STRANGERS IN A FOREIGN LAND... FATHER GEORGE SCHULTZE, SJ / MICHAEL WESTFALL INTERVIEW

THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE WORKER ^ | 02-01-2007 | MICHAEL WESTFALL

[carolgr]

FATHER SCHULTZE: I became personally interested in Latino labor issues because my mother is a Latina. Her maiden name was Grijalva and she was born in Mimbres, New Mexico. The Catholic Church and the U.S. labor movement remain allies with regard to many work related issues; for example, just wages, adequate benefits, good working conditions, and the right to collective bargaining. As labor leaders and their staff people move further to the left on culture issues, I predict this relationship will become further strained. I often don’t feel comfortable at academic meetings that discuss labor in the United States because I hear views that are radically different from many union members and my own. The Catholic Church sees a consistent ethic of life that includes our individual decisions e.g., sexual morality and our communal decisions e.g., just war. A slippery slope exists in labor’s wrongheaded acceptance of attempts to redefine marriage and the failure to understand the importance of respecting human life. If we continue to disregard the unborn, we will find greater acceptance of euthanasia. Not only will health care workers (who are often union members) benefit from a culture that respects life; it is the right thing to do. Unionists aren’t speaking out because they kowtow to those who in recent generations have set the cultural agenda, normally the media and academics. Union leaders also find political correctness politically expedient. Isn’t this how Satan works? Union members need to express their opposition to cultural radicalism through all the internal union channels available to them. During the early 1990s, the international president of the plumber’s union wrote an article in a national Catholic magazine that explained his opposition to abortion and why he could not vote for candidate Bill Clinton.

[sageb1]

If the labor unions go any farther left, will Fr. Schultze finally see the light? I don't care what the unions do, but the Church has moved so far to the left that I have a difficult time looking my priest in the eye. The affiliation the Church has with the Democrat party is becoming obscene.

[Last Dakotan]

As I explain in my book, the Catholic Church continues to support the right of all workers to organize, and bishops, priests and religious have taken active roles in supporting this fundamental human right.

If justice is to be served, the Church must be equally vocal in supporting a right not to organize.