First Sermon
Focused on Worker’s Rights
Despite the behavior in regards to
school teachers and unions, Pope Benedict did use his first Sunday sermon as the
newly ordained Pope to stress the importance of dignity, solidarity, and respect
for workers.
Here’s the excerpt from a story from
the Catholic News Service: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0502694.htm
Speaking to the
crowd, which included thousands of members of Italy's Association of Christian
Workers, Pope Benedict said believers must promote "Christian fraternity ... in
the workplace and in social life so that solidarity, justice and peace may be
pillars on which to build the unity of the Christian family."
Pope
Benedict recalled that Pope Pius XII had created the feast day of St. Joseph the
Worker in order "to stress the importance of work and of the presence of Christ
and the church in the labor world."
"It is necessary to pay witness also
in today's society to the 'Gospel of work,' which John Paul II spoke of in his
encyclical 'Laborem Exercens,'" Pope Benedict said.
"I hope that work
will not be lacking, especially for young people, and that working conditions
will respect always the dignity of the human person," the pope
said.
Hope for a
powerful message of support for Unions
Even with the controversial action
towards workers in Catholic Schools, let’s hope that the Pope maintains the
long, Catholic tradition of being supportive of workers and unions as he makes
speeches and travels around the United States. Let’s also hope that
the church’s actions towards teachers change before that message no longer seems
legitimate.
Comments
re: Does the Pope Care about Worker’s Rights?
I think it's a bit erroneous to connect Catholic teachers' ability to unionize with whether the pope cares about workers' rights or not. Given the way the Catholic church works and the fact that it has different organization (and different cultural norms) in each country, I think it would be more accurate to ask whether the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (www.usccb.org) should be addressing this issue.
I also think that this is a unique situation because these teachers are part of a private education system. That's not to say that they shouldn't be able to collectively bargain for wages - as someone who went to Catholic schools for elementary, middle, and high school, I'll be the first to attest that the wages of parochial school teachers aren't that great.
But, that aside, I think it has to be specific that these are parish teachers and/or teachers of diocesan schools you're talking about. In any Catholic diocese, there are also a myriad of schools run by individual orders, and it should be up to the individual teachers in schools not part of the diocesan systems to negotiate with their administrations in those instances because they are often so specialized and because those schools are entities separate from dioceses.