Editorial: Paternalistic Liberalism
     In a speech last summer to the Catholic Health Association, Mercy Sister Doris Gottemoeller, in referring to unions at Catholic hospitals, stated, “we are committed ... to maintaining long-standing relationships of mutual trust between employers and employees without the insertion of an intermediary.”  Sr. Gottemoeller’s talk was generally positive about the need to address the below standard wages and working conditions which afflict workers at Catholic health care and nursing home facilities.  She noted that when workers attempt to organize some administrators’ responses are “tentative and uncertain, perhaps reactionary.”
     In his keynote address to the October NACST Convention/Conference, Reverend Sinclair Oubre referred to the “paternalistic liberalism” which is found in the Church.  It is the attitude taken by some clerics and other Church leaders [and not a small number of 60’s liberals] who identify victims in particular situations, then move to help the victims, without giving the victims a voice in the struggle to overcome their oppression.  Sister Gottemoeller's comment illustrates that attitude.
     Catholic school unions, as well as those at other religiously affiliated institutions, are not third-party intermediaries inserted at the workplace.  The unions are the workers’ voice and vehicle to put into practice the Church’s social teaching and to effect change, to improve the schools and other Catholic institutions.  Unionized Catholic school teachers exemplify the positive aspects of true liberalism - we act together to overcome the below standard working conditions which victimize teachers.
     Administrators at Catholic institutions need to make a seminal change in attitude toward unions.  They need to get rid of the paternalism and allow us to effectively promote the satisfaction of our own needs. We can and we do speak for ourselves - through our unions.

fromthePresident...Challenges [State of the Union Address at the 1999 NACST Convention]
     I have just spent the last two days in Cleveland, working in an Exhibit Booth at the OCEA Convention where I had the opportunity to speak with hundreds of teachers from Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Indiana.  What an incredible difference in attitude I witnessed between the unionized teachers of Cleveland, Columbus and Youngstown and what I call the “one-page people,” teachers with an administrator-written, unilateral contract which is offered in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion and into which they have had no true input.
     When these one-page people learn we are the National Catholic Teachers’ Union, they look more than a little envious.  Many of them tell us, almost in a whisper, that they’ve been told that they arenot allowed to organize.  Their principals tell them this and, sadly, they accept it as true.
     Others ask when we are going to organize them.  We respond as always that NACST is happy to work closely with all teachers who want to achieve recognition of their local organization and to engage in collective bargaining with their employer.  We’re as close as the phone, fax or e-mail.
     All of us in the National Association of Catholic School Teachers had a starting point - for some it was twenty-five or thirty years ago; for others, it is as recent as last year.  It was the quest for justice and dignity, the pursuit of representation so that we could negotiatie for better salaries, benefits and working conditions and it was fueled by the social justice teachings of the Catholic Church.  We must never lose sight of these documents of our Pope and our bishops, documents which affirm us and our vocation as union leaders.
     It is tremendously heartening for all of us here today at the 21st annual NACST Convention/Conference to hear from one another what has been happening over the past year as we negotiated contracts, argued grievances, resolved teachers’ problems and labored daily to keep our local union strong.  We do extremely good work, and it is seldom easy, but, then, no one ever said it would be.
     We come together as the National Association of Catholic School Teachers to celebrate our accomplishments and to draw strength from one another.  And we will leave with a continuing determination to meet any and all challenges which we will face, especially as we reach out to the unorganized, the unrepresented, the unempowered.
     We look ahead to a year of new ventures and adventures for Catholic teacher union leaders, their local unions and the National.
     Let us wish each other good luck and Godspeed.

The National Interfaith Committee for Workplace Justice / Sr. Barbara Pfarr
     When Sister Barbara Pfarr goes to bat for workers’ rights she gets resistance form an unlikely quarter - some fellow nuns.
     Although nuns are a famously sympathetic and sociable group of people, Sister Pfarr hasn’t found it easy to make new friends in the sisterhood since beginning her work here [in Chicago] with the National Interfaith Committee for Workplace Justice.
     That is because her exact mission is to uphold the right to organize and bargain collectively in religious institutions.  And, the most formidable of these institutions are health care systems owned, if not operated, by religious orders of women.
     For her part, Sister Pfarr said she suspects the real resistance will come from religious employers that simply don’t want unions in their institutions.
     She counts numerous nuns in that column.  Increasingly, she hears them say Catholic teaching on the value of unions no longer has relevance to the modern economy.
     There are plenty of poorly paid workers today, especially women and minorities whose causes the nuns often champion, she added.  “And they’re in our institutions,” said Sister Pfarr.

from an article in OurSundayVisitor, September 26, 1999
Visit the National Interfaith Committee for Workplace Justice at www.igc.org/nicwj.

from FatherGreeley - Catholic School Research
     By every imaginable measure Catholic schools are superior [academically] to their public counterparts, even when all appropriate background variables have been taken into account.
     The success of the Catholic schools is strongest among the disadvantaged students.  The contribution of Catholic Schools to disadvantaged students does not vary with race.
     Catholic schools are successful because they make greater academic demands, provide stronger community support, and give more personal attention to students.  [James] Coleman in fact argued that the Catholic schools are indeed the “Common Schools” in that they did for the disadvantaged what the public schools claim to do but in fact fail to do.
     Those who attend Catholic schools are less prejudiced than Catholics who attend public schools and less prejudiced than all public school graduates.  Moreover, they are also more likely to be pro-feminist.  All of these statements are true even when social class and educational achievement are held constant.
     The effect of Catholic education on adult religious behavior has been stronger in the post [Vatican II] years than before.
     I know of no evidence that “religious education” (formerly called CCD) has any independent impact at all on subsequent adult behavior of those who participated in it.
     Funding of Catholic schools is an investment.  The extra contribution to Sunday collections of parents with children in Catholic schools on a national average picks up the cost of such schools and those who attended such schools are likely to be more generous in adult life.  Catholic schools are indeed a capital investment.

from a May 1997 presentation “Catholic School Research at the Crossroads” by Rev. Andrew Greeley - complete text at www.agreeley.com/articles/school.html
 

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September 1999