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Remember the Laborers
Catholic social thought, from the teachings of Pope Leo XIII and for over a century, has fostered the American labor movement with sound moral helmsmanship. Not only pontiffs, but prophetic clergy and laypersons have given voice and conscience to the cause of workers’ rights and economic justice, notably, Dorothy Day, John Cort and America’s foremost labor priest, the late Msgr. George G. Higgins.
For over half a century Msgr. Higgins was at the vanguard of Catholic - Labor relations. Bishop William F. Murphy, in his Labor Day statement (“An American Catholic Tradition”) as Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, lauds Msgr. Higgins, marking an annual tradition begun by Msgr. Higgins himself. His hopeful realism, notes Bishop Murphy, would have understood the importance of the “big picture” of work in today’s globalized marketplace without neglecting its impact on the individual working man and woman. The worker must never become lost in the work, however urgent, nor the artisan in the art, however sublime.
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Msgr. George Higgins with striking mine workers in Kentucky in 1974. |
The consumerist lust for morally undisciplined production and the collectivist obsession with socio-political perfectionism are part of the same anonymous, spiritless machine behind which political and economic opportunists, cowards alike, crouch. We just witnessed the appalling Olympic saga of 7-year-old Yang Peiyi, the little girl heard but not seen because some censorious bureaucrat feared her chubby cheeks and tiny crooked teeth might tarnish the image of her homeland.
We have seen even uglier episodes of this old story before. Wrought high and bold into an iron gate at the Auschwitz extermination camp are letters screaming, ARBEIT MACHT FREI (literally, “work liberates”). To the hapless prisoners driven daily below, this cynical insult must have tasted as bitter as death; they knew full well their work was as valued by their Nazi oppressors as their freedom was not. Too late did the world realize also. In the totalitarian equation, communist or consumerist, the individual can always be sacrificed to the cause – be it national pride or simply what people will buy.
Workers are sacrificed on the altar of work wherever the humanity of the worker is forgotten. The surge of Turkish immigrants, four decades after West Germany first sought them as “guest workers,” now breeds waves of Ausländerhass (“hatred for foreigners”), just for the “crime” of staying (legally) and propagating. As one social commentator (Max Frisch) remarked: “We asked for workers and we got people.” Never mind that in the United States, too, government authorized recruitment of Mexican workers (“Braceros”) to fill jobs on U.S. farms resulted in an increase of both legal and illegal immigration. And as availability and dependence on foreign workers (or their work-product) increases, so also do manufacturing expectations that in turn drive production managers to outsource in order to meet consumer demand. We notice the problem when a friend is laid off from a job a worker abroad will do for less pay, without the insurance and pension – or when lead is found in a child’s toy.
Catholic social thought insists on bringing full consideration of the dignity of the human person, the protection of family life, wealth creation, the common good and the preferential option for the poor into the marketplace and the political arena. As we celebrate Labor Day 2008, our country has much to thank God for, especially the blessings of our freedom and resources, human and natural, which bring us such extraordinary economic power. At the same time, the Gospel impels us to employ these blessings to foster just and humane labor conditions. Our election year challenges include the courageous reform of economic, immigration and energy policies.
Since the human dimension of economic life is so central to Catholic social thought, all our efforts to foster just conditions of work must include Sabbath observance. Oh so slowly the “Arbeit Macht Frei” seduction absorbs us, where not an hour can be found on a weekend for God who, after all, began all work with Creation. Yet even God rested on the seventh day – to appreciate the work of Creation, especially man and woman (the greatest work!) made in the image and likeness of God. Today work consumes even the Sabbath itself; the worker is lost in the work that must be done. Let’s take back the Sabbath! An excellent Labor Day resolution would be to invite ourselves and everyone we know to reclaim Sunday as a day of prayer, thanksgiving, reflection and rejuvenation that our work might be both our delight and our duty, in God’s name, to continue. Without time to pray and reflect on the work we do during the week, we may never see the work consuming us. The Creator who rests is greater than Creation. By giving us the Sabbath, God invites us, too, to know we are more than our work – of which we, God’s images, must be the masters.
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