[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 96 (Tuesday, July 16, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1263]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      MONSIGNOR GEORGE C. HIGGINS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. DAVID R. OBEY

                              of wisconsin

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 16, 2002

  Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, in the tumult of recent events, the passing of 
a great man did not receive as much attention as it should have. 
Monsignor George C. Higgins died on May 1.
  More than any other clergyman in this century, Monsignor Higgins 
personified the moral obligation that a just society has to honor work 
and workers. To me he more than anyone else over his long lifetime 
personified the demand for justice that should permeate our whole 
society.
  E.J. Dionne, the thoughtful Washington Post columnist, wrote a 
splendid column on the death of Monsignor Higgins. I commend it to my 
colleagues.

                          The Great Monsignor

       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 1930s 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 every 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 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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