In Ottawa recently a group of Catholic parents protested to their school board over Justin Trudeau’s appearance in November 2012 to talk to students at a Catholic school about bullying. Some parents told the board this was a “scandal” because Trudeau supports same-sex marriage and a woman’s right to choose. According to slides from their presentation, a group of parents called upon the school board to prevent appearances by anyone advocating “ideas that are contrary to the social and moral teachings of the Catholic Church.”
The pressure appears to have worked, at least in part, because the Ottawa board has amended its policy. Previously, it read that partnerships and sponsorships must be “consistent with the Board’s philosophy, Vision statement and Catholic Social Teaching.” The statement went on to provide some detail about the social teaching mentioned, including “the dignity of the human person, human rights and responsibilities, common good, solidarity, the preferential option for the poor, and the value and dignity of human work.”
Social teaching
The Catholic board’s revised policy contains some interesting changes. Now, it says that all sponsorships and partnerships must adhere to “Catholic social and moral teaching”, but drops its earlier mention of specific examples — human rights, solidarity, the value and dignity of human work and so on. The words “social teaching” remain, however, even if the list of examples has been removed. One would assume, then, that the board would want anyone appearing as guests to be faithful to those examples of social teaching as well.
Pope Leo XIII
The Church’s historic teaching about human work begins with Pope Leo XIII in 1891, when he released his encyclical Rerum Novarum (On the Conditions of Labor). There was a new and rapid industrialization at the time that attracted people to cities and factories where they often existed in desperate conditions. The pope’s primary stated concern was the need for an improvement in what he called “the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class.”
Pope Leo called for a living wage without describing it in those exact words, although later popes did so. He defended private property but also the right, even the necessity, of workers to protect themselves by forming trade unions. His teaching has been supported and repeated by other papal encyclicals for more than 100 years.
John Paul II and unions
One of those supporting documents was issued by Pope John Paul II in 1981. It was called Laborem Exercens (On Human Labor) and in it he argues that people have a right to work and that a group of other social rights (to unionize, to be paid a living wage, to participate in economic decision-making) are based upon this fundamental right. John Paul reasserts the importance of workers forming unions. “Their task,” he wrote, “is to defend the existential interests of workers in all sectors in which their rights are concerned. The experience of history teaches the organizations of this type are an indispensable element of social life, especially in modern societies.”
This encyclical remains relevant today for its insistence that human dignity and social justice must take priority over capital. In other words the needs of people are more important than the wants of capital. The encyclical is an antidote to those who argue that even if unions were needed in an earlier era, they are no longer relevant today. Those arguments deliberately ignore the reality of conditions in the garment industry in Bangladesh or on the kill floor in Alberta slaughterhouses, to cite but two examples.
Right to strike
Pope John Paul also affirmed the right to strike as being “legitimate in the proper conditions and within just limits.” He added, however, that the “the strike weapon” is an extreme means that should rarely be used. The Canadian Labour Congress (my employer) says that more than 99% of union-management negotiations in Canada are successfully concluded without a strike or lockout occurring.
Catholic vetting
If potential speakers in Catholic schools are to be vetted for what they think and say about same sex marriage, for example, then the vetting should also extend to what they say, or have said, about the rights of workers to organize unions and to engage in collective bargaining.
In practice, that would mean that a good number of media and political luminaries – Pierre Poilievre, Jason Kenney and the CBC’s Kevin O’Leary, to name but a few — would never grace a podium in a Catholic school because they oppose, at least substantially, the church’s social teaching on work and labour unions.
A better idea
But there is a solution that is much preferable to a Catholic McCarthyism that attempts to censor and attack people such as Justin Trudeau and President Obama in the U.S., where some Catholics protested against his being invited to speak at Notre Dame University.
The better idea would be for Catholic schools, not to mention parishes and dioceses, to ensure that the Church’s social teaching is taught, preached and discussed. That teaching is a well-kept secret because few educators, clergy, or even bishops appear interested in promoting it.
Pulpit and Politics 
This is a great article Dennis and a strong argument for the Ottawa School Board to stop censoring. I love reading your insightful pieces – keep it up!
LikeLike
It would be better for the government to stop funding what the UN deemed a discriminatory system.
LikeLike
Thanks Ian. The funding of separate schools has been a hot issue, especially in Ontario. There is certainly a logic to the argument that a system that relies on public, ie: tax-funded support, should not have the right to impose its own values on all students, not to mention guest speakers. That said, if the system were privately funded, the shift in emphasis away from the Church’s worthwhile social teaching would still be occurring. In other words, I would be writing the same blog in that scenario.
LikeLike
Like communism, predatory capitalism is incompatible with Christianity or simple decency. Unlike our current federal government, Catholic social teaching puts life before profit, stresses justice for all, and ought to be shouted from the rooftops. A little review of Catholic social teaching from Pope John Paul II and his predecessors illustrates the point:
“There are needs and common goals that cannot be satisfied by the market system. It is the task of the state and of all society to defend them. An idolatry of the market alone cannot do all that should be done. It is right to struggle against an unjust economic system that does not uphold the priority of the human being over capital and land.”
John Paul II, 1991
“Among the actions and attitudes opposed to God’s will, two are very typical: greed and the thirst for power. One must denounce the economic, financial, and social mechanisms and structures that are manipulated by the rich and powerful for their own benefit at the expense of the poor.”
John Paul II, 1987
“Unions are indeed engaged in the struggle for social justice, but this is a struggle for the common good, and not against others. Workers’ rights cannot be deemed to be the mere result of economic systems aimed at maximum profits. The thing that must shape the whole economy is respect for the workers’ rights within each country and all through the world’s economy. But above all we must remember the priority of labor over capital.”
John Paul II, 1981
“Private property does not constitute for anyone an absolute or unconditional right. No one is justified in keeping for his exclusive use what he does not need when others lack necessities.”
Paul VI, 1967
“Excessive economic and social differences between the members of the one human family or population groups cause scandal, and militate against social justice. Economic development must not be left to the sole judgement of a few men or groups possessing excessive economic power, or of the political community alone, or of certain powerful nations. It is proper, on the contrary, that at every level the largest number of people have an active share in directing that development.”
Vatican II, 1965
“One may not take as the ultimate criteria in economic life the interests of individuals or organized groups, nor unregulated competition, nor excessive power on the part of the wealthy, nor the vain honour of the nation … nor anything of this sort. Rather, it is necessary that economic undertaking be governed by justice and charity as the principle laws of social life. The remuneration of work is not something that can be left to the laws of the marketplace; nor should it be a decision left to the will of the more powerful. It must be determined in accordance with justice and equity. As for the State, its whole purpose is the realization of the common good.”
John XXIII, 1961
“The right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces. For from this source, as from a poisoned spring, have originated and spread all the errors of individualist economic teaching.
Pius XI, 1931
“In protecting the rights of private individuals, however, special consideration must be given to the weak and the poor… oppressed workers, above all, ought to be liberated from the savagery of greedy men, who inordinately use human beings as things for gain.”
Leo XIII, 1891
LikeLike