EVANS ARCHIVES
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Solidarity binds all in common family
By George Evans
March 28, 2008
    (Before continuing our review of the modern Catholic social encyclicals, I again urge everyone in the closing days of the legislative session, to advocate based on Catholic social teachings those issues still before the Legislature, particularly the proper funding and administration of Medicaid so that all eligible persons may be properly served. The papal writer we focus on today, the beloved Pope John XXIII would urge us to do nothing less.)
    The year is 1961 and this elderly “interim” pope who will soon call Vatican Council II first writes another monumental social encyclical in the tradition of Leo XIII (“Rerum Novarum”) and Pius XI (“Quadragesimo Anno”). “Mater et Magistra” on Christianity and Social Progress was written 70 years after “Rerum Novarum” and 30 years after “Quadragesimo     Anno” with perfect Roman Catholic symmetry and historical awareness.
John XXIII begins his encyclical reviewing and confirming the significant contributions made by Leo XIII and Pius XI: the right to private property, the right of workers to organize, the right to a living wage, the value of private initiative, just remuneration for work, the social function of private property, the role of the state in creating a just social order, the need for cooperation between capital and labor for the benefit of the common good and the role of God and the church in all of this.
    Pope John notes in the intervening years since 1931 “the economic scene has undergone a radical transformation, both in the internal structure of the various states and in their relations with one another.” (Par. 46)
    Since “Quadragesimo Anno” the world had both suffered through and survived World War II, experienced the destructiveness of the atomic bomb, the conquest of outer space, television and an explosion in communications and transportation. Great improvements had developed in many countries in social insurance and social security, in basic education, and political independence as the colonial world was replaced in Asia and Africa.
    Pope John XXIII sees the need for his encyclical particularly to address the growing disparity not between capital and labor as was the case with Leo XIII, but between agriculture and industry and services.
    Nearly every country, is faced with this fundamental problem: What can be done to reduce the disproportion in productive efficiency between agriculture on the one hand, and industry and services on the other; and to ensure agricultural living standards approximate as closely as possible those enjoyed by city dwellers who draw their resources either from industry or from the services in which they are engaged. (Par. 125)
    Pope John internationalizes the applicability of Catholic social teachings to the post colonial Third World countries where the abject poverty of the rural agricultural worker calls for remedies “such as roads; transportation; means of communication; drinking water; housing; health services; elementary, technical and professional education; religious and recreational facilities; and the supply of modern installations and furnishings for the farm residence.” (par. 127)
    These things and social insurance, social security and appropriate price protection can only be achieved by cooperation of all involved — farm workers, cooperatives, credit banks and political systems. For the common good to be served wealthy nations need to participate:
    The solidarity which binds all men together as members of a common family makes it impossible for wealthy nations to look with indifference upon the hunger, misery and poverty of other nations whose citizens are unable to enjoy even elementary human rights. The nations of the world are becoming more and more dependent on one another and it will not be possible to preserve a lasting peace so long as glaring economic and social imbalance persists.(Par. 157)
    Pope John’s fervent cry in 1961 remains as relevant and compelling today as then. At a recent seminar in Jackson, Bread for the World informed us currently 850 million people suffer from hunger, 1 billion people live in extreme poverty on less than $1 a day, 1.1 billion people have no access to clean water and sewers and 9.7 million people die before their fifth birthday in sub-Saharan Africa where HIV/AIDS has reduced the life expectancy to less than 40 years.
    Pope John called for lay Catholics to take the lead in transforming society by personal charity and advocacy in the service of the world’s poor. A simple but perfect opportunity is at hand by supporting Senate Bill 2433 pending in Congress. Known as the “Global Poverty Act” which seeks an increase of $5 billion in all international aid programs known as Poverty Focused Development Assistance (PFDA). This would increase U.S. spending for all PFDA from half of one percent to approximately three-fourths of one percent of the approximate $3 trillion U.S. budget.
    Contact your senators and ask them to support SB 2433 — what an easy yet meaningful way to respond to Pope John XXIII’s call.
(George Evans is a pastoral minister at Jackson St. Richard Parish. Contact him via evans@saintrichard.com)

Time for advocacy now, contact your legislators
By George Evans
February 22, 2008
     Bishop Joseph Latino has not written a papal encyclical. But he has written a series of thoughtful and insightful articles for Mississippi Catholic and The Clarion Ledger related to Catholic social teachings and advocacy issues touched by those teachings, particularly insofar as children are concerned.
     Because the Legislature is now in session and will be gone by the end of March, I depart for one month from continuing the study of the Catholic social encyclicals as such and, rather, apply what we already know from them and Bishop Latino’s call for our involvement.
     The fact is there are HUGE issues presently facing the Mississippi Legislature (not to mention the Congress) which impact all of us but particularly the poor, the sick, the mentally ill, the immigrants, the children. As part of my job, I have tried to monitor the issues most affecting those in need – the Biblical widows, orphans and aliens of our day.
     We know as of Dec. 31, 2007, approximately 50,000 persons, mostly children, have been removed from Medicaid rolls since January 2005 and the overwhelming impression is that the requirement of face-to-face meetings for recertification, a significant cause of the reduction, (instead of recertification by mail which was the requirement prior to April 2005 in Mississippi and remains the procedure in all but two or three other states) will continue.
     The result will be no doctor care for children not on the rolls, and their minor illnesses will become major until they land in emergency rooms where they can receive free care – the most expensive to providers and the rest of us who ultimately pay in increased costs passed along in the system.
     The mental health centers are desperately underfunded. Persons reasonably treated on an outpatient basis relatively near their homes will go untreated until their illness (frequently because they are not on their medicine any longer) reaches catastrophic levels requiring acute emergency management at huge costs and greater chance of injury to self, family or others.
     The tobacco tax issue has apparently been hidden behind the study of the appointed Tax Study Commission. Who knows when and what will ever come of that.
The implementation of the federal court settlement regarding foster care is apparently bogged down as if in quicksand. It will take a return to federal court for implementation to become meaningful. Meanwhile the overburdened system creaks along at best, and children continue to suffer.
     A plethora of extremely tough, some would say vindictive, immigration laws have been proposed. Whether they become law is uncertain, but the spirit of many is reminiscent of the worst days of the 1950s and ‘60s.
     The question is where is the Christian advocacy effort on these and the many other questions in the public domain. Where is the Catholic advocacy effort called for in all of the encyclicals and by our own Bishop Latino and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in it’s recent document, “Faithful Citizenship.” If it’s there it’s not apparent. Catholic Charities beats the drum but with little response. I send information to a significant list serve but with little response.
     Bishop Latino stands tall but with little response from what I have seen. Are we that oblivious to the common good? Are we unable to translate the dramatic picture of Matthew 25 of salvation being dependent on how we respond to the poor into our consciousness because of our narcissistic and materialistic culture into which we have all been compromised.
     America magazine in its 2/4/08 issue reports:
     With income inequality in the United States hitting ever higher levels, it nonetheless comes as a jolt to learn the share of after-tax income going to the wealthiest 1 percent of households has reached its highest point since the start of the Great Depression. ... The gap between the richest Americans and all others has grown wider than at any other time since at least 1929 . ... The situation is not helped by tax cuts that have primarily benefited the highest income households.
     Do we ignore this reality? Or, are we numb because we benefit. Or, more likely, are we just too busy as were the priest and Levite who passed the Samaritan on the side of the road. Regardless, we have an economy with many of the disparities that prompted Pope Pius XI to write “Quadragesimo Anno” in 1931 as discussed in my last article in this paper and which cries out for our voice to turn it around.
     I think it important for each of us, as hard as it may be, to accept the fact that, as Catholics, action is not optional but mandatory like prayer and the sacraments. Father Ron Rolheiser in the Mississippi Catholic of 2/15/08 in his brilliant fashion captures the challenge:
     Jesus and justice – rarely do we bring them together as the Gospels do.
     Somehow we find it hard to bring together the Jesus who is so uncompromising in the area of private prayer and integrity, who says we delude ourselves if we think we are following him but are not praying or keeping the commandments, with the Jesus who tells us unequivocally that at the last judgment there will only be one test as to whether we will go to heaven or not, namely, how we re-sponded to the poor during our lifetime.
     The Jesus who invites us into personal piety and church doctrine is the same Jesus who tells us nobody will get to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.
     In our world today, responding to the poor requires not only personal charity but also issue advocacy in the conference rooms of business and in the halls of government both state and federal. The time for advocacy is now. Contact your legislators by phone, letter or email and let them hear from you on this issue.
(George Evans is a pastoral minister at Jackson St. Richard Parish. Contact him via evans@saintrichard.com)

We cannot reconstruct social order from sidelines
By George Evans
January 25, 2008
      In this critically important election year (federal) and legislative year (state), it behooves us to continue our journey down the path of Catholic social teachings with the magnificent encyclical of Pope Pius XI, “Quadragesimo Anno,” (“The Reconstruction of the Social Order”).
      Written on the 40th anniversary of Leo XII’s monumental “Rerum Novarum” (“On the Condition of Labor”), Pius XI describes the enormous impact that encyclical has had in the intervening 40 years.
      Particularly, he notes a true Catholic social science has arisen and inundated Catholic study groups, seminaries, auxiliaries and even legislative halls and courts of justice. (Par. 20-21) “Working class” and other “lower classes” have been helped by some balancing of the economic power between capital and labor and by laws and programs for their benefit. (Par. 28)
      The impact of “On the Condition of Labor” has been pervasive: “Leo’s encyclical has proved itself the ‘Magna Charta’ upon which all Christian activity in the social field ought to be based, as on a foundation.” (Par. 39)
      True to the continuing mantra of Leo and all Catholic social teaching, “Observe, Judge and Act,” Pius XI after due praise and reaffirmation of Leo’s principles and reminder that all teachings come from the Gospels, applies those teachings to the world and time of 1931.
      Industrialization had continued to develop and had begun its spread to the Far East, a devastating and soul wrenching and spirit depleting world war had been fought in Christian Europe, and a world wide depression gripped everyone, but particularly the laborer and the “huge army of rural wage workers.”(Par. 34)
      But, Pius XI points out, the riches of industrialization “are not rightly distributed and equitably made available to the various classes of the people.” (Par. 60) He thus issues a new clarion call that the common good of all society be kept inviolate (Par. 57):
      To each, therefore, must be given his own share of goods, and the distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the gravest evils due to the huge disparity between the few exceedingly rich and the un-numbered property less, must be effectively called back to and brought into conformity with the norms of the common good, that is, social justice.
      Pius recognizes the state must do its proper part in bringing this to fruition when necessary. He roundly criticizes “individualism” as identified with unrestricted capitalism and “collectivism” as identified with communism and socialism as both violating the natural law and ultimately the common good.
      He reserves particularly strong criticism for Communism which had experienced enormous growth and influence since Leo XIII. Its tenets of unrelenting class warfare and absolute extermination of private ownership he found repulsive to God’s plan of creation, natural law and the teachings of the church and Leo XIII.
      Economic systems must be developed so that women and children are not abused in the work world (Par. 71) and that a just wage should be paid — enough to support a family with one wage earner. (Par. 71)
      But the right of private property must remain inviolate and its use must conform, at the same time, to the common good as well as the individual good. Pointedly, “A person’s superfluous income, that is, income which he does not need to sustain life fittingly and with dignity, is not left wholly to his own free determination.” (Par. 50) The scriptural demand to serve the common good must remain the ultimate restraint on unbridled individualism.
      What then, if anything, does Pius XI call us to today? Our circumstances 77 years later certainly differ from 1931 as they do from 1891, the time of Leo XIII. I submit Pius XI’s call to reconstruct the social order is no less urgent and, perhaps may even be more so, now than then.
      He called for the church of his day to be involved in that reconstruction. We need to be also. He called for the egregious disparities in wealth to be addressed by both the private sector and the state as necessary.
      The need today is no less great with 37 million and 1 of 5 children below the poverty level in America, the richest country in the world and with 47 million without health insurance.       And world wide 25,000 die every day from hunger; 500 million live every day in hunger; and 2.5 billion exist on $400 or less per year.
      It is crucial we not only accept, but embrace, the call of Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI to conform ourselves personally to the gospel values which inspired their two encyclicals, commit ourselves to the common good as well as our own individual betterment, and become actively involved in the community and legislative work at both the state and federal level.
      We cannot reconstruct the social order if we sit on the sidelines and curse the darkness as the world goes by. We can only make a difference to serve the common good and answer the call of the Scriptures and our church if we venture forth in prayerful and informed involvement and advocacy.
(George Evans is a pastoral minister at Jackson St. Richard Parish. Contact him via evans@saintrichard.com)

`Rerum Novarum’ still speaks to us today
By George Evans
November 30, 2007
      It is doubtful Pope Leo XIII envisioned the impact his encyclical “Rerum Novarum” would have on the future of Catholic social teachings. Now 116 years later it is still considered the foundational document of “our best kept secret.”
     It set the pattern for all the great social encyclicals which followed – Observe (read the signs of the times), Judge based on the Scriptures we have previously discussed in some detail and other church teaching, and suggest Action based on the observation and judgment.
     “The Condition of Labor” was needed because the church observed the desperate plight of and the terrible exploitation and poverty of European and North American workers at the end of the 19th century.
     The industrial revolution created the concentration of masses in cities to work in factories in a way unknown before in history. Concomitantly, there emerged a concentration of wealth in the hands of a relatively few in an extreme example of unbridled capitalism.
     The protections and restraints we know today simply did not exist. There was no balance between labor and capital. Power and prestige was almost solely in the hands of capital.
     Working conditions were horrible from sanitation to excessive hours for men, women and even children. Excessive wealth of the few trumped grinding poverty of the masses.      Exploitation of workers was the rule rather than the exception.
Leo XIII stepped into the fray knowing the difficulties involved in resolving the relative rights and duties of the rich and the poor, of capitol and labor.
     We clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class . . . Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition . . . The hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.(Par.3)
     Though calling for reform in working conditions and wages and asserting that the common good is the end of civil society, Pope Leo strongly defends the right to private property against the onslaught of socialism which was becoming more pronounced at that time.
     “Every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own.” (Par. 6) Man and the family precede the state and the principle of private ownership is pre-eminently in conformity with human nature. (Par. 11-12)
     It is the use of private property without respect for the dignity of the person of the worker that is the danger. “To misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers – that is truly shameful and inhuman.” (Par. 20)
     Justice demands the worker have time for his religious duties and “he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings.” (Par. 20) The worker has the duty to work well, not to harm the property of the employer, to refrain from violence and rioting, to be thrifty. (Par. 20)
     The employer on the other hand is faced with this obligation:
     His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are fair, many things have to be considered: but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this – that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. (Par. 20)
     Long before the idea of a just wage was raised in Congress during the recent debate over an increase in the minimum wage, Leo XIII argued for it, as he did for the need to care for the poor, for the value of family, and the right to join workers associations, the precursor of modern day unions.
     By the use of gospel principles the church can help reconcile classes and help head off the burgeoning class strife which unfortunately continued to manifest itself in this country throughout the early part of the 20th century.
     The concepts contained in “Rerum Novarum” are still applicable to our situation these many years later. Class strife between the haves and the have nots is still rampant today.      The fact the working poor collapse under the financial stress of the first serious illness, major car repair or other serious unusual expense raises the question of how just our wages are today.
     The increasing disparity between rich and poor over the last 20 years raises for our time as well as Pope Leo’s time whether wealth is properly serving the common good as well as the individual good and benefit.
     This encyclical still speaks to us today in the early 21st century as well as it courageously did to the late 19th century. We still need to observe, judge, and act with the vision of the Scriptures and “Rerum Novarum.”
(George Evans is a pastoral minister at Jackson St. Richard Parish. Contact him via evans@saintrichard.com)

From beginning church cared for those in need
By George Evans
October 26, 2007
      As we begin the transition of Catholic social teachings from the Scriptures to the modern Catholic encyclicals beginning with Leo XIll and “Rerun Novarum,” we pause for a quick look at the development in the earliest church communities as described in the Acts of the Apostles.
     From the very beginning the church emphasized the absolute necessity of caring for those in need: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; And they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need.” (Acts 2:44-5)
     This radical form of community life recognized the Gospel in its purest form. Pope Benedict tells us in “Deus Caritas Est,” In these words, St. Luke provides a kind of definition of the church, whose constitutive elements include fidelity to the “teaching of the Apostles,” “communion,” “the breaking of the bread” and “prayer"(Acts 2:42).
     As the church grew, this radical form of material communion could not in fact be preserved. “But its essential core remained: within the community of believers there can never be room for a poverty that denies anyone what is needed for a dignified life.” (Deus Carita Est, paragraph 20).
     An early practical adaptation is seen in Acts 6:1-6 when a problem arose when Hellenists claimed their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
     The office of deacon was created to meet the problem allowing the Apostles to continue in the ministry of prayer (Eucharist and liturgy) and the ministry of the word (preaching) while still solving the physical needs of the community. The church made sure the needs of the poor were met from its inception.
     Pope Benedict bridges the years from the Acts of the Apostles to Leo XIII and 1891 in “Deus Caritas Est” as follows.
     As the years went by and the church spread further afield, the exercise of charity became established as one of her essential activities, along with the administration of the sacraments and the proclamation of the word: love for widows and orphans, prisoners, and the sick and needy of every kind is as essential to her as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel.
     The church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the sacraments and the word. (Paragraph 22)
     What then changes in 1891 with “Rerum Novarum” that we designate it as the beginning of modern Catholic social teachings. What had happened in the world that led the church to begin to emphasize justice and social policy as well as its documented emphasis from the beginning on charity.
     For centuries through the Middle Ages most people lived and died in small rural agrarian societies where the needs of most were known and taken care of on the local level without the need for much more. Charity in the purest sense was all that was needed to satisfy the Gospel imperative of responding to the common good.
     But with the advance of new modes of transportation and particularly with the growth of cities in the 19th century due to the industrial revolution and the concentration of capital and labor new problems requiring new responses from the church and its members became necessary.
     Simple charity, though still needed then and now, was no longer adequate standing by itself. Toward the end of the 19th ccntury the tenants of Marxism added to this reality – the poor, it was said, need not charity but justice.
     The industrial revolution in Europe and North America led to the rupture of the old social order. The combination of a class of great wealth from an extreme concentration of capital and a class of salaried workers created a new social phenomenon – and a new issue of capital versus labor.
     The modern Catholic encyclicals originally grew out of that issue and have continued to address it and its progeny since 1891. Pope Benedict described the setting for “Rerum Novarum” as follows:
     Capital and the means of production were now the new source of power which, concentrated in the hands of a few) led to the suppression of the rights of the working classes, against which they had to rebel. (Paragraph 26)
     In the finest tradition of what has become one of the mantras of Catholic social teaching – OBSERVE JUDGE, ACT – Pope Leo XIll wrote “Rerum Novarum” in 1891 in response to a request of the hierarchy of England, Ireland, and the United States.
     It had profound influence on the development of modern Catholic social teaching and major impact on the growing batle between capital and labor. That is where we shall begin next time.
(George Evans is a pastoral minister at Jackson St. Richard Parish. Contact him via evans@saintrichard.com)

Catholic social teaching completes circle of prayer
By George Evans
August 31 , 2007
     On our journey to properly place Catholic social teachings in the framework of a Catholic life of prayer, worship, sacrament and service, we now arrive at the New Testament, and particularly the Gospels, as completing the Scriptural basis of Catholic social teachings.
     I trust the journey through the Law, the Prophets and a touch of Wisdom has prepared the way for Jesus and his amazing history changing appearance in this world and in our personal life of salvation.
     It is he, the Lord, who completes the circle of full Catholic life by his life and it is he who definitively outlines the parameters for Catholic social teachings in the Gospels.
     In what I and others before me have come to call his inaugural address in Luke 4:16-21, Jesus bursts upon the public scene and sets forth his vision for his ministry, similarly to what any new president would do in his first inaugural address. He has withstood the temptation in the desert and is filled with the Holy Spirit after 40 days with his Father.
     He starts his ministry appropriately in Nazareth in the synagogue and with Isaiah and a passage we studied in the last column. He tells those assembled as they wait to see what this man is about the following:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
he has anointed me to bring
glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me
to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, and to
proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord....
Today this scripture passage
is fulfilled in your hearing.

     In his opening salvo, Jesus tells them and us what he is about and therefore what we must be about: to bring glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed.
     How then could there ever be a question about the place of service and advocacy in the daily life of Catholics or any Christian. How could Catholic social teachings be “Our Best      Kept Secret.” It’s in Jesus’ inaugural address in its seminal form.
     Matthew brings us the same message in his chapter 11. John the Baptist in prison has heard about Jesus’s works and sends his disciples to ask him “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” (Mt 11:3). In other words, are you the long awaited Messiah?
     Jesus defines himself as the Messiah by telling John that he is fulfilling Isaiah’s prophesy because he knew John knew Isaiah and would understand: Jesus said to them in reply, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.” (Mt 11:4-6)
     Service and compassion are not only a constitutive part of Jesus’ mission. They are definitional. He defines himself to John and tells him who he is by his acts of compassion and healing and mercy and justice.
     This is the Father’s will for me. I have come to pour myself out for all the poor and wretched who are in most need as well as for the small minority of his day who were comfortable. We shall explore this further in the next column as to who specifically are the poor and wretched.
     For us today perhaps the succinct challenge is the haunting last sentence of the above quote from Mt 11:6: “And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.”
     In the messy business of reaching out to the blind, deaf, poor, stroke victims, homeless, immigrants, do we take offense at Jesus by turning away and ignoring it all or attempting to satisfy what we are called to do with a modest check (compared to our income or assets). It haunts me and is a daily struggle. Perhaps our ultimate hope is that we live in such a way that Jesus takes no offense at us.
     I turn to Father Ron Rolheiser’s column in Mississippi Catholic on May 20, 2005. When talking about relating to the poor he reflects, “What Jesus asks of us is simply that we see the poor, that we do not let affluence become a narcotic that knocks out our eye sight.      Riches aren’t bad and poverty isn’t beautiful. But nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.’”
     We so worry about what friends and important people think and say about us. In Luke and Matthew, Jesus in defining himself and his mission tells us what is important. Father Rohlheiser captures it with his special flair.
     We should worry not about a letter of recommendation from the rich and powerful but from the poor. How strange but beautiful this is. How in keeping with the lives of the saints.
     Next time we will see further how the Gospels develop Jesus’ ministry among the poor and oppressed and expand the foundation of Catholic social teachings.
(George Evans is a pastoral minister at Jackson St. Richard Parish. Contact him via evans@saintrichard.com)