[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 141 (Monday, October 18, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12793-S12794]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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    CENTENNIAL OF CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE BROOKLYN-QUEENS DIOCESE

 Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, This year marks the centennial of 
Catholic Charities of the Brooklyn-Queens Diocese, the largest Roman 
Catholic human services agency in the nation. Perhaps on earth. The New 
York Times had the happy thought to mark the occasion with a profile of 
Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan, the vicar of the diocese, who heads Catholic 
Charities. The warmth and wisdom of this great churchman comes through 
so clearly, so forcefully. As Yeats once wrote of such a man, ``he was 
blessed and had the power to bless.'' I have treasured his friendship, 
and share his fears as to the fate of New York's poor when they begin 
to fall off the five-year cliff created by the so-called Welfare Reform 
Act of 1996. We would do well to contemplate the fact that the only 
major social legislation of the 1990s was the abolition of Aid to 
Families of Dependent Children, a provision of the great Social 
Security Act of 1935. We could care for children in the midst of the 
Great Depression of the 1930s, but somehow not in the midst of the 
great prosperity of the 1990s. I spoke at length about the gamble we 
were taking when the legislation was before us. I hope I was wrong. But 
if Joe Sullivan is worried I think we all should be. I know we all 
should be.
  I ask that the story from The Times be included in the Record.
  The story follows.

                [From the New York Times, Oct. 13, 1999]

          Now Pitching for the Rome Team, It's Bishop Sullivan

                           (By Randy Kennedy)

       ``The year was 1948 and a guy says to me, `Hey listen, you 
     think you're such a good pitcher, they're having a tryout for 
     the Phillies. So go.' ''
       And so Joe Sullivan of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, went. ``And the 
     guy asked me to throw the ball. And I could throw pretty 
     hard. And I could throw a fairly decent curve.''
       One thing leads to another ``and they wanted to sign me.''
       If this were the made-for-television version of the life of 
     Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan, this is where the big turning 
     point would come: he chooses God over baseball. He gives up a 
     brilliant pitching career to go to bat for the souls of men.
       But as it turns out, Bishop Sullivan never really liked the 
     baseball life that much anyway. ``It was essentially a boring 
     life,'' he remembers of his one summer canvassing the South 
     in a beaten-up bus and throwing for the Americus Phillies in 
     Georgia. ``You played all night ball in the minor leagues, 
     and you'd kind of lounge around most of the rest of the 
     time.''
       He had always loved the church, however. He was a standout 
     in the choir. He missed being an altar boy only because he 
     was much too proud to stoop to asking Sister Blanche, the nun 
     who made the recommendations. (``Quite bluntly, I felt I 
     wasn't going to kiss . . . you know . . . you know?) But even 
     as a young boy and through high school, he almost never 
     missed a daily Mass at St. Ephrem's. ``I mean,'' he said, ``I 
     bought Catholicism as a young kid. I really believed.''
       So the real turning point in his life, one not of his 
     making, came much later, after he had spent four years at 
     seminary and three years as the pastor of his first parish, 
     Our Lady of Lourdes in Queens Village. The bishop needed 
     social workers.
       ``I got a call on a Tuesday night to see him Wednesday 
     morning. And I was registered for graduate school in social 
     work by Thursday morning. I didn't know what a social 
     worker was.''
       He adds: ``When I went to school and they asked me, `Why 
     did you choose social work?' I said, `Because the bishop 
     appointed me.' The social work people's reaction to that was 
     that I was hostile. I said, `Well, it's the truth. I don't 
     know whether it's hostile or not.'
       ``So then they asked me if I wanted to be a social worker. 
     And the answer was, `No!' ''
       He pauses for a little dramatic effect. ``Best thing that 
     ever happened to me.''
       Yesterday, Bishop Sullivan, an imposing, tough-talking, 
     immensely friendly man, was sitting in a makeshift television 
     studio in Bishop Ford High School in Brooklyn. He was 
     preparing for a live cable show in which he would talk about 
     the centennial, this

[[Page S12794]]

     month, of Catholic Charities of the Brooklyn-Queens Diocese, 
     now the largest Roman Catholic human-services agency in the 
     country, covering America's most populous diocese.
       Despite not knowing what a social worker was back then, 
     Bishop Sullivan has devoted 38 years of his life to the job, 
     serving in welfare offices and hospitals, rising to direct 
     the charities and now serving as vicar for human services, 
     overseeing the charities' vast operations with their 
     director, Frank DeStafano. (Mr. Stefano couldn't resist a dig 
     at the boss yesterday as a reporter sat down: ``Not the 
     baseball thing again. He was only on the team for three days! 
     Myself, I was always dedicated to the poor. No time for any 
     kind of fund like that.'')
       Bishop Sullivan's message to the cable audience yesterday 
     was that he could hope for nothing better during the next 100 
     years of Catholic charity work than for one message to be 
     hammered home: ``To be a practicing Catholic means to be 
     involved in the lives of others.''
       But as he relaxed after the show he had another, angrier 
     message not about personal but about public responsibility: 
     welfare reform. He complained that too few people are talking 
     about its effects now, which he says have hurt the poor in 
     Brooklyn and Queens as much as anything he has seen in three 
     decades of tumultuous change in the boroughs.
       ``I agree,'' he said, ``that it had to be reformed, and I 
     agree that there had to be a change in the culture that work 
     must be more important than relief. But I radically disagree 
     with the way it was done.''
       Four years ago, he and another bishop managed to wangle an 
     hour and 15 minutes in the Oval Office with President 
     Clinton, to try to talk him out of signing the welfare reform 
     legislation. Mr. Clinton said he understood them. Then he 
     signed the measure anyway.
       ``But I will tell you,'' he said, his face coloring, ``that 
     I think most of what is being said about the success of these 
     programs is hype including here in this city. To me it's a 
     sham. You look at the food lines at Catholic Charities. You 
     look at the food lines at parishes. You look at the people 
     trying to pay their rents.''
       He added: ``They haven't heard the last of this. We're only 
     into the third year, and the reality is that there will 
     always be dependent people who can't work.''
       As he socked on a snap-brim hat to run out and give a 
     speech about health care, he was asked whether it ever 
     disheartens him--approaching his 70th year, his 44th as a 
     priest, and nearly as long as a social worker--that there are 
     still so many people suffering.
       ``It might not make any sense but it doesn't,'' he said. 
     ``I really think this job as heaven on . . . way to heaven. 
     It doesn't come in the end. It begins here.''

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