In mid-1960 bishops of midwest states (72 bishops from 44 dioceses) issued a pastoral, "Strangers and Guests," after two years of consultation.(10) Against the framework of the Judeo-Christian tradition of "stewardship," the bishops discussed family farms, technology, conservation, pollution, strip mining, energy, and the rights of farmworkers and the Native Americans.
Among the many sources of suffering for the farm-family has been the increasing "vertical integration" of the agricultural sector of the U.S. economy. That is, a single large corporation many own the land or control much of the entire farm-to-market process. Some corporations may only sell feed, chemicals, and tractors; provide trucks or railroad cars for shipping; own canneries, packing houses or supermarkets. Usually, the farmers are bound by contracts designed to fulfill profit-maximization goals of agribusiness or other national or transnational corporations. Too often "farmers assume most of the risks and corporate investors take most of the profits."
In addition to farm-families and Native Americans, the pastoral singled out another sufferer--migrant workers. Often members of already disadvantaged racial or ethnic minorities, these itinerant farm workers work long and arduous hours,
. . . are poorly paid, ill clothed, under-nourished, condemned to live in substandard housing and denied bargaining power.
Often family farmers are squeezed between just demands of migrants and unjust terms of corporate contracts. Despite forming the most vital productive group in society, family-farmers and migrant workers receive treatment which is an affront to Christians aware of Pauls' I Timothy, 5:18,
The scripture says, "You shall not put a muzzle on an ox when he is threshing the grain" and also "The worker deserves his wages."
In late 1980, Minnesota bishops issued a draft of a pastoral on the rights of Catholic school employees.(11) While the omission of any reference to collective bargaining was very striking, the statement declared that dioceses,
. . . must unequivocally recognize the right of our employees to be part of the decision-making process [and] that teachers have a natural right to organize and elect or appoint leadership to represent them.
In light of developments in one school in the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, many were wary that such an omission might leave schools to use "participatory management" schemes in order to block teachers who desired to form a union.
In early 1980, Archbishop William O. Brady of St. Paul-Minneapolis spoke at the St. Joseph Guild's dinner-meeting in the Commodore Hotel.(12) A nearby Wilson Meat-Packing Company plant was closed because of a strike after Governor Orville Freeman had brought in the National Guard. The archbishop opposed the company's policy of hiring strike replacement workers. Aware of bitterness between employees and employers, Brady said, "I am not convinced that anyone skilled in distributive justice in terms of today's circumstances would agree with Wilson in its positions."
Also in early 1960, Archbishop Henry J. O'Brien of Hartford issued a pastoral in observance of "Social Action Sunday" in his archdiocese. He said that the root of social and economic troubles was "cold indifference" to dangers and warnings uttered by popes in calling for heroic efforts in a positive apostolate.(13) The deep and shaking changes and problems of the day, said O'Brien, "must be resolves not by expedient remedies but by decisions which respect the dignity of all God's creatures."
At the same time, the Administrator of the diocese of Norwich, Connecticut, Monsignor John J. Reilly, also issued a pastoral. Reilly noted two widely-held but erroneous opinions, "capital and labor are enemies" and "the church sides with labor." Stressing that the church is "on the side of justice" and that "only an idiot would defend warfare between capital and labor," Reilly urged both parties to "clasp hands in friendship" and "from time to time examine their consciences."
In early 1960, Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston accepted St. Peter's College "Rerum Novarum" award in Jersey City for outstanding work in the interests of industrial peace.(14) During his speech Cushing said a national labor-management conference "would be more than worth the effort [even if it were only to] . . . prepare the way or set the stage for continuing working-sessions in specific industries."
Cushing thought that a new era of socially conscious collective bargaining would be well underway, if America's 50 largest corporations and 20 largest international unions could agree on "fundamental ethical principles for guiding wage and prices decisions." He saw such a move as a significant step in the direction of the "industry council plan to which the social encyclicals attach so much importance."
Additionally, Cushing called for "a modicum of common sense and Christian charity" on the part of labor leaders and employers and a reasonable measure of patience on the part of the government, the press and the general public. Such, Cushing thought, would bring about an atmosphere of improved labor-management collective bargaining beneficial to the national welfare.
Finally, Cushing praised joint-committees studying the mutual problems of several companies and labor unions as "hopeful signs." More than any improved techniques, he valued the dispositions of charity and justice. The former "unites human hearts" and the latter "can remove the causes of conflict." While charity cannot substitute for justice or technical improvement,
It is the only force capable of persuading labor and management to cooperate with one another on a more sustained basis . . . and--even more important than that--to subordinate their legitimate, but partial and parochial interests to the over-riding demands for the common good.
In March 1960, Bishop Walter Foery of Syracuse was commended for his plea for a quick settlement of a United Steelworkers' strike against two Carrier Company plants in the Syracuse area.(15) Prior to the bishop's plea, some 3,000 hourly paid wages struck because of the company call for overtime in its normally busy season, suspension of the local union's president, and other bargaining issues. The union interpreted the call for overtime as an attempt to build up an inventory as future strike insurance. Two days of violence erupted more near the end of the month. The company re-opened the plants but refused to re-instate the president of the union local. Even though 2,700 workers returned to work, the flurry of picket violence increased as strike replacement workers were hired.
Foery's plea appeared in the Syracuse diocesan newspaper, Catholic Sun. In addition to predicting that prolongation of the strike would be diastrous to the good name and the economy of Syracuse, Foery indicated the impossibility of his being indifferent to the strike, as "a citizen and religious leader." While he had prayed and hoped that initially the strike could have been settled justly and honorably, Foery pleaded that "the confusion and lack of prudent consideration of the issues," caused by the delay, be replaced by "an attitude of mutual cooperation which sets aside suspicion and unwarranted accusation and builds up respect and good will for all concerned."
The plea was endorsed by the Syracuse Post-Standard. Representatives of both labor and management did likewise. Said Joseph P. Molony, district director USWA, "Having heard Bishop Foery's plea, we shall do all in our power to make an honorable agreement." Said Cloud Wampler, chair of the Carrier board, "My management associates and I have the highest respect for Bishop Foery and we subscribe whole-heartedly to the broad philosophy contained in his statement."
Later in 1960, Bishop John Cody of Kansas City, Mo., commented on a strike, which delayed for some months a $2 million school-church building program in the diocese.(16) Admitting that a strike can be both lawful and moral, Cody added, that labor has no right to strike indiscriminately and that the responsibility for preventing strikes does not rest on labor alone. A strike, continued Cody,
. . . may be made necessary by the refusal of employers to give heed to just or reasonable demands of the workers. For, each party and person concerned, there exists a serious moral obligation to be guide not only by personal advantage but by a rightly formed conscience.
Cody called for the promotion and support of "industry councils and schools of labor-management relations." Urging a true Christian spirit of charity, Cody concluded, "Employers and employees alike, to say nothing of the general public, will suffer as long as the spirit of selfishness prevails in the negotiations chambers."
Also in late 1960, Archbishop Robert Lucey of San Antonio declared the "constitutional right" of school teachers to join unions.(17) His statement was a reaction to rumors that school board members refused contracts to teachers who belonged to the American Federation of Teachers. Aware that teachers could be subjected to injustice of school boards without too much difficulty, Lucey added,
A teacher's tenure of office, confirmed by a written contract, is reasonably secure for one year. This is a fragile species of security. What protection does a public school teacher enjoy against the whims of a capricious school board. . . .
Human nature being what it is, our teachers should have job security to protect them from harassments. . . . To make them subject to dismissal every summer is a poor way to show the high esteem in which we hold them. Let's give our teachers security. They deserve it.
In late 1960 also, Bishop Joseph Marling, C.SS.R. of Jefferson City, MO and president of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, addressed its annual convention.(18) His talk focused on the negative impact of industrialization on farmers. "At the heart of the farm problem lies the injustice that farmers suffer when forced to sell at a level below their actual cost of production." Solutions suggested by the bishop included introducing new jobs to rural areas and stemming the tide of corporate farming.
On Labor Day, September 7, 1959, Bishop John Wright of Pittsburgh ascribed words from the eighteenth chapter of the Book of Proverbs to "the essential spirit and the reasons for the substantial progress of the labor movement in the U.S".(19) The text read, "When brother helps brother, theirs is the strength of a fortress." He contrasted "fraternity" and "brotherhood" in the U.S. labor movement, as part of a social evolution, with the revolutionary "class-war hatred" in the labor movement elsewhere in the world. He viewed the U.S. labor movement as a logical development from the,
. . . spiritual idealism of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Revelation, as these have flourished under the institutions and traditions of American democracy.
Wright continued by saying that U.S. priests join in Labor Day celebrations because the spirit of the labor movement is quite consistent with that "exemplified and taught by the Church." Furthermore, occasional tensions or disputes between labor and management were not to be viewed as struggles between the "privileged" and the "disenfranchised" or between "haves" and "have-nots". Instead,
. . . they are differences between two broad groupings of equally loyal Americans . . . which the law of the land seeks equally to protect and equally to discipline, intentionally favoring neither and, when necessary, moderating or encouraging both.
Sometimes both management and labor must be protected, for example by anti-trust legislation, from any trend or abuses of the concentration of power "in the hands of unrepresentative profiteers." Whatever the debates or controversies, many the result of social progress, they have enabled U.S. labor to be strong and disposed to be generous "when treated as an equal partner, in working loyally and fraternally with management to promote the common good."
One could say the U.S. labor movement is "liberal" or "progressive" in the area of social problems, but "conservative" in its rank and file's eagerness to conserve the political, educational, moral and religious heritage of the nation "at its fairest." Labor has also been eager to share that heritage "with the less privileged in the world-wide human community." Examples would include participation in war relief, international understanding, building world peace and more liberal immigration laws. Furthermore, there are more professors, businessmen, scientists and publicists than representatives of the U.S. labor movement, who play hosts to Communists envoys or visitors.
Finally, Wright lauded the contributions of Cardinal Gibbons and the pastorals and presences of leaders like Cardinal Cushing of Boston, while understandingly but firmly rejecting the role of "the priest-workers" in Europe. The difference was one of means and not goals. Wright saw religion and patriotism, far from being the "opium and illusion of American workers," as the inspiration of their dynamic fraternity and the sources of their dominant characteristics.
In early 1961, there was a dinner in Buffalo marking the 70th anniversary of Rerum Novarum.(20) One speaker, Leo Smith, Bishop of Buffalo, asserted that with any technological improvements, human rights are far more important than any machine invented to improve production. The work ". . . must not fall into that black period when the laborer was considered merely a tool and the machine considered to be better than he."
Another speaker, Monsignor Stanley Kulpinski, Diocesan Labor College Director, underlined the achievements since Rerum Novarum. Even though some of Leo XIII's contemporaries thought he was crazy and some influential Catholic employers tried to stop priests from reading the encyclical from the pulpit, Rerum Novarum had at least two significant impacts.
One of them is the decline of right-wing socialism. The other is the emergence of economies in France, Italy and particularly in Germany that have proved that private enterprise, regulated in accord with the papal directives, can achieve a prosperity and social equity far beyond the abilities of socialism.
The 1961 Labor Day Statement of Archbishop William Brady of St. Paul deplored the loss of the original meaning of "Labor Day."(21) He called for a conscious effort to restore some pride "in workmanship, so that people who work with their hands will have a high sense of their importance as a vital force in the nation."
Despite sharper competition from the increasingly economic solidarity of Europe, Brady was confident ". . . we can surpass them all by our know-how, our competence, our productivity and our workmanship." Despite deplorable union corruption, he called the U.S. labor movement to return to its crusading spirit. Deploring also labor-management conflict, Brady called both to form "a year-long partnership."
In late summer 1961, Archbishop Jon Dearden of Detroit was the main speaker at the joint meeting of the National Conference of Social Action Committees (NCSAC) and the National Catholic Conference of Interracial Justice (NCCIJ).(22) He warned the audience about the danger of confusing social principles (binding on everyone, everywhere) with their application to and interpretation of certain social situations (dependent upon prudential judgments of people from a variety of backgrounds). The danger is that the identification of the debatable with the undebatable with equal cogency will incline some people "to look upon a substantial part of Christian social doctrine as being only conjectural in its force."
Dearden did not, however, think that such caution ranked him among those who would risk nothing at all. He called for progress as necessary and missteps as sometimes likely. Yet, he concluded,
. . . just as we must not allow people to close their eyes to the social teachings of the Church, neither must we set forth as part of her teaching that which may rather be our own personal application to a very contingent situation.
A late summer 1961 convention of the Texas AFL-CIO, in Galveston, listened to Archbishop Robert Lucey of San Antonio.(23) He began by decrying opposition to social legislation which branded it as "socialism," despite its obvious benefits to the prison inmates, mentally ill, aged, dependent children, homeless, ill-housed and workers hurt by industrial accidents.
Conceding instances of abuse of power by some labor leaders, Lucey mentioned the "generally unfavorable, sometimes violently unfavorable" attitude of powerful individuals and corporations in Texas toward the labor movement. He pierced through the deceitful and phony arguments about the conduct of "so-called racketeers and hoodlums." The real issues were the right of workers to organize, the necessity of such an organization and the value of the same.
If all the working people in Texas were organized so that they received an honest day's wage for an honest day's work, the progress and prosperity of our state would be enormous.
Remarking that migrant workers at the bottom of the social ladder got "precious little consideration in this state," Lucey thought the exploitation almost inevitable. Cited as causes were "the moral weakness of human nature, lack of labor organization and absence of protective legislation."
Early in 1962, the Buffalo Diocesan Labor College's graduation dinner featured two speakers.(24) Auxiliary Bishop, Leo Smith, warned against "playing the old record" of the past, labor-management conflict. He urged the audience to think of the greater challenge--"if we don't help the emerging people, the communists will." The second speaker, Rev. James J. McGinley, S.J., president of Canisus College, urged Catholics to re-read the social encyclicals. It would help them remake their "work-a-day world into a meaningful career".
At the beginning of Lent 1962, Albert Cardinal Meyer of Chicago issued a pastoral letter.(25) Maintaining that, while charity leads one beyond justice, we are not permitted "to pass over justice, nor to neglect the clear moral principle on which justice must be based." It was quite a mystery to him "why some Catholics do not remember that defrauding the poor man of his wages is a sine that cries out to heaven." Failure to fulfill social duties and to be just to one's employees endangers one's soul.
Meyer urged gratitude to God's mercy and credit to efforts to government, management and organized labor which created immense improvement in economic conditions. Nevertheless, Meyer criticized those who complained that Mater et Magistra was "trivial and irrelevant," because it dealt with economic problems which they claimed no longer existed in the unparalleled prosperity of the U.S. In his mind,
. . . they are blind who do not see that inspite of all technological and political advances, there are still very many who are in very serious need of help.
The greatest problems to be faced in Chicago were those of minority groups, "who suffer from prejudice and from severe economic obstacles to suitable employment and decent housing".
The Labor Day celebration in the Miami diocese featured many speakers during Mass, dinner and workshops.(26) At the dinner, Bishop Coleman Carroll explained the legitimacy of the diocese providing the facilities for labor and management to gather to discuss in a friendly way their problems. Because "moral problems are involved it is within the province of the Church to be helpful and . . . of a bishop to assist in these matters." Carroll was convinced the results would of necessity by beneficial. For, a day ". . . such as this can enlighten the minds of both labor and management."
In late 1962, Archbishop Lucey, of San Antonio and Chair of the U.S. Bishops' Committee for the Spanish-Speaking, issued a statement criticized the U.S. "bracero" program as the "poisonous fallout" of injustice.(27) In a keynote address to the 11th conference for the Spanish-speaking in Milwaukee, he expressed the shock and disillusionment of millions of Americans with the large-scale importation of Mexican nationals to work in U.S. agriculture. Some of its fallout included unemployment among U.S. farmworkers, continuance of low wages, enlargement of the migrant stream and adverse conditions of the braceros themselves. Lucey pointed out the sources of the program.
Growers in several states have immense political power. . . . Woe to the legislator who entertains the quaint notion that growers should pay honest wages. That way lies political death.
Referring to the bracero program as a "ghastly international racket," Lucey predicted that the need for good relations with Latin America and growing public awareness would bring about its end.
A few weeks later, Lucey again criticized the "bracero" program as "a national disgrace," during an address to the Houston Chapter of the American Jewish Committee.(28) On that occasion, Lucey also received the first Max Nathan award, named in honor of the founder of the chapter and a former leading citizen of the Jewish community of Houston. Remarking that the award dramatized the problem of migrant labor in the U.S., Lucey said,
It points an accusing finger at the iniquities of that problem, at the injustices which are a blot on our escutcheon, at a situation which I have described publicly as our badge of infamy, a ghastly international racket.
He told his audience that freedom is indivisible, that the U.S. is weakened when one large segment of its economy practices tyranny and that the very idea of freedom and justice is damaged when the rights of minorities are violated. While some farmers and groups are neither dishonest nor blameworthy, "the system itself" has gone wrong. He was confident that public opinion would condemn" the iniquities which had hurt the good name of the U.S. around the world and particularly in Latin America. Citing the dangers of atheistic communism and the need for Americans of all faiths to be united and face up to that threat, Lucey concluded.
Lip service to human rights no longer has value. The 20th century has caught up with those unworthy stewards who publicly proclaim liberty and justice for all, but privately try to massacre both liberty and justice for minority groups.
In late 1962, Bishop Wright of Pittsburgh spoke to the NCSAC convention.(29) Conceding that neither automation is evil nor that its directors are necessarily enemies of Christian morality or democratic society, Wright deplored the byproducts of automation. Once thriving towns turned into ghost towns and once busy streets turned into lines of people stoically waiting for surplus food handouts, Wright placed heavy responsibility on the economic system.
. . . the economic order which profits from automation must make provisions for the person impeded in his pursuit of salvation by any system which downgrades the person and upgrades the machine.
Wright called for a "new place" for the victims of automation and a "new way" for continuance of the central emphasis on the person and the personal values which the Judaeo-Christian tradition and "the pretensions of democracy" demand. With pointed reference to unemployment due to automation of elevators and communications machinery, Wright concluded. In all moral theology, social planning and politics central is the human person, so much so that,
. . . the dynamic of social action is in keeping clear that while the means in a social order involve institutions, movements and programs, the end is always personal, the person of the one who serves and the person of the one served.
In very late 1962, Auxiliary Bishop Henry Clinch of Monterey-Fresno addressed the regional convention of the Catholic Press Association.(30) His theme was the necessity of the Catholic press to search its structures and effect its renewal within the church.
The church might earn rich dividends by seeking out and investing in class and productive talent. . . . We might do well to employ the very best lay minds and let the qualified laymen-managers worry about salaries.
Archbishop Henry O'Brien, in a 1962 "Social Action Sunday" statement stressed that one of the most urgent obligations of the Catholic laity was to bring the "constructive principles" of the church's social teaching into "the office, the shop, the union, the professional and trade association."(31) He complained too many Catholics "are satisfied with a ghetto kind of existence." Being very devout, saying the rosary daily, and receiving the sacraments frequently, but living,
. . . their lives completely unaware that God has given them a role to play in helping to shape the world in which they live to the standards of Christ's teaching.
O'Brien insisted more than personal sanctification and saying prayers, while being indifferent to the social problems of the day, is demanded of lay Catholics. He concluded by emphasizing that the task of bringing the church's teaching to social problems is a job for the laity. "It is he, not the priest, who has competence here."
In late 1962, Bishop John Wright of Pittsburgh addressed the national convention of the Albertus Magnus Guild, an organization of Catholics specializing in the natural sciences.(32) He warned the scientists not to forfeit anything in the world of faith, while they seek to use the best of science. He stressed the alternatives are two forms of materialism--the dialectical materialism of Marx and the Western "biological and technized" materialism. Any civilization dominated by one or the other, he insisted, was bound to prove fatal to humane concepts of spiritual freedom.
Marxist teaching will prove fatal by explicit intention; the automation mentality as a result of the perilous temptations implicit--not in the machinery as such--but in the spirit that the sheer bewitchery of machinery begets.
Wright than proceeded to explain each alternative. Even in the choice of personnel, the use of calculators can be wrong and conclusions can omit essential and human elements. Theoretically, the machine might choose the ideal individual but neglect personality traits or unexpected complications of private life. The impossibility of incorporating the human factor in calculations reveals some significant similarities between the automation mentality and the philosophy of dialectical materialism.
Dialectical materialism is based on the theory that nothing exists which is not capable of demonstrable proof. That means the exclusion of all spiritual values and religious teachings. It dismisses the spiritual concepts of the nature, and consequently, the importance of the person, and specifically--the existence of free will. In dialectical materialism the fate of the individual is determined by dogmatic, theoretical considerations.
In a mechanistic society, the fate of the individual is determined by the theories of programming.
Another warning about automation was given in early 1963 by Bishop Leo Smith, during a dinner celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the Buffalo Diocesan Labor College.(33) Smith reminded the audience that one of the reasons for and major agenda items of the Second Vatican Council was the church's concern over the world's technological advances. Such advances tend to place the essential dignity of the person into the background. Calling upon management and labor to recognize the need for absolute standards of truth in business, Smith concluded,
There is a danger to religion that methods of technology may make truth unimportant. It is up to not only the church but everyone interested in humanity to devote some thought to the problem. The longer we live in a technological world, the more we realize the limits of human knowledge.
In early 1964, as the Michigan Catholic Conference planned a job training project. Under a $60,000 contract from the U.S. Labor Department's Office of Manpower Automation and training, the bishop of Grand Rapids, Allen Babcock, expressed the hopes and commitment of the Michigan Catholic bishops, represented by the conference, of which he was the president.(34) We hope to demonstrate that people who have never received a proper education can be retrained for some useful employment.
The program to train 150 persons with less than an eighth-grade education, was to be coordinated with the English Language Center of Michigan State University, offering a literacy training program, and the Lansing Board of Education, offering vocational training instruction. The potential workers were to be trained for jobs as machine operators, mechanic helpers and custodians.
Babock noted that many of the trainees had been on welfare most of their lives. He emphasized that if,
. . . we can help this fellow get a job which pays twice as much as he is getting from welfare, then the cost of training will pay for itself. But more important than the economic benefits of the program, we hope to restore the human dignity as well as give him a marketable skill.
On October 17, 1964 Archbishop Paul Hallinan of Atlanta wrote the first of two articles on the corporal works of mercy of Ave Maria magazine.(35) The article focused on the meaning of work and labor in the technological revolution.
Genesis portrayed humans as "homo faber" before the Fall and only after the Fall as "homo peccator." Although a painful and penitential aspect of work was introduced, work was not incompatible with bliss. However, history gave evidence otherwise, said Hallinan,
. . . the odious phrase "servile work" has persisted in Christian times to remind us that work and servitude are linked. The best men, the "aristoi," are the "have"; their specialty is leisure which . . . can produce philosophers or fools. The others are the lesser breed, the subhumans, the "have-nots"; their specialty is work. This is the Platonic dreams of a predestined society, whether the dreamers are Greek or later Christians.
Despite Christ's message and mission, the division survived the Middle Ages, even in the prayers composed for the poor by the nobility of the times, "Bless the squire and his close relations. And keep us all in our proper stations." Even though there were brilliant islands of learning and culture in those centuries, none should overlook "the dull and tedious existence of the countless surrounding majority of their contemporaries." Hallinan said it would take all the romanticism of King arthur's court "to portray the Middle Ages as a truly Christian society or the age of enlightenment as a time of justice".
Furthermore, "this romance of the past" and "the artificial glory" was sadly transferred to the 19th century industrialist and the sad misery simply spread over a larger proletariat. Hallinan stated that the damage done to church social teaching was not by Communists and Socialists, who ignored or ridiculed it, but by industrialists. Some were disturbed or slow of heart or suspicious or gravely offended, as noted sadly in Pius XI's Divini Redemptoris, 1937.
Hallinan noted the contributions of Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore in preventing a Vatican condemnation of the Knights of Labor and influencing Leo XIII. Yet, despite his efforts--as well as those of Archbishop Ireland, Bishops Keane, Gilmour, and Spalding, and priests like Peter Dietz and John A. Ryan--the image of labor did not improve. Even worker violence and complex issues within the church did not explain for Hallinan,
. . . the ill-conceived efforts of some industrialists and churchmen to prevent badly needed child-labor legislation in the early part of the century nor . . . the widespread sympathy for state anti-union laws (ironically labeled "Right to Work" legislation) of our times.
Hallinan likened the encyclicals to austere saints for many Christians--for admiration but not for imitation. Like so many Americans, Catholics "love the underdog but see themselves best in the success story." Fourth of July may value freedom, Thanksgiving gratitude, Christmas gifts and Easter new clothes, thought Hallinan.
Only on Labor Day are we embarrassed. Work, unlike freedom and new clothes, is precisely what so many are all eager to get away from.
In discussing labor in the technological revolution, Hallinan asserted that labor changes in the past were both a normal development of human skill and a cause of social unrest. Steam engines and textile machinery of the 18th century, electrical power in the 19th century, and refinements in modern automobiles and airplane--each produced its own revolution, but only paralleled human muscles. Electronics drew inspiration from the human neuro-muscular system in the early computers and from human psyche for feedback control, digital binary number computers and tape-controlled machinery. These later developments, unlike the simple automation that produced bread and cigarettes, handle with selective memory (not unlike in humans) and with incredible speed payrolls, inventories, production control and sales forecasts.
With this background, Hallinan asks, "Are the machines taking over?" Some sort of an answer but no complete relief to the fear lurking in the question was provided by a Dr. Arthur L. Samuel of IBM,
Computers are giant morons, not giant minds . . . man as the originator will always be on top . . . men vary in their intellectual capabilities, and the machine may and undoubtedly will surpass some men.
Hallinan made explicit the fear or reality of unemployment among the unskilled and semi-skilled workers. Their misery and discontent will demand the best efforts of management, unions and government in the years ahead. Indeed, Hallinan characterized the heart of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty as "a war on disorder and tension."
Yet, Hallinan's focus was not the resultant unemployment but the automated work itself. He noted studies of industrial workers in 1956 and of professional nurses in 1959 on "job-satisfaction." Three-fourths of the workers did not regard their job as a "central life interests," while four-fifths of the nurses did. One would be disheartened to think a worker's lathe as the most important item on the horizon, but it would be diastrous to learn a patient's life was only on the periphery of a nurse's concern. Reference was made to comments of Tom Dooley about one of the strongest human instincts--to confer upon a thing some quality that comes from the self--to paint, to write, to change, to argue, to build, to do it yourself. The urgent pull of such an instinct was underlined by Hallinan by the comment of an automobile worker in a newly automated plant,
I don't like the lack of feeling responsible for your work. The feeling that you're really turning out more work, but knowing that it's not yours really, and as good as you could make it if you had control of the machine like before.
Hallinan also referred to a study of 20 automated offices. It revealed, besides layoffs and transfers with lower pay, a serious "deterioration" in the surviving routine jobs and middle management positions.
Hallinan stressed that technology forced a look at the elusive phenomenon of "impersonality." Undifferentiated homes, lonely crowds, anonymous workplace, and impersonal machines--a gloomy picture and challenge to industry and labor to restore the vision of humanity by encouraging the growth of personality. Eric Gill's paradox was noted--the artist is not a special kind of artist. The automated atmosphere left little room, according to Hallinan, for the person, let alone the artist. As homo faber the person as artist must meet the demands of art--"expression, a sense of creativity, and the risk a man takes when he acts in his own special way."
A critic, John P. Sisk, was cited as revealing the close tie between the scientist and business leader, zeal for anonymity even in writing technical articles, and impression that things "were done" but no one "did" them. Automobile bodies and payroll checks are "processed," not by individual worker, but by the "anonymous impersonal team."
Dr. Samuel was cited again to stress that the chief frontier of automation, "artificial intelligence," is "neither a myth nor a threat to man." While Hallinan agreed that there is no myth in what has arrived, there may be the threats, not of enslavement, but of unemployment and impersonalization.
For the Christian, Hallinan approached all automation with something less that an easy, buoyant enthusiasm. Not likely to legislate for or against, to decide upon installation, nor to destroy, moderns must learn to live with machines. Increased technological capacity is good in itself, because of its relationship to human creativity and divine omnipotence. As Gustave Weigel phrased it--neither evolution nor industrial structure is unworthy of humans. What is unworthy of humans is the panic at the threat of change and the weakened will to search out the personal value of work. Hallinan was convinced it was still true, just as it was when textile machines were smashed. Namely, "automation was equated with anxiety, fear and despair."
For Hallinan, the new conditions of work allow systems analysts ,as well as the unskilled , a look at the role of work in life--at life itself.
Does he understand work is a means to an end . . . as Bishop John L. Spalding wrote ". . . man is worth not what his work is worth, but what his leisure is worth?" Are the new tools really a "means of salvation as the secular optimists claim, or only one phase of creation? In Weigel's terms: "The expansion of technological prowess, since it is a manifestation of God's creation, is like all of God's creation--good. But it is not salvific. Of it neither hinders salvation, nor does it hasten."
A second article on the corporal works of mercy by Archbishop Paul Hallinan of Atlanta appeared on October 24, 1964 in the Ave Maria magazine.(36) The original question of the first article, "What has become of the works of mercy?" was repeated. An answer was posed in three steps: examine the work itself, relate it to one's needs, re-examine one's life. Such steps were contained in a 1957 pastoral of the Archbishop of Milan, later Pope Paul VI, "There can be in work a religious dignity, redemptive value, vocation."
Dismissing a romantic notion of work, Hallinan subscribed to the notion of the founder of the St. Vincent de Paul Society, Frederick Ozanam. The nobility of work exists in a world which is "the workshop of Providence" and each one's function is the particular task assigned to us. The words of the theologian Norris Clarke describe the task of workers in the workshop of Providence,
He must strive to remake or transform creatively by his own God-given powers, the world that his Father has made out of nothing, and given him for his workshop.
For Hallinan, such would be ridiculous if humans were mere clods. However, two "very unclod-like gifts"--intelligence and will--enable humans to rise to a special dignity. "He does not dare God in his craft, nor does he fool the public with proud self-display. Work would gain no nobility from either attempt."
Hallinan then developed ideas on the noble essence of work from the words of two priests. One was Archbishop Montini, later Paul VI. In a speech at a machine-tool factory in Milan, he spoke of the workers as,
. . . the first-born sons of the world of work, because you give your brothers the tools . . . Does the man who seeks to produce a particular form or function know that he has before him, almost springing forth from his hands . . . a mirror/ Yes, a mirror made by him from a ray of divine perfection. Does he know that when he works he is playing? . . . We will pray for them [fellow workers] and tell them, "brother, come with me if you have lost your way." We do not want a selfish class struggle. Christ is with us all.
The other priest, Henri Perrin, a worker-priest, until the experiment was ended in 1954 by Rome, began his factory days as a prison worker and secret chaplain in Germany in 1943. With the mind of a poet, Perrin describe factory machines.
It's like a background accompaniment, over which one's mind can weave what it likes. Sometimes I feel lost in wonder before the strength of the machines . . . this enormous strength, gentle and brutal, so docile to those who know how to handle it, that thumps rends, penetrates, bores, glazes smoothes, polishes.
Perrin wrote in his journal of his "universe of workers,"
Whoever they are they have their own personal gestures at times: a glance, a movement . . . a way of leaning over a machine, of feeling and tool edge, of taking a piece of bread, of telling me about their kinds--those little refinements that come near to being prayer. They have no ideal of how much I love them.
Without the nobility of holiness, for Hallinan, work is always a penalty or curse. He insists holiness flows, not from tools or material, but from fellow workers. Work is ennobled and blessed, opportunity for works of mercy is heightened by positive attitudes and kindness toward fellow workers. Without the slightest hint of patronizing, they are hungry to be fed and needy to be helped. Although work is a participation in the divine creativity, with a divine dimension and title to nobility, it is "more accurate to speak of work helping to make saints of us. A saint is a human being in whom God has His way."
Hallinan quoted Father Bruno in relating work to sanctity. Besides introducing discipline which everyone needs, work is "the best and safest mortification." Father Louis Bouyer's ideas were mentioned, concerning the inappropriateness of a liturgical "Feast of Labor," as if "human effort as such and in itself is redemptive." Most fitting would be a special votive Mass, with a solemn blessing for workers and their labors, because the redemptive validity of labor depends entirely on Christ. Hallinan continued by insisting on maintaining a balance between the nobility and the inadequacy of work, recalling Father Weigel's caution that technology and all work is good but not salvific, can assist but not accomplish salvation.
A right view of one's vocation can convey the goodness and insufficiency of work, said Hallinan. In modern life, "vocation" should be a synthesis of the work, families, community, religious and leisure dimensions of one's life. Rather than leaving one compartmentalized, a sense of vocation gives such dimensions purpose and direction. Yet, Hallinan seeks more than the arrogance of a "human without humility." He stresses the necessity of a "call" and a "caller," which Cardinal Newman related closely.
God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, puts it in the body, one soul, puts it in the body, one by one for a purpose . . . . He has an end for each of us; we are equal in His sight, and we are placed in our different ranks and stations not to get what we can out of them for ourselves, but to labor in them for Him . . . Whatever man's rank in life may be, does he in it perform the work God has given him to do?"
For Hallinan, failure to answer Newman's question, will allow little order and harmony in such a life, make labor dull and punishing but not noble an aid to salvation. Using a phrase of 20th century popes "consecration of the world," according to one's abilities, Hallinan poses some questions about a variety of jobs.
Can this be done with an automated drill press as well as a hammer and saw? With molecules and test tubes as well as human patients? Is the man on top of the automative gravedigger, the digger, the lady who is quality-checking the processed foods, the researcher in his laboratory really involved in the works of mercy?
His answer is "no," if one is acting against God's plan, if a person,
. . . hates his work and despises its value . . . exalts labor to the height of the redemptive act itself . . . resents or suspects or envies or discriminates against his fellow workers . . . looks upon his working hours as mere existence.
Hallinan concluded by saying that what makes labor a person's job and vocation, both noble in itself and a preparation for salvation is the Christian view of things, humans and God.
Then--and only then--can ordinary assignments to drugery and monotony be lifted to the plane of a work of mercy.