RAUSCH ARCHIVES
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‘We need to rethink our social fabric’
By Fr. John S. Rausch
April 18 , 2008
Not since the Gilded Age of the 1890s has the wealth gap between the rich and poor in the United States been wider. With 469 American billionaires, the richest 1 percent of Americans own 33.4 percent of all U.S. wealth measured as stocks, bonds, cash, real estate and personal possessions.
The bottom 90 percent of all Americans divide only 30.4 percent of the wealth between them. While 37 million Americans live in poverty, most breadwinners among them have jobs, and some have two or more. The numbers seemingly measure only the economic gap, but on deeper reflection they indicate a disturbing trend: the diminishing of the middle class in America.
Harley Shaiken writing for Washington’s Economic Policy Institute described the era, at least until this most recent slowdown, as the Great Disconnect where the economy grew while wages remained flat or even declined. Basically, the gains of productivity were not shared fairly within the economy.
Productivity expanded by a vigorous 20 percent between 2000 and 2006, but real wages edged up only 2 percent during this period. Corporate profits more than doubled since 2001, jumping from 7 percent of national income to 12.2 percent in five years. The ratio of average CEO pay to average worker’s pay in 2006 reached 431 to 1. The gravy train pulled out of the station leaving most workers behind.
Historians credit organized labor in great part for building the American middle class, and hence fostering fuller equality in society. While labor fought against child labor, it campaigned for the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, overtime pay, pensions, health care, safety laws, Social Security and Medicare. For every gain labor achieved, nonunion workers received a ripple effect of improvement as employers raised wages to avoid unionization.
Whereas in the aftermath of World War II one in three workers belonged to unions, today only 12 percent of the workforce (7.4 percent of the private sector and 4.6 percent of government workers) is unionized. The union force that created the dream for a middle class society has not been strong enough to capture the gains of productivity for today’s workers. It could not set human and labor standards for free trade agreements that favor transnational corporations. As a result, jobs go overseas and wages stagnate.
In addition, the decline of the labor movement has crippled the unions’ ability to shape public policy that currently shifts the tax burden away from the rich resulting in shrinking revenues for health care, education and infrastructure projects that benefit the middle class.
Over 20 years ago, the U.S. Catholic bishops issued an economic pastoral letter, “Economic Justice for All.” The extreme free market proponents roundly criticized their teaching about limitations on property rights, because the bishops emphasized accountability toward all the stakeholders that produce wealth in society: workers, managers, shareholders, vendors and the local community.
To build back the middle class means to rethink the rules weaving our social fabric. A 2006 poll conducted by Peter Hart Associates found 58 percent of non-managerial working Americans would join a union if they could, but employers currently possess disproportionate power to prevent a successful union drive.
The pendulum needs to swing back to labor for a fairer society. Also, the tax cuts since 2001 need special scrutiny to avoid contributing to the rise of an American aristocracy with more billionaires. Finally, within the definition of wealth must come a sense of community and a respect for creation.
Rethinking our social fabric ultimately means identifying the threads to weave the common good for a just society.
(Father John Rausch is a Glenmary priest who writes, teaches and organizes in Appalachia.)
Resolve to work for common good this Lent
By Fr. John S. Rausch
February 8 , 2008
Franklin-Covey, a company specializing in personal effectiveness training, conducted its third annual New Year’s Resolutions Survey by polling 15,031 customers. The respondents’ top three resolutions for 2008: 1. Get out of debt or save money, 2. Lose weight, and 3. Develop a healthy habit like exercise or healthy eating.
The survey further reported only 23 percent keep their goals for a year and fully 35 percent break their New Year’s resolutions by the end of January. More than a third said they were too busy to change, and another third shrugged off being committed to them.
Some resolutions on their top 10 list would directly impact loved ones, like Number 6: Spend more time with family and friends, or Number 9: Break an unhealthy habit (e.g. smoking, alcohol, overeating.) Other resolutions would further a career, like Number 4: Get organized, or Number 10: Change employment.
While personal improvement appeals to everyone, people of faith might pause and ask how these resolutions address the biting problems of the world. Is self-improvement another expression of narcissism, or can self-improvement be intentionally linked to the common good?
In short, at the end of 2008 will people be wealthier and look more like fashion models, or will society radiate more human compassion wrapped in a healthier environment with fewer people living in poverty?
Eric Reece, author of “Lost Mountain,” thinks that 2007 will be remembered as the year Americans finally realized the urgency of the global environmental crisis. Last year, Al Gore and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Also last year, scientists learned that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than previously thought. Recently, the phrase “ecological footprint” entered our popular lexicon to highlight the amount of nature needed for our unsustainable consumption choices (Google “Ecological Footprint Quiz.”)
Frequently, resolutions that serve the common good prove compatible with those for personal improvement. A resolution to recycle, for example, will lessen our ecological footprint while encouraging a review of our consumption choices as we sort the bottles and containers.
Turning off lights will save money while sparing the destruction of Appalachia through mountaintop removal. Walking when possible will preserve the atmosphere while adding a few steps of exercise.
However, an emphasis on personal improvement tends to overlook the demands of the larger community. Violence continues to grip our society. At Virginia Tech 33 people were killed in April, 2007, and six months before, five Amish girls were murdered in Pennsylvania. The challenge: To build a culture of non-violence and reconciliation.
Since the average American child views approximately 12,000 murders on television by adolescence, what’s the alternative to teaching problem-solving by killing, war and capital punishment? For one thing, fasting from violent TV would offer time for analysis through reading, study and contemplation.
Ultimately, when more people resolve to get involved and reach out to socially troubled and isolated individuals, our schools and malls will be safer from rampage murders.
Finally, the plight of 37 million Americans in poverty cannot be overcome by one individual’s resolution. However, two public policies would help: universal health care and a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants as recommended by the U.S. Catholic bishops. Both policy changes will require considerable effort, but for someone wanting better employment, these goals represent meaningful work.
By January’s end, most New Year’s resolutions fade. For people of faith Lent, which starts in early February, seems an appropriate time to see past the vanity of personal improvement goals and resolve to work for the common good.
(Father John Rausch is a Glenmary priest who writes, teaches and organizes in Appalachia.)
Bishops advocate ‘responsible transition’ out of Iraq
By Fr. John S. Rausch
January 11, 2008
When the church beatified Franz Jagerstatter on Oct. 26, 2007, it telegraphed an alternative message to a world too easily provoked to war. Political leaders can get it wrong. An individual’s conscience, formed by an intense and prayerful study of the Gospel, remains the final arbiter of human action.
Jagerstatter, an Austrian farmer, refused induction into the German army during World War II, because he knew the war was unjust. No fewer than two priests and one bishop reminded him about his duty to his widowed mother, his wife and three small children, yet he refused military service. When the Nazis guillotined him in 1944, Franz Jagerstatter became the only layman in Germany executed as a conscientious objector (CO).
Today, a growing number of U.S. military personnel are opting for CO status in light of the Iraq War. While the official number of formal applications for CO status remains low, 425 between 2002 to 2006, veterans opposing the war charge the actual number seeking CO status has been underreported due to the difficult application process and peer pressure. Still, military policy recognizes the religious and moral beliefs of service personnel can evolve to a conscientious objection to war.
This Iraq War began under the darkest cloud of moral uncertainty. Recall that John Paul II had grave moral reservations from the start. At the time Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as quoted in 30 Days (April, 2003), summarized the pope’s position saying, “Reasons sufficient for unleashing a war against Iraq did not exist.”
The administration’s paean about the world being safer without Saddam Hussein ignored the moral principle: “the ends do not justify the means.” With no discovery of WMDs (weapons of mass destruction), the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, the use of torture and the ignition of sectarian violence seemingly exacerbated by the U.S. occupation of Iraq, military personnel could easily have the needed epiphany to push them to seek CO status.
The U.S. Catholic bishops this past November advocated a “responsible transition” out of Iraq. They rejected the polarizing caricatures of “stay the course” and “cut and run.” They also counseled against establishing permanent military bases in Iraq, or controlling Iraqi oil resources. Bishop William Skylstad, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) president said, “Our nation must now focus more on the ethics of exit than on the ethics of intervention.”
The ethics of exit underscores the U.S. obligation to address the humanitarian crisis it helped create. To build the peace means to repair the damage. Currently, two million Iraqis have fled their country, including 40 percent of all professionals and 33 percent of all doctors. Another two million Iraqis are displaced within their country, allowing only 30 percent of Iraqi children to attend school last year.
On the home front, a relatively small percentage of the American people are assuming the greatest burdens of this war. With the number of U.S. soldiers killed approaching 4,000 and almost 30,000 wounded, many of the 160,000 U.S. troops are serving their second, third, or even fourth combat tours.
The prolonged overseas tours of duty predictably are stressing marriages and increasing the incidents of post-traumatic stress disorder. Dealing with the destruction around them and the stress within them, soldiers must form their consciences about war.
Bishop Skyltsad said, “Our nation must also make provisions for those who in conscience exercise their right to conscientious objection or selective conscientious objection.”
At Sunday liturgy, people of faith frequently pray for the safety of our troops. Perhaps the petitions need to include those in the military suffering moral anguish who feel this war is wrong.
(Father John Rausch is a Glenmary priest who writes, teaches and organizes in Appalachia.)
Single-payer system for health care sounds good
By Fr. John S. Rausch
November 23 , 2007
Michael Moore’s movie, “Sicko,” opens with a man sewing up his own leg-wound because he lacks health insurance. The audience then learns that 18,000 Americans without health insurance die each year. Those with insurance still face a managed care system that gives a bonus to doctors with a high rate of treatment-denials.
One doctor confesses in her testimony that in 1987 she denied a man a necessary operation that caused his death. Her company told her she was “not denying care, just denying payment.”
At my video store, “Sicko” was tagged “comedy.” Given that the movie unabashedly promotes universal health care to save lives, is Michael Moore a comedian or a contemporary moralist?
The numbers reveal a sick medical delivery system getting sicker. Reuters reports the number of Americans lacking health insurance rose to 47 million, a spike of 8.6 million from 2000 to 2006. For workers, erosion in employer-provided health insurance registered its sixth straight year of decline leaving just 71 percent of the workforce with health insurance, down from 75 percent in 2000.
With so many Americans uninsured, the U.S. still has the most expensive health care system in the world. In 2004 U.S. per capita spending on health care averaged $6,280, which amounted to 16 percent of GDP. In comparison, other countries with universal health care spent far less staying healthy: Canada 10 percent, Australia 9 percent and England 7 percent.
Because our patchwork medical delivery system misses people, we rank poorly in the World Health Organization’s latest survey that puts the U.S. as 37th among nations for quality health care. Our infant mortality rate with 77 babies on average dying every day in the U.S. rates us 42nd in the world. Life expectancy is shorter in the U.S. than all but 34 countries. Canadians with universal health care live three years longer than we do.
In essence, universal health care is neither an economic nor health issue. It is a moral issue. The Catholic Health Association (CHA), rooted in the church’s social teachings, maintains that health care remains the service of healing that can never simply be a business. To affirm human dignity health care cannot merely be a consumer good, but must be a “birth right,” hence, a human right.
A strictly market based medical system has failed to deliver. The free market approach has created a two-class system with some patients receiving the most advanced medical care in the world and others going without.
Talking with primary health providers in clinics throughout Appalachia – the ones who treat the uninsured and people not covered by Medicare or Medicaid, I hear resounding support for a single-payer system (SPS) for health care.
With more than half of America’s low-wage workers (those making less than $20,000 a year) without health insurance, people of faith are seeing universal health care as a matter of justice that could be addressed by SPS. It eliminates out-of-pocket payments, preserves free choice of providers and establishes public accountability.
SPS is not socialized medicine, but a government-run payment system. The plan pays the medical provider directly without relying on an insurance intermediary. Currently between 15 to 30 percent of health premiums in the private sector go to overhead and profits, while a single-payer system, like Medicare, spends only 2 percent of its revenue on administrative costs.
When one million people file for bankruptcy each year because of medical bills – with 68 percent of them having health insurance when they filed, the system is sick. Advocating for SPS represents the needed therapy for this strained system.
(Father John Rausch is a Glenmary priest who writes, teaches and organizes in Appalachia.)
Commons generally provide equal access to services
By Fr. John S. Rausch
November 2 , 2007
In 1903 John Muir took President Teddy Roosevelt on a three-day camping trip to the Yosemite wilderness. There among the ancient sequoias and cascading waterfalls, Muir convinced T.R. to preserve the beauty before them.
Later Roosevelt would argue the concept of democracy includes future generations, because it would be undemocratic to diminish the nation’s resources for present profit: “We do not intend our natural resources to be exploited by the few against the interests of the many.”
A millennium and a half before, in 528 C.E., Roman Emperor Justinian proclaimed, “By the law of nature these things are common to all humanity: the air, running water, the sea and consequently the shores of the sea.” Justinian’s code, widely known as the Public Trust Doctrine, insured the heritage of all citizens by protecting the commons.
The commons describe the many resources we own collectively. Some commons represent physical assets like the global atmosphere, ecosystems, mountains, roads, wildlife and clean water, while other commons comprise public institutions like libraries, museums, schools and government agencies.
Unlike markets, where people need money to participate, the commons generally provide equal access to a resource. The children of the poor can enjoy the playground at a city park, while the kids of the wealthy may own their own Jungle Jim set. This access to a park represents a civic or social right and not a privilege enjoyed by only the elite.
Today, however, the commons face a threat to their very existence by an untrammeled spirit of privatization. After three decades of portraying government as inept, beginning with President Reagan’s famous statement, “Government is the problem,” privatization has become the solution.
Advocates of privatization see laissez-faire individualism and free market economics as offering efficiency, smaller-sized government and greater individual choice – appealing sound bites. In reality, the commons pass into private hands, especially to corporations, and the people, not government, lose.
Indiana leased its 157-mile Indiana Toll Road with hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks to a foreign consortium for the next 75 years for $3.8 billion. Economist Roger Skurski valued the road over that period at $11.38 billion.
After 2010 the consortium can raise the tolls by a specified percentage each year which drivers can either pay or drive the alternative, clogged circuitous routes between Toledo and Chicago.
The myth persists: corporations are inherently more efficient than government. That comparison mixes grapefruits with avocados. In the global economy, corporations pledge loyalty to their shareholders, not necessarily to the country or the common good.
Corporate efficiency comes largely from paying lower wages to employees and occasionally from shortcutting the suppliers they buy from and cheapening the products they deliver. The savings from this efficiency not infrequently find their way into extravagant executive compensations and higher profits.
Conversely, government has an obligation to serve everyone, including those needing higher cost services, such as rural postal patrons. Responsible legislators using the ability-to-pay principle can raise taxes to insure delivering public services and preserving the commons for all.
If lawmakers avoid the tax debate and choose privatization, corporations will cherry-pick the most profitable parts of a public service and leave the most costly for government.
Government at all levels is experiencing the push for corporate takeovers in schools, parks, prisons, hospitals, tax collection, environmental protection, police work and military forces.
During this assault on the commons, people of faith need to ask in a moral context: are there any functions, or responsibilities, of society that should never be outsourced for profit – but rather preserved for future generations?
(Father John Rausch is a Glenmary priest who writes, teaches and organizes in Appalachia.)
Don't look away from Darfur
By Fr. John S. Rausch
August 31 , 2007
Nothing quenches a thirst like cool water, whether it’s PepsiCo’s Aquafina (13 percent of the bottled water market), or Coca-Cola’s Desina (11percent of the market), or a specialty water from Nestle. Every day millions of Americans grab a clear plastic bottle of water from the cooler at a convenience store, or pull a case of it from the shelves at their local supermarket. Toting water has become as indispensable for some people as carrying a cell phone.
The $15 billion a year industry has grown from a marketing approach evoking purity, natural springs and the great outdoors. In 1976 the average American drank 1.6 gallons of bottled water, but 30 years later consumption jumped to 28.3 gallons. Within a decade bottled water is projected to surpass the current 52.9 gallons per year consumption rate of soda.
While drinking water rather than soda offers positive health benefits, the delivery of individual servings of water in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles brings a headache to landfills. Americans used 50 billion PET bottles last year, about 167 per person, but recycled only 23 percent of them. Landfills got the other 38 billion. Add to this the pollution from moving one billion bottles of water weekly by ship, truck and train, and bottled water represents a genuine environmental concern.
Fiji Water comes from the islands of Fiji, which lie roughly 8,000 miles from New York. The bottles for the Fiji Water nearly double the trip because first they are brought to Fiji, filled, then shipped to their final destination. Transportation represents fully half the wholesale cost of Fiji Water. In addition, the Fiji Water plant further impacts the environment because it operates 24 hours a day requiring uninterrupted electricity that the factory supplies with three large generators run by diesel fuel.
The bottled water closest to home comes from Aquafina and Dasani because they start with the local municipal water throughout the country. Both Pepsi and Coca-Cola add an energy-intensive filtration process to insure purity and consistency. As researcher Charles Fishman writes: “They are recleaning already-clean tap water.”
Despite safe, clean municipal water in the U.S. costing pennies per gallon, many consumers still choose to buy water at twice the price of gasoline. For some, bottled water represents convenience, for others, status and for still others, matters of health.
The marketplace sees purchasing bottled water as a consumer choice, but people of faith reject the “it’s-my-money” argument. Water “constitutes an essential element of life” – according to Benedict XVI’s 2007 Message for World Water Day – and “water cannot be treated as just another commodity.” The principles of subsidiarity and solidarity paint a larger picture about the global water supply.
Worldwide, one billion people lack safe water and everyday over 3,000 children die from diseases caused by unhealthy water. While Fiji Water ships one million bottles of water per day, more than half the people in Fiji lack safe, reliable drinking water. By purchasing bottled water that promotes profits over the public good, i.e. the privatization of water, the consumer can encourage the disregard for local community rights (subsidiarity) to provide safe drinking water for all.
In addition, solidarity requires examining present patterns of water delivery with its pollution and waste in light of future generations, because today’s convenience might produce tomorrow’s hangover.
While promoting greater water drinking for health reasons, we can responsibly tap safe local supplies using additional filters and refillable bottles. If giving a cup of cold water brings God’s blessing (Mat 10:42), how much more will insuring safe water for all with the minimum of pollution?
(Father John Rausch is a Glenmary priest who writes, teaches and organizes in Appalachia.)
(Father John Rausch is a Glenmary priest who writes, teaches and organizes in Appalachia.)
Don't look away from Darfur
By Fr. John S. Rausch
July 20 , 2007
Falling refrigerators dropped from planes plus old car chassis and kegs of nails raining down on innocent civilians during aerial bombardments are cited as some of the Sudanese government’s weird war tactics in the “Unity Statement” of Save Darfur, a coalition of over one hundred groups including the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops.
The bizarre bombings coupled with the more horrifying strategems of razing villages, raping women, murdering boys and attacking food and water supplies describe the atrocities perpetrated on villagers by government troops and their shadow military partners known as the Janjaweed.
Yet again, the world watches in horror. This time Darfur approaches a tragic genocide similar to Rwanda’s a decade earlier.
The quick facts: over 400,000 Darfurian civilians have died – an estimated 150,000 from violent attacks and 250,000 from disease and starvation. About 2.8 million have been displaced within Sudan and another 250,000 have fled abroad, mainly to Chad where they face further violence.
Ninety percent of the villages of Darfur’s targeted ethnic groups have been destroyed. Approximately 3.6 million people are dependent on international humanitarian assistance, but a third of those in need are beyond the reach of humanitarian workers.
The bloodletting began in 2003 when rebels from Darfur challenged the government for genuine political representation, investment in their impoverished region and a share of potential oil revenues. Sudan’s government, widely considered one of the most repressive regimes in the world, responded by arming and supporting a militia, the Janjaweed, to fight on its side against the rebel insurgents.
The Janjaweed, a colloquialism translated as “horsemen with guns,” or “evil horsemen,” represents a mob of armed thugs more than a militia that has rampaged through villages and towns killing and raping.
Drawn mainly from pastoral peoples of different tribes, the Janjaweed are attacking the farmers in the Darfur region to gain access to land and water for their herds. The government for its part promotes regional instability to maintain its grip on power and its eye on oil reserves.
The international community raises largely ceremonial protests, while jealously guarding its individual self-interests. The world community has indeed supplied humanitarian aid, but has stopped short of exerting substantive political clout.
Critics charge that although the U.S. has labeled the situation “genocide,” behind the scenes it avoids spoiling relationships with Khartoum because it wants useful information about terrorists in the region.
China, on the other hand, derives fully 10 percent of its oil from Sudan. In terms of trade, Sudan represents China’s third largest trading partner in Africa, and since the 1990s China has sold arms and weapons to Sudan. Human rights organizations have reported sighting Chinese-made small arms weapons and military trucks used by government and Janjaweed forces in Darfur.
The enormity of the suffering in Darfur staggers the mind, but Martin Luther King Jr. warns us against “the paralysis of analysis.” Save Darfur suggests a few doable steps: 1) send money to appropriate humanitarian relief organizations; 2) divest in companies investing in Sudan; and 3) petition Congress to call on China to pressure the Khartoum government to end the violence.
For people of faith, charity demands we help the victims of Darfur immediately, yet justice beckons us to step back and develop greater foresight to prevent future Darfurs. What are the humanitarian principles that should trigger economic and political responses before a crisis develops, even at the expense of our own self-interest?
How can we utilize the International Criminal Court to deter genocide and war crimes? How can we stop looking away when the crisis is not in our own backyard?
(Father John Rausch is a Glenmary priest who writes, teaches and organizes in Appalachia.)
Problem: Not guns but people with guns
By Fr. John S. Rausch
May 25, 2007
Virginia Tech University recently conferred 27 diplomas posthumously on the students killed in the April 16 shootings. The granting of degrees to those slain represented another step in healing the brokenness that gun violence brought to that campus.
Although the 32 deaths at Virginia Tech represented the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, commentators quickly recalled the 13 deaths at Columbine High School in 1999 and the 5 Amish girls killed in Pennsylvania last fall. Analysts ask: why.
Some shooters appear mentally disturbed, some loners, some rebellious and angry. The common thread: everyone of the shooters had easy access to high-powered firearms.
The number of guns in the U.S. has quadrupled from 54 million in 1950 to over 222 million today including 76 million handguns. The U.S. far exceeds the industrialized nations in gun deaths because of its level of lethal firepower. More than 30,000 people die each year from gunshot wounds through murder, suicide and accidents.
However, the National Opinion Research Center reports that currently gun ownership continues to decline as support for firearms control rises, even after 9/11. Whereas in the mid 1970s modern household gun ownership peaked at 55 percent, by 2006 that number dropped to 35 percent. Researchers suspect that fewer people hunt for recreation and, with a declining crime rate, fewer home owners buy guns for protection.
People of faith view violence in a holistic way. The U.S. Catholic bishops in their 1994 statement, “Confronting a Culture of Violence: A Catholic Framework for Action,” said, “Violence in our culture is fed by multiple forces . . . We have to address simultaneously declining family life and the increasing availability of deadly weapons, the lure of gangs and the slavery of addiction, the absence of real opportunity, budget cuts adversely affecting the poor, and the loss of moral values.”
The root causes of violence challenge the very economic fabric of society. Poverty breeds violence. Lack of decent jobs seeds frustration. The widening income gap leaves those left behind feeling like losers.
The forces of globalization with its outsourcing of middle income jobs and its undercutting of union strength diminish family life when the market demands more than one wage earner for the family to survive.
Weakened family life invites the pseudo-security of gang membership, and additive substances offer a quick escape from harsh life choices and economic failure.
Society in general contributes to this moral breakdown by solving problems with violence. Abortion and capital punishment appear as quick fixes. The U.S. military budget now ranks larger than the combined defense budgets of every other nation in the world, and our foreign policy makers rely more on the stick than negotiations, thus modeling problem-solving with violence.
Heavy doses of violence spew forth from the media, TV, movies and video games. Child advocates claim the average U.S. child views 12,000 to 15,000 murders on television by adolescence, and talk-radio regularly traffics in anti-black, anti-Arab, anti-gay and anti-female rhetoric that further coarsens society.
Fear of terrorism funds the arms manufacturers that ever increases the budget of the military. Fear for personal safety enriches the gun industry, while its lobbyists campaign to neutralize state and federal gun laws.
Then, when someone tragically murders multiple numbers of people at a school or mall, public analysis turns to mental health issues and psychopathic behavior-topics that need attention in our society without waiting for a violent act.
Yet few acknowledge that the anti-social or psychotic behavior of the perpetrator caused such carnage and death, because he had such easy access to guns.
(Father John Rausch is a Glenmary priest who writes, teaches and organizes in Appalachia.) |
