By Rita McInerney

The social justice committee at Sacred Heart Church in Atlanta reached out and drew 75 people to commemorating 100 years of Catholic social teaching on Oct. 26.

Examined were social questions addressed by popes and bishops’ conferences beginning with Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of Workers) issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891.

Following a tight schedule on a warm Saturday afternoon, participants heard speakers on housing, homelessness, immigrants and refugees, unemployment, health care, global issues of hunger, war and injustice, and racism.

The afternoon concluded with a talk on Catholic social teaching by Archbishop James P. Lyke, OFM. He linked the Church’s rich treasury of Gospel teachings on compassion and justice and the Law of Love embodied in Jesus Christ, the later writings of the great saints and evangelists to the encyclicals of modern popes.

As the conference opened, Glenmary Father John Rausch, speaking on unemployment, said it is the community that gives people basic education, skill levels, work and moral values. Yet the community is often short-changed. Today’s economic system “many times sees the community as one input for production. When that is used up they (the employer) go off to Mexico” where labor is cheaper.

Today there is a “divorce” between company ownership, the stockholders, and those who control it, the managers. Often, in the drive for productivity, the managers “are encouraged to make decisions against the workers and the community.”

Father Rausch told of a worker-owned sewing cooperative he started in Dungannon, W. Va., during 12 years of ministry in Central Appalachia.

Co-op members pledged 10 percent of their profits to community work. “They recognized the community supported us and they wanted to give back,” the priest said.

People should work, Father Rausch added, for their livelihood, for self-fulfillment, to make a contribution to humanity. Work is a positive activity. Unfortunately, “we equate human dignity more in terms of what wealth a person has or how much they’re willing to do. We forget to say that human dignity comes not from what you do or what you process but because you’re a child of God.”

Thomas Reuter also spoke on joblessness. He focussed on the “dehumanizing” labor pool system which denies hope to many caught in its vise. Reuter is director of Samaritan House, a day facility in Atlanta which assists the homeless in finding employment and low-income housing. Samaritan House provides homeless people with showers, clean clothes and Marta tokens for job-hunting.

Labor pools, described by Reuter as “our biggest growth industry,” can deliver anywhere from 10 to 100 men everyday to businesses needing cheap labor for menial, hard and often dangerous work. If day laborers are lucky they take home $22 for eight hours’ work. That’s what they collect after being hired at six dollars per hour. Taxes, rental for showers, and the price of meager lunch are deducted.

People hired by labor pools, Reuter said, “are worth no more than their bodies can do on that particular day.” Since the competition is so fierce among the homeless and unemployed, they have to be at the hiring place by six a.m. to be hired three hours later. They never know what the work will be and they can’t challenge a supervisor about unsafe working conditions. “They would never be sent out again by the labor pool.”

Reuter urged his audience to learn more about labor pools and to be sensitive to whether justice is a concern in their own workplaces. “Do you know what your company policies are?” about workers hired for menial jobs, he asked.

Dr. Sharne Sheehey, medical director of the Mercy Mobile Health Program operated by St. Joseph’s Hospital, spoke on health care. She told her group that the program, begun six years ago, goes to all the large shelters and soup kitchens in Atlanta to care for the homeless. Their medical needs are the same as ours, she told the people crowded into the room. But medical care is not a priority for the homeless. They lack access to it so the diseases or ailments they suffer are often discovered late.

“TB is our main concern now. It’s a major public threat and is not being treated,” she said.

Individuals should get their churches involved in ongoing projects rather than “episodic things,” she urged. “We need people all year round.” She would like to see schools get children involved “early on so that the fear of the homeless doesn’t exist.” She takes two of her young children along when she goes out with the mobile program and they “love it.”

At the high school level, Dr. Sheehey suggested the students develop their own efforts. “It’s more productive to do smaller projects that are ongoing.”

Sister Marie Sullivan, OP, director of Christian Emergency Health Centers, spoke on housing and homelessness. She said the number of women and children seeking shelter at the Moreland Avenue women’s shelter hasn’t been below 100 since Aug. 13.

Capacity at the shelter is 85. While 40 percent of the women are working, most are earning minimum wage and can’t afford housing.

In a telephone interview following the conference, she suggested concerned people who want to do something about homelessness start “with something very small.” This could be keeping informed on what their legislators are doing and making their voices heard on measures with social justice dimensions.

In his talk on Catholic social teaching, the archbishop said Rerum Novarum, written by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, was the first encyclical to spell out the broad principles underlying the rights and obligations of workers, employers and the state.

“Even now, 100 years after it was written, this remarkable document continues to inspire and influence apostles of justice in the marketplace, and proponents of the dignity of the human condition,” he said. “All the popes since Leo have drawn heavily on its profound resources, as well as taking every opportunity to clarify and update its language, so that it may go on being understood, and its relevance to all ages of social growth made manifest.”

Later in his talk, he quoted Pope Leo’s words on the role of the clergy; “Every minister of holy religion must bring to the struggle the full energy of his mind and all his power of endurance…they must strive to secure the good of the people; and above all must earnestly cherish in themselves, and try to arouse in other charity, the mistress and queen of virtues.”

“If ever the clarion call to action were sounded, it is in these words which summon the consciences of all Christian men and women to direct and active involvement,” Archbishop Lyke added.

Archbishop Lyke answered several questions after his talk. The first concerned whether he thought one or two problems of the day “stand above the others.”

“When any one human person suffers, Christ suffers,” he replied. “So it’s very difficult to measure the intensity, the level of Christ’s suffering. …In what instance is Christ the most defenseless, the most powerless, the most voiceless?” he asked. “Then I think you would have some way to begin to respond to the question. I think, for example, it’s very clear that the pre-born child is the most voiceless, defenseless, most powerless. That doesn’t mean that every Catholic should work with the same intensity and energy around that specific issue…When you so dramatically and single-mindedly focus in on one issue, you neglect the Christ in the other persons who are suffering in a different way but nevertheless suffering.”

He quoted Matthew, chapter 25:35-40, “For I was hungry and you gave me food…Christ is there in all of those different persons. So you cannot say that because the pre-born child is the most voiceless and powerless that, therefore, you can ignore visits to those in prison, and those who are ill and the feeding of those who are hungry.”

To a questioner who asked what he thought were the great needs the Church must address, he replied at length.

“On the one hand, people will affirm again and again that the Church is the people, yet when it comes to doing something they will say, “How will the church – meaning the bishops and the institutional dimension respond?”

The Church is you and I. So each Catholic must ask in his or her own conscience, ‘What can I do?’ in collaboration with other Catholics and Christians and other faiths.”

In responding to another questioner who saw a need for “open, clear leadership from the office of archbishop,” he replied that “If you would get The Georgia Bulletin, you would learn my writings have not been little, there have been many instances of addressing social issues since I’ve been here.”

“When the appropriate time comes,” he said, “I will look to each parish to have a social justice committee.” The impact would be substantial, he said, “if you would multiply by 84 parishes and missions what Sacred Heart is doing.”

We only do these things “by motivation, inspiration and persuasion,” he said, “and each individual will have to decide what he or she will do.”

“In one of our parishes white people are moving out in droves at the same time black people are moving in. How will we reach those who are running? Only by individuals who persuade them not to go.”

The archbishop recalled his own grammar school in Chicago. He was one of three black children in his fourth grade, he told the group. By the seventh grade all children in the class were black.

“In 1991, nothing has changed,” he said, “because small groups, individuals have not banded together and said ‘enough.’”