your high school history book, you students. Parents, you take a look too and see what it has to say about the labor movement. I have taught public high school in four jurisdictions: Connecticut, New York City, New York State, and New Hampshire. We are lucky here in Marlboro. Jack Mazza tells me there is a whole week-long unit on labor in the advanced placement American History course in our high school. That’s great but it’s not the wayitisinmostplaces,andit’sstillnotenough.You’reluckyto getaparagraphontheKnightsofLaborinthenineteenthcenturyandanotherontheAFL -CIOinthetwentieth,andsomething about the Wagner Act of 1935 that established the National Labor Relations Board and (this they never tell you) theweakestlaborlawsintheindustrializedworld. Ifahistorybooktellsyouintheprefacethatit’sgoingtogive you an overview of the story of our nation, how it came to be, whoformeditandhow,anditdoesnotincludethemightybattletoestablishminimalprotectionsfortheworkingpeopleofthiscountry ,thenitisnottelling you the truth. If it’s not the truth, it’s a lie. I realized this when a good Jesuit priest, Father Ryan, offered to teach a course in Labor History for us at Fairfield Prep, after school, not for credit. It was the most important class I ever took, in high school or in college, because it taught me that what I had been led to believe was history, wasn’t. The struggle for the fortyhour week, for health and safety regulations, for the right to organize for collective bargaining ,forsocialsecurityandoldagepensions,forworkers’compensationforinjuryonthejob, forunemploymentcompensation,foraminimumwage,thatwasallleftout. It cost blood! Yes, there was violence, almost all of it aimed against unarmed workers. Men,womenandchildrenwereburnedtodeath,menwereshot,somewerelynched,castrated ,draggedthroughthestreetsandhanged.In1897,deputysheriffsnearHazelton,PennsylvaniashotdownnineteenunarmedSlavic ,HungarianandSicilianminersbecausetheywent out on strike. That stimulated the building of the United Mineworkers Union. Organizers wereimprisonedunjustlyforaslongastwentyyears,allfortryingtoformaunion.Whytalk about this sort of thing in church? Church is where we come to get closer to God, to hear the WordandtocometogetherinCommunionwithJesusourGodandwithoneanotherandall God’s children. There you have it! All God’s children, not just the sons and daughters of the Labor Day Sermon by Tom Cornell Cesar Chavez, center, and followers attend an outdoor Mass on the capitol steps in Sacramento, Calif., before start of a labor protest march, date unknown. Deacon Tom Cornell is a veteran of the Catholic Worker Movement, former national secretary of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, and a founder of Pax Christi, U.S.A. This sermon was given in 2006 in Marlboro, NY. Religion.qxd:Politics rev. 8/10/08 1:28 PM Page 54 powerful. The God we worship is a God who demands justice, “Whose mighty right arm scatters the proud in their conceit, who lifts up the lowly and casts down the mighty from their thrones, who fills the hungry with good things....” (from The Magnificat,Luke1:46-55) Bythemiddleofthenineteenthcentury,theCatholicChurch hadtodealwiththedevastatingeffectsoftheindustrialrevolution on its people. In countries where the bishops were chosen from the sons of the powerful, the Church was very slow, too slow to respond to the crisis, and Pope Pius IX lamented, “We have lost the working classes.” In England, where the Catholic population was small and mostly Irish and poor, and in the United States, where the bishops were, almost every single one of them, sons of workers, the response was quick and positive. Therichandpowerful,thenoblefamiliesthatruledItaly,Spain, France,GermanyandtheAustro-HungarianEmpireandtheir bishop cousins wanted the Pope to condemn the labor movement , the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and the Knights of Labor in the United States as CommunistsandenemiesofChristandhisChurch.OntheothersidewereCardinalGibbons inBaltimoreandCardinalManninginLondon.TheywenttoRomeandappealeddirectlyto thePope.GibbonsandManningwon. In1891PopeLeoXIIIgavehisanswertothesocialquestioninanencyclicalthatsetoffthe developmentofmodernCatholicSocialTeaching,RerumNovarum,orInTheseRevolutionary Times. Labor is prior to capital. Work comes first, because work creates capital. People comefirstbecausemenandwomenaremadeintheimageand likeness of God. Dollars, pounds and euros are made in the mint! Labor is not a commodity on the market, subject to the lawofsupplyanddemand.AllGod’screationwasmeantforthe benefitofall.Ontheotherhand,theChurchdefendstherightto privateproperty.“Propertyispropertoman.”Theproblemwith capitalismisthatitdoesn’tgetenoughcapitaltoenoughpeople. Private property, yes, but it is not an absoluterightandmustbe subjecttotherequirementsofthecommongood.Workershave aright,evenanobligation...

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