On Labor Day, I worked.

Breakfast reading brought inspiration through fabulous writing by Patricia Williams in The Nation. In “The Color of Contagion” she ties diverse topics like medical education and the history of discrimination to the coronavirus and its disparate impact on minorities in the United States. A sample: “Americans are not raised to believe in the entanglements of a common fate. The very notion of public health has been undermined by ingrained brands of individualism so radical that even contagious disease is officially regulated by the vocabulary of ‘choice,’ ‘freedom,’ and ‘personal responsibility.’”

I chose this particular quotation to accompany what most impressed me in my post weight-training reading in NCR Online on Labor Day. We as Catholics are “raised to believe in the entanglements of a common fate.” One way we have acted that belief out is through the labor movement, experiencing a mini-resurgence in this year of Black Lives Matter and pandemic. We know how much we depend on others and others depend on us.

Michael Sean Winters writes around the word “Solidarity” and recalls an AFL-CIO demonstration against Reaganism in 1981 in DC, which I also attended. He lands in a similar place to Williams: “The fables of rugged individualism that condition so much of the culture’s core beliefs, combined with the dominance of neoliberal economic ideas and globalization have brought us to where we are: incapable of mounting an effective defense against a pandemic.” His attempting to convince libertarian entrepreneur friends of the necessity of progressive taxation reminds me of arguing that if this country had supported Amtrak et al. proportionately to its support of highways, we would have a more viable public transit system serving many more people.

If I had spent a little less time clearing old emails and videos, another Labor Day luxury, I would have been able to attend the first virtual Labor Day Mass held by the Catholic Labor Network. Lexington Bishop John Stowe, already a Black Lives Matter hero to me, was celebrant. He spoke on Catholic Social Justice teaching on labor. Maybe CLN will post the recording; I think that counts, these days. Meanwhile, read the website and check out CLN’s Gaudium et Spes Labor Report 2020: 600+ Catholic Institutions with Unions, especially if you are so employed. NCR has a brief summary.

After lunch I sit down to write and who is in my Inbox but Zachary Johnson of CTA, writing about labor history, with a church focus, of course. He gets right to the point: “Most of the labor that created and sustains the Catholic Church was and remains unpaid and exploited.” First, slavery. Last, exemption from labor laws, which I recently addressed here, July 11 and 18. In the middle, women:

“Even though it is widely acknowledged that orders of women religious founded most of the Catholic schools and hospitals around the country, the wages of the women who worked in these institutions were paltry, while most of the value of their labor was extracted by the male clerics who controlled the Church. It is still true in many parishes that women run the church while the priest functions as a figurehead with the authority to administer sacraments.”

Johnson is critical of the church’s role in capitalism and its feudal structure, which we know all too well as we try to change it. Someone else who is critical of both and really has the power to change at least part of it? Pope Francis. NCR covers his recent talk: “Economics should be an expression of ‘care and concern that refuses to sacrifice human dignity to the idols of finance, that does not give rise to violence and inequality and that uses financial resources not to dominate but to serve,’ he said. ‘Genuine profit comes from treasures accessible to all.’” Ponder that for a while.

Catholic News Service reports that October 3 Francis is going to publish an encyclical on labor. Guess what it’s called? “Fratelli Tutti” I nearly choked, but the English translation is “Brothers and Sisters All,” and the Latin is from St. Francis himself, so I can breathe again. We will be watching the news from Assisi.

Speaking of Sisters, my final article from today’s NCR is about a hometown hero, Mercy Sister Mary Scullion. The editors probably don’t realize the irony of featuring this fearless advocate for the homeless a few days before the City of Philadelphia clears three encampments that have provided shelter for more than a hundred this summer. This action is inevitable, and I am sure she is suffering, as most of us are who are committed to Catholic Social Justice teaching. But let not this coincidence take away from her remarkable success: more than 900 units and varied programs with 95% of those served finding permanent housing. “”In the Project HOME community, we’ve always understood that homelessness is the canary in the mine. It’s the prophetic call to all of us that there’s something radically wrong in our society if anybody is living on our streets.”

Then I went outside to read and wait for dinner. I hope Labor Day is not so far from your thoughts that all this feels irrelevant. I don’t know what news will break this week; I just know we need to keep standing in solidarity with pandemic victims, workers, women, the homeless, and everyone who is hurt by the individualism in America.