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By Bishop John, January 22, 2013 4:18 am

Heads no longer turn when someone refers to a one-world economy or a globalized economy and there are many aspects of this new economic situation that will be helpful to the whole world’s population in the long run. However, on the short run, it is often the poor that suffer by changes in the system.
The expansion of the biofuels industry has contributed to spikes in food prices and a shortage of land for food based agriculture in poor corners of the Third World because raw materials are grown wherever it is cheapest. Back in the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, I had many opportunities to drive all over Mexico and through much of Central America. One thing that I clearly remember as I cruised those thousands of miles was that corn was everywhere – corn in the plains, corn in the valley, corn very high up the sides of steep mountains. Scattered over this enormous area you would always see the small houses, huts really, of the people who were growing that corn. It not only provided them a livelihood, but it provided them with life itself. A simple life, yes, but at least they did not starve.
Today?? Well, the corn is still there but a great deal of it is not making its way to the table. Many developed nations have enacted laws mandating the increasing use of biofuel in cars and the policy is having a ripple affect across the planet. Land once devoted to growing food for humans is now sometimes more profitably used for churning out vehicle fuel. Timothy Wise is a top university development director and an expert on development aid. His studies reflect that the United States is purchasing 40% of Guatemala’s corn to make biofuel. I am sure you can well imagine the affect that this is having on the cost of tortillas in that poor, rural country. Parts of Guatemala that were covered with corn five or ten years ago is now be utilized to produce sugar cane and African palms. Fifty percent of Guatemala’s children are chronically undernourished, the fourth highest rate in the world according to the United Nations.
Biofuel. We try to solve a problem and create another one! 

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By Bishop John, October 2, 2012 4:51 am

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That story begins in about 1804 up in New England when a group of leather workers had the temerity to discuss among themselves whether they could ask the owners for a slight increase in their pay. THEY WERE LOCKED UP FOR THAT CRIME! Thanks be to God, we have come a long way from that situation, but there are still tremendous obstacles for working people to improve their lot in a way that would enable them to get their share of the economic pie, a pie that is for the most part actually physically produced by them.

With 10% unemployment and union membership down to a small fraction of what it was 30 years ago, things give the appearance of being quite peaceful. However, there is a lot of anger, frustration and disappointment in the lives of people who are struggling to put food on the table. They hear about the infamous 1% while they lose their homes. They see their jobs disappear and if they can get another one, it is at a much lower level of pay. They see much that they have achieved between 1935 and 1980 being swept away and that includes health insurance, retirement, vacation, etc., etc.

Things were tough in the ‘30’s, ‘40’s, and ‘50’s but you know what was a great source of encouragement for blue-collar working people? Time after time in this or that economic struggle, they would see the Roman Catholic priests standing with them in their struggles. They also knew that behind that priest was their bishop. The Church was with them. It made a tremendous difference. It gave the people the courage to struggle on and struggle on they did.

It is a different world. There is a whole new set of problems, extraordinarily difficult obstacles, not the least of which is the mindset of the American public that has come to see the union movement as something to be disdained. In the middle of all that, I was thrilled to see in the newspaper a few weeks ago that a group of 35 priests met in Chicago to review the situation for the difficult conditions that are besetting our workers and to see if they could reinvigorate a movement that was so successful 50 years ago.

This is really encouraging to me personally. I had the honor of serving for several years as the assistant to Monsignor George Higgins who was the informal national chaplain of the union movement. Pray for these priests who are struggling to reinvigorate this movement that they can count on God’s help, St. Joseph the Worker and Monsignor George Higgins.

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By Bishop John, September 18, 2012 4:06 am

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As a nation, we are bitterly torn in two directions on how we are to use our magnificent assets not just in the world of business but in natural resources as well. In last Sunday’s second reading, St. James tells us that those decisions should be arrived at by considering not only economic data but fundamental moral principals as well. “What good is it to profess faith without practicing it?” He goes on to talk about providing food and clothing for people who are in need.

In our Lord’s time, the poor people were down the street in the village and we could carry bread down there to them. Today, the pressing needs for survival may be in northern Michigan or rural West Virginia and we must organize our aid programs on the basis of a great and complicated nation. He tells us that if we do not provide for our vulnerable fellow citizens regardless of where they live, we should not be talking about our religious values because, as James says, SUCH FAITH DOES NOTHING IN PRACTICE. It is thoroughly lifeless.

Those are strong words, my friends, and they were spoken to the Christians of the first century and they should ring in our ears as well.

I am proud of so much about the Catholic Church and one of the things about which I am most proud is the highly developed social theology as to how we ought to utilize God’s gifts, develop them fairly and share them in a way that takes into consideration the needs of everyone. In today’s America, that certainly involves a food distribution system that covers the whole country in a meaningful and effective way. With millions unemployed and hanging on by their fingernails, this is no time to cut emergency food programs.

St. James is watching!

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By Bishop John, September 10, 2012 4:00 am

All of my adult life I have been impressed with the practicality of God’s word in the bible. Coming from a priest, that may not be a very surprising statement because after all it is GOD’S WORD. However, I mean something else. I have always found that the sacred texts have an unbelievably easy applicability in concrete situations around us. A good example of this will be seen in the next few weeks where we will see St. James speaking words that the whole world needs to hear. However, the citizens of the United States need to hear James’ words in a very special way as our nation struggles to choose a president for the next four years.

Yesterday’s text dramatically points out that we are all God’s children, everybody is important, but the poor are especially important because they have been especially loved by God. James blasts the hypocritical tendency of his age to consider wealthy people to be more important than the poor. Such discrimination flies in the face of the Church’s 2,000-year-old tradition.

The Church has made many mistakes through the centuries. All of us are sinful and some of our leaders have at times seemed to be at total variance with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. However, one thing the Church has never lost sight of and that is its concern for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable. They are a very special people. They do not need to be treated merely equally but to be treated evermore sensitively than those who have the resources to provide for themselves.

In the near future, our country will be struggling with a new national budget and there are two very different approaches on how to use the nation’s resources. I would suggest that we go back to St. James. The second chapter provides a marvelous guide of how our country is to allocate its resources. St. James tells us that 1% and 99% is not the proper formula.

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By Bishop John, August 1, 2012 4:37 am

Our Savior Jesus Christ taught us many things while he was among us for nearly three years as how we ought to relate to each other, be responsible for each other and, most of all, be concerned about the poor, the weak and the vulnerable among us. I think of that truth and then I remember what the Agriculture Committee in the House of Representatives voted to pass two weeks ago. They are moving the new Farm Bill forward and they will be reporting to the full House that $16.5 billion should be cut from food and hunger relief programs. These are programs that directly benefit children, elders and poor families.

No nation in history has ever had the capacity to produce food as does the United States. We have every right to be proud of that but with that awesome ability to produce food we are faced with the fact that 36 million Americans are living in poverty and one in seven is at least partially dependent on the nutrition assistance program. Every time a family uses nutrition assistance to buy food, it benefits the business and the employees where the purchase is made – the truck driver who delivered the food, the warehouse that stored it, the plant that processed it and the farmer who grew it. According to Hank Perret, those cuts will affect more than 300,000 Texans. He states, “Make no mistake that these cuts will hurt many families already straining to pay their summer electric bills, rent and gas, making it harder to put food on their tables.”

I am sure that these facts sadden you. I urge you to have a positive reaction to it. Write your Congressman to not accept the drastic cuts being pushed by the Agriculture Committee. For additional advice, go to austinfoodbank.org/advocate to see how you can help.

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By Bishop John, July 24, 2012 6:03 am

The other day, in discussing the history of organized labor, I mentioned that one of the best assets that the union movement had in its organizing efforts was the active support of the Roman Catholic Church.

Why was that support so consistent? There are a number of reasons, one of which is that throughout the bible, both the Old and New Testament, there are endless references to God’s love for the poor and the need for people of means to be helpful and supportive of poor people. Jesus himself said that throughout his public life and throughout its history the Church put caring for the poor, the needy vulnerable at the top of its list of priorities.
With Leo XIII’s wonderful encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 both bishops and priests across the world were given a bright lit green light to step up on the side of working people. There were important scriptural and theological reasons for the Church’s stand but there are other down to earth reasons as well.

The Catholic Church in the 19th century was a Church of immigrants. Our people were all recent arrivals, mostly from European countries, and they could see that the individual worker was very vulnerable when it came to setting wages and working conditions. Only by being united could they struggle for their share of the economic pie. This means that the vast majority of priests grew up in working class families. They saw their fathers long work days and low pay, poor working conditions and no job security. When union organizers came around and offered them a possible solution to their many difficulties it was only natural that their fathers would join and these priests, when they were seminarians and then young priests, would see the advantage that the union movement brought to the hard working people of the country.

At this time, the majority of the priests have grown up in middle or upper-income families. They are not anti-union but they did not have the personal experience of being affected by the union movement. The small army of “labor priests” quietly passed on and has not been replaced. There have been recent efforts to rekindle an interest in organized labors efforts but, regretfully, they have not met with great success. Most of today’s union leaders have little or no experience of working with the churches. Over time there has been a gradual, unintentional separation, I feel that this is a great mistake; more accurately, a tragedy.

Today there is still a substantial amount of injustice and even oppression in the work place. Hi-tech employees are doing very well but tens of thousands of regular white collar employees learned how insecure their jobs were starting in 2008. Their jobs were simply eliminated overnight. But it is the low skills and the immigrant who is often the victim suffering most in the work place. WAGE THEFT is a major problem for low-income, unskilled, undocumented people who work hard and long hours, and frequently are paid below the minimum wage, cheated on the total amount owed and threatened with being reported to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. So their only choice is to take the inadequate pay and disappear.

These cruel oppressors of the poorest among us, however, are forewarned. Throughout the bible, Yahweh threatens the oppressors of the poor and especially those who deny them the fruit of their labor.

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By Bishop John, July 13, 2012 3:06 am

There has been communications problems of late between the Vatican, bishops of the United States and the various orders of religious women in the country. Most of us are very familiar about that and it is certainly regrettable when there is a lack of harmony within the community of faith. However, there are bright spots too.

I was very thrilled to see the bishops’ evaluation of Congressman Ryan’s proposed budget and the evaluation of NETWORK, the action arm of religious women in this country. Both of them see Ryan’s proposed budget being blisteringly hard on the poor and the vulnerable and cutting back on resources for internal development of the country and unwisely beneficial to the more wealthy members of our society. Catholic social theory has always taught that the poor always have to be our first concern. I forget which president, I think it was Harry Truman who said, “The wealthy can take care of themselves. I have to be concerned about the poor and the vulnerable in our country.” That is certainly true in keeping with general principle in Catholic social theory.

David Brooks of the New York Times recently wrote a thoughtful, and I think somewhat erroneous column, on the fact that the age of the Welfare State is over. He is certainly right about the fact that we are going through convulsive economic and social changes, but the poor and the vulnerable are still here. If we eliminate the programs that have been set up over the last fifty years to care for the needy in our society, what will happen then? Changing into one international market with less and less need for unskilled labor, we will still have a vast reservoir of people who are unable to function productively in this new economic situation. Today there are tens of millions of them. It is not likely that they will just disappear. I think that the governmental operations will have to continue doing what they have done for the last fifty years for some good time into the future.

We must travel this difficult road together.

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By Bishop John, June 19, 2012 11:22 am

Ever since the bitter struggle over raising this country’s debt ceiling, there has been an enormous amount of verbiage expressed over the 1% and the 99% as to who possesses the wealth of this country. It is referred to so frequently that it seems to have almost lost its meaning.

It doesn’t matter whether the figures are actually accurate. Do 1% of the people have the vast majority of wealth and the 99% get along with the remainder? Don’t get tied up on the math! There can be no doubt that there is an extraordinary concentration of wealth and therefore power in the hands of a very small portion of the American population. This situation existed throughout the 19th century but began to change when economic and social reforms were enacted in the 1930’s and for nearly half a century there was dramatic improvement in regards to the distribution of wealth in the United States. Regretfully, for the last twenty years we have been sliding back into that 19th century format which leaves such a sizable portion of the country in dire straits, desperately poor and terribly vulnerable while the wealthy 1% increased not only their wealth but the power that naturally comes with that wealth.

Whenever a political and economic system concentrates power and wealth in the hands of a small minority, it guarantees the existence of a permanent underclass whose members live without capacities of decent living, whether it be employment, housing, proper education and health care. In our democratic society, massive programs have been developed to respond to each one of these pressing needs, but the fact is that the concentration of wealth creates these problems and no amount or number of do-good organizations or programs are going to change that until there is a more equitable distribution of our nation’s economic production.

Regretfully, the history of the human family does not reflect many situations where the wealthy segment of a population freely steps forward to share its vast wealth with those who are in need. This usually does not happen at all and when it does, it is often brought about by a violent revolution. I thank God that our country has developed a system where we could develop a more equitable means of sharing the benefits of our extraordinary economic system, but in the summer of 2012, the scene is grim.

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By Bishop John, May 24, 2012 5:03 am

Several weeks ago, Representative Paul Ryan, the leading voice of the Republicans in the budgetary struggles currently going on in this country, announced a budget. While it was passed by the House and endorsed by presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, it has been vigorously opposed by the students of Georgetown and by the American bishops. One hundred Georgetown faculty members signed a letter protesting the Ryan budget which according to the Georgetown professors, “….continuing misuse of Catholic teachings to defend a budget that decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few.” The Ryan budget would trim billions from programs for low-income, vulnerable citizens. The letter states, “In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and antagonism towards religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love.”

In the past, Ryan has stated that Ayn Rand was an important influence in his thinking.

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By Bishop John, April 13, 2012 5:27 am

During Governor Rick Perry’s brief dip into the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he touted time after time the great advantage that Texans, especially Texas businesses, enjoy because of our state’s very low tax rate. On this point, the governor was certainly correct. Texas’ taxes are relatively low when compared to our other large industrial states. However, those low taxes carry a very heavy price with them in another area of life.

In this wealthy State of Texas, more than 25% of our children live in poverty! Thirty-nine percent of Texas mothers receive no or very late prenatal care. 1.2 million Texas children have no form of health insurance while 96% of those same children are U.S. citizens. The same is true at the other end of the age spectrum.

Texas is very wealthy. If it were an independent nation, it would enjoy the 11th largest economy in the world. However, this rich state in a cold and calculated manner refuses to fulfill its responsibility to its children and to the elderly. These facts are not really something to brag about! Right?

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