[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 67 (Wednesday, May 22, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E880-E882]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          MONSIGNOR GEORGE C. HIGGINS: AMERICA'S LABOR PRIEST

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JOHN J. LaFALCE

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, May 21, 2002

  Mr. LaFALCE.  Mr. Speaker, America lost its preeminent ``labor 
priest'' on May 1st when Monsignor George C. Higgins died at the age of 
86 after a half-century career in the Nation's Capital devoted to the 
cause of social justice and the rights of labor. As head of the 
Catholic Bishop's Social Action Department for 35 years, Msgr. Higgins 
was an influential church figure and respected authority on the labor 
movement who dedicated his life to promoting the rights of workers 
around the world.
  No one did more to advance the church's social teachings on a just 
economy and the rights of working people. Msgr. Higgins brought the 
church and labor closer together by showing working men and women that 
the church's social teaching was on their side--that work must be 
valued and workers honored, and that a just society demands that 
workers have the right to organize and bargain collectively.
  Generations of American workers--who never knew his name--owe 
Monsignor Higgins a debt of gratitude for devoting his life to fighting 
injustice and defending their rights.
  I would like to insert in the Record for the benefit of my colleagues 
the following statements by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and 
by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney on Msgr. Higgins death, and an essay 
by E.J. Dionne entitled ``The Great Monsignor.''

   Msgr. George Higgins, Dean of Church Social Action Movement, Dies

       Washington (May 1, 2002).--Msgr. George G. Higgins, the 
     ``labor priest'' who was generally regarded as the dean of 
     the U.S. Church's social action ministry for the last half 
     century, died May 1 at the age of 86.
       After a long illness, Msgr. Higgins died at the home of his 
     sister, Bridget Doonan, in LaGrange, Illinois, his native 
     city. He had returned to LaGrange in January to speak at St. 
     Francis Xavier Church, the parish in which he was raised. 
     After delivering the talk on January 19, he fell ill with a 
     severe infection and was hospitalized for a period of three 
     months.
       ``Msgr. George Higgins was without parallel the authority 
     on the Church's social teaching and on labor-management 
     issues,'' said Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, President of the 
     United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). ``He 
     was a forceful and articulate figure in the Church and a 
     major influence on the lives of several generations of 
     Catholics dedicated to the cause of social justice. He was, 
     above all, a good and dedicated priest. I pray for the repose 
     of his soul and for the consolation of his family and the 
     many persons in all walks of life to whom he will always be a 
     vibrant and lasting inspiration.''
       A priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, who spent 60 years 
     of his life working in the nation's capital, Msgr. Higgins 
     was probably the best known and most influential priest in 
     the United States. He was widely admired within the Church 
     and in the secular realm for his knowledge of the labor 
     movement, ecumenism, Catholic-Jewish relations and many other 
     fields, and for his talents as a skillful negotiator.
       ``The best informed priest in the United States,'' as U.S. 
     Church historian John

[[Page E881]]

     Tracy Ellis once described him, Msgr. Higgins was an advisor 
     to labor leaders and presidential commissions, a friend to 
     bishops and to everyday Catholic people. Above all, he was a 
     champion of ordinary men and women and of the workers' right 
     to organize.
       He headed the Social Action Department of the Catholic 
     Bishops' Conference for 35 years, and his syndicated column, 
     ``The Yardstick,'' appeared in Catholic papers from 1945 
     until he penned his last piece in September, 2001, by which 
     time macular degeneration had seriously impeded his vision. 
     By then he had written nearly 3,000 columns. Most were on 
     some aspect of the labor movement but his range of topics was 
     vast. He had a special interest in Catholic-Jewish relations.
       Msgr. Higgins was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of 
     Chicago in 1940. He came to Washington to study at the 
     Catholic University of America, where he earned a doctorate 
     in economics and political science, and took on a supposedly 
     temporary position with the Social Action Department of the 
     National Catholic Welfare Conference, as the United States 
     Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was then known. The 
     following year he became assistant director of the department 
     and, in 1956, its director.
       While guiding that office, he used his column to teach on a 
     wide variety of topics important to the Church, while using 
     his personality and old-fashioned political skills to mediate 
     labor disputes from coast to coast. He counseled Cesar Chavez 
     and the United Farm Workers, and was a mediator between 
     workers and growers in California and the Midwest. For 35 
     years he was chairman of the United Auto Workers' Public 
     Review Board, an agency that handles grievances between rank 
     and file workers and the union.
       Msgr. Higgins was a peritus (expert) at all four sessions 
     of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and was on the 
     preparatory commission which drafted the council's laity 
     document, the first U.S. priest to receive such an 
     assignment. He became one of the best known interpreters of 
     the Council to the English-speaking world as a daily member 
     of the U.S. Bishops' press panel. After retiring from the 
     Bishops' Conference in 1980, Msgr. Higgins was an adjunct 
     lecturer in the Theology Department of the Catholic 
     University of America, 1980-1994, and later professor 
     emeritus.
       Msgr. Higgins received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 
     White House ceremonies in 2000. The previous year he was 
     awarded the Laetare Medal, the highest honor given by the 
     University of Notre Dame.
       In June, 2001, the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison 
     Committee (sponsored by the Holy See and the International 
     Jewish Committee for Interregiligous Consultations) honored 
     Msgr. Higgins as one of the great pioneers of the dialogue 
     worldwide.
       A dinner planned as a tribute to Msgr. Higgins last 
     September 11 was postponed, but a reception in his honor was 
     held two months later at the time of the U.S. Bishops' fall 
     meeting. It was co-hosted by Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza, then 
     President of the Bishops' Conference, and Mr. John Sweeney, 
     President of the AFL-CIO.
       The Mass of Christina Burial will be celebrated on Tuesday, 
     May 7, at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. A visitation and 
     Liturgy of the Eucharist will be celebrated at St. Francis 
     Xavier, La Grante, May 6.
                                  ____


  Statement by AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney Upon the Passing of 
                          Msgr. George Higgins

       How like Msgr. George Higgins for his last day on earth to 
     have been on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker--and 
     International Worker's Day!
       Throughout his entire life, this ``labor priest,'' as we 
     fondly and admiringly referred to him, fought for and lifted 
     the lives of working men and women--hundreds of thousands of 
     them. Wherever working people were joining together to build 
     a better life, George Higgins was there. He prayed with 
     striking miners in Wyoming, celebrated an organizing victory 
     with meat cutters in Texas, stood with hospital workers and 
     mediated between farm workers and grape growers in 
     California, and testified on Catholic social teaching in a 
     case before the Education Labor Relations Board in Illinois.
       More than any other American in the 20th century, Msgr. 
     Higgins argued that Christian beliefs must prominently 
     include the notion that work must be valued and workers 
     honored. His preaching on Catholic social teaching educated 
     generations of leaders within his church and helped them 
     apply the justice Gospel in their own areas.
       And for more than 60 years, Msgr. Higgins championed the 
     right of working men and women to join freely in unions to 
     improve their lives, giving unremitting energy and effort and 
     vision and wisdom to American's unions, in good as well as 
     challenging years.
       One venue for his inspiration was AFL-CIO conventions, at 
     which he delivered invocations for more than 20 years. In 
     1999, in the opening invocation at the community convocation 
     preceding our Los Angeles convention, he spoke of his belief 
     in organizing as a path of justice:
       ``We will not have a decent society in the United States 
     until a much larger percentage of the workers are organized 
     into unions,'' he said.
       Msgr. Higgins was a certain force in bringing labor and the 
     church closer together, and his efforts over many years laid 
     the ground work for the strong and growing partnership 
     between the union movement and the National Interfaith 
     Committee for Worker Justice.
       And while his preaching of the justice Gospel won him well-
     deserved praise, his pastoral attention to working families 
     was also remarkable: many who suffered disappointment or 
     disillusion were uplifted by his resolute faith in the reign 
     of God and hopefulness in God's ultimate triumph over 
     injustice. When I visited with him last Saturday I was struck 
     by the gifts Msgr. Higgins had given to so many of us who 
     were privileged to know him.
       All workers--whether they are farm workers, health care 
     workers, poultry workers, steel workers, immigrants, people 
     of color, whites, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim or Protestant--owe 
     a debt of gratitude to Msgr. Higgins.
       So while we are saddened by his passing, we are--even more 
     so--ever mindful of and deeply grateful for the conscience, 
     courage, intellect and love that Msgr. George Higgins 
     committed to America's workers and America's unions.

                                  ____
                                  

                          The Great Monsignor

                          (By E.J. Dionne Jr.)

       There is no such thing as a timely death. But just when you 
     thought all the stories on American priests were destined to 
     be about evil committed and covered up, one of the truly 
     great priests was called to his eternal reward.
       Monsignor George G. Higgins was the sort of Catholic 
     clergyman regularly cast as a hero in movies of the 1940s and 
     '50s. He was an uncompromising pro-labor priest who walked 
     picket lines, fought anti-Semitism, supported civil rights 
     and wrote and wrote and wrote in the hope that some of his 
     arguments about social justice might penetrate somewhere.
       He got attached to causes before they became fashionable, 
     and stuck with them after the fashionable people moved on. 
     Cesar Chavez once said that no one had done more for American 
     farm workers than Monsignor Higgins. In the 1980s, he 
     traveled regularly to Poland in support of Solidarity's 
     struggle against communism and became an important link 
     between American union leaders and their Polish brethren.
       As it happens, even the day of Monsignor Higgins's death, 
     at the age of 86, was appropriate. He passed from this world 
     on May 1, the day that many countries set aside to honor 
     labor and that the Catholic Church designates as the Feast of 
     St. Joseph the Worker.
       If Higgins had been there when that famous carpenter was 
     looking for a place to spend the night with his pregnant 
     wife, the monsignor would certainly have taken the family in. 
     He would also have handed Joseph a union card, told him he 
     deserved better pay and benefits, and insisted that no 
     working person should ever have to beg for shelter.
       Yes, Higgins sounds so old-fashioned--and in ever good 
     sense he was--that you might wonder about his relevance to 
     our moment. Let us count the ways.
       One of the most astonishing and disturbing aspects of the 
     Catholic Church's current scandal is the profound 
     disjunction--that's a charitable word--between what the 
     church preaches about sexuality and compassion toward the 
     young and how its leaders reacted to the flagrant violation 
     of these norms by priests.
       Higgins, who spent decades as the Catholic Church's point 
     man on labor and social-justice issues, hated the idea of 
     preachers' exhorting people to do one thing and then doing 
     the opposite. And so he made himself into a true pain for any 
     administrator of any Catholic institution who resisted the 
     demands of workers for fair pay and union representation.
       ``These men and women mop the floors of Catholic schools, 
     work in Catholic hospital kitchens and perform other 
     sometimes menial tasks in various institutions,'' he once 
     wrote. ``They have not volunteered to serve the church for 
     less than proportionate compensation.''
       ``The church has a long history of speaking out on justice 
     and peace issues,'' he said. ``Yet only in more recent times 
     has the church made it clear that these teachings apply as 
     well to the workings of its own institutions.''
       Where some religious leaders complain that they get caught 
     up in scandal because they are unfairly held to higher 
     standards, Higgins believed that higher standards were 
     exactly the calling of those who claim the authority to tell 
     others what to do.
       It bothered Higgins to the end of his life that the cause 
     of trade unionism had become so unfashionable, especially 
     among well-educated and well-paid elites. For 56 years, he 
     wrote a column for the Catholic press, and he returned to 
     union issues so often that he once felt obligated to headline 
     one of his offerings: ``Why There's So Much Ado About Labor 
     in My Column.''
       His answer was simple: ``I am convinced that we are not 
     likely to have a fully free or democratic society over the 
     long haul without a strong and effective labor movement.''
       To those who saw collective bargaining as outdated in a new 
     economy involving choice, mobility and entrepreneurship, 
     Higgins would thunder back about the rights of those for whom 
     such a glittering world was still, at best, a distant 
     possibility: hospital workers, farm workers, fast-food 
     workers and others who need higher wages to help their 
     children

[[Page E882]]

     reach their dreams. He could not abide well-paid 
     intellectuals who regularly derided unions as dinosaurs, and 
     he told them so, over and over.
       It is one of the highest callings of spiritual leaders to 
     force those who live happy and comfortable lives to consider 
     their obligations to those heavily burdened by injustice and 
     deprivation. It is a great loss when such prophetic voices 
     are stilled by scandal and the cynicism it breeds. 
     Fortunately, that never happened to Higgins. He never had to 
     shut up about injustice and, God bless him, he never did.

     

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