Working for the Church
Last week, I told Kate McElwee that I had more to say about working for the church, and I do. But first, I will draw your attention to other writers who address the issue.
Jamie Manson is always pastoral. In her comments on the Supreme Court’s “ministerial exception” decision, she highlights the effects of allowing employment discrimination under the guise of “religious freedom” on the very people the church needs: “all of the young adults preparing for ministry in hundreds of seminaries, divinity schools and other formation programs.” Many will work in situations, as Manson has done and describes: “Ministry is already high risk enough for church workers who have to make themselves both emotionally and physically vulnerable in pastoral care programs, homeless ministries, domestic violence shelters, hospitals and hospices, prisons and halfway houses.” Add being fired at will. “Is this what a church that claims to be founded on the Gospel values of compassion and justice looks like?”
I don’t know Chris Damian, but my guess is he’s always legal. He takes apart the USCCB briefs in several “religious freedom” cases, arguing that they “wave away the distinction between ‘homosexual inclinations’ and ‘homosexual conduct,’ … a distinction fundamental to Catholic moral theology.”
This is where I insert the old joke, Is the Pope—or in this case, are the Bishops—Catholic?
Chris Schenk is one clear Catholic. She writes about another employment issue that emerged in the last week, Catholic entities’ use of PPP funds as presented in a widely-circulated AP article. I am annoyed by that article. Matt Malone probably is, too; in America he mostly defends the institution.
My guess is that Schenk is also annoyed, but she shifts the focus from the institution to church employees, who do pay taxes, and argues that their jobs should be protected. While she admits, “Widespread suspicion of diocesan bishops continues to be fueled by our too-recent history of sex abuse cover-ups, money laundering by bishops and laity, a failure of accountability and most germane to the present topic, woefully deficient financial transparency,” she provides other links to resources for determining whether churches are being just to their employees. Another is to Tom Fox’s note that NCR received PPP funds, as America did. I am certainly glad that so many of these employees kept working. Fox and Schenk and Malone exemplify the compassion and justice inherent in Catholic moral theology.
To go back to the beginning, what I have to insert about working for the church is an April article from The Nation that will turn yellow if I hold onto it much longer. Investigative reported Amy Littlefield examines “Union-Busting in the Name of God.” This article inspired my snide comment last week about rose-colored Jesuit glasses.
Littlefield begins with the efforts of graduate students at Jesuit Boston College to demand recognition of their union, which was withdrawn because of a federal appeals court’s negative decision on a similar union. Bryn Spielvogel, an education PhD candidate, said: “They no longer have a legal obligation to recognize and bargain with our union, but we believe that they still have a moral obligation to do so, particularly as a Jesuit university that holds up social justice as a core value and mission of the university.”
The College had responded “that BC’s Catholic mission puts the workers outside the protection of the law—in this case, outside the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which enforces the right of private-sector workers to unionize.” A similar argument is made regarding adjunct professors at Jesuit Seattle University and at Holy Spirit (Spiritan) Duquesne, the latter covered in detail in the article. Sound familiar? Hoping that religious organizations will do the right thing is not enough.
Littlefield provides a really good survey of Catholic labor teaching in the light of US court decisions. Popes Leo XIII and Francis are quoted, along with the Catholic Labor Network, all of whom provide a nice counterpoint to the rationales for exemption of religious organizations under US labor law, the history of which Littlefield also chronicles. Adrienne Alexander, Vice President of the Labor Network, spoke to Catholic Organizations for Renewal last November. Their website has a terrific blog and a library of church documents. It also lists unionized Catholic workplaces, mostly healthcare and schools, including in higher education. The blog notes the recent “wiping out” of the faculty union at St. Xavier University in Chicago, but why go on?
There’s good news, too, and Littlefield enjoys as I do the guerilla tactics of the graduate students at Jesuit Georgetown. “During the university’s celebration of Jesuit Heritage Week in 2018, they handed out flyers emblazoned with the hashtag #PracticeWhatYouPreach and a quotation from Pope Francis: ‘There is no good society without a good union.’”
Littlefield goes on: “The students planned to stage a mock award ceremony outside a Georgetown fundraiser, handing out fake prizes to cutouts of Georgetown officials to congratulate them for failing to live up to the university’s Jesuit mission. On the eve of the event, [graduate student Brian] McDonnell said, Georgetown folded. “It was at this point that the university e-mailed us and said, ‘Don’t do this. We’ll talk next week about an election agreement.’” And, overseen by an independent arbitrator, the union was recognized, and on May 1, signed a contract.
How appropriate. May Day is celebrated as International Workers’ Day by socialist movements all over the world. It was appropriated by the Catholic Church as the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. Maybe some of the Jesuits are entitled to their rose-colored glasses.