Appreciation The legacy of a workers
champion
By GERALD RENNER
Msgr. George Gilmary Higgins died May 1 at the age of 86 after
more than half a century as a leading advocate for workers rights, economic and
social justice and better interfaith relations.
He was hospitalized with a severe infection Jan. 19 just hours
after he gave a lively talk in a social justice workshop in his boyhood parish
of St. Francis Xavier in LaGrange, Ill.
Higgins built a 58-year-long ministry based in Washington that was
unique, beginning with his appointment in 1944 as a social action official for
the U.S. Catholic bishops through his most recent role as professor emeritus of
The Catholic University of America.
He worked tirelessly to elevate the dignity and better the
economic status of working people through their right to form trade unions. He
championed civil rights and sought to improve the relationship between
Catholics and Jews.
A confidant and adviser to leaders in labor, church and state,
Higgins exercised a behind-the-scenes role as an advocate of social justice.
Over the years he sided with the causes of migrant farm workers, steelworkers,
miners, janitors, maids, teachers, nurses and others. He occasionally joined a
picket line but more often accomplished his goal by talking and listening to
all sides in a dispute.
He was honored with a string of awards in recent years, including
a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian award,
conferred by President Clinton in 2000.
Applied church teaching
For more than 60 years now, he has organized, marched,
prayed and bled for the social and economic justice of working Americans,
the president said as he presented the award.
At graduation ceremonies last May, the University of Notre Dame
awarded him the 2001 Laetare Medal, given annually to a Catholic for
contributions to society.
Higgins made his views widely known through The
Yardstick, a weekly column he wrote for 56 years that appeared in many
diocesan newspapers. While frequently devoted to labor issues, the column also
commented on the application of church teaching to a wide range of peace and
justice issues, including human rights, racism and anti-Semitism. Only when he
was afflicted with macular degeneration, an incurable eye disease, did he give
up the column last year.
In his last column written for Labor Day in September, he said
with typical modesty that a review of his topics reminded me that on many
issues I was more or less on target, but that on others I was wide of the mark,
if not completely wrong.
But Higgins never lost faith that the best way workers
rights could be advanced was through organizing, even as the manufacturing base
of the nation narrowed and union membership declined.
His position led him into confrontations with Catholic hospitals
and other institutions that have been resistant, as unions in recent years
turned to nonprofit organizations to organize.
A Christian community that fails to respect the dignity of
its own employees is a contradiction in terms -- or, in any event, will be
perceived as such by its disaffected workers. This is not to say workers must
belong to a union to have a sense of their own dignity. It is to say, however,
that their right to organize must be respected, Higgins wrote in
The Yardstick in 2000.
He often reminded American Catholics that they should not forget
their immigrant roots and that new immigrants who are mostly low-wage workers
need the support of the church.
Time to change course
He said at Notre Dame when he received the Laetare Medal that the
argument that church efforts to help the poor should be only spiritual
finds no support anywhere in the entire corpus of Catholic social
teaching, least of all in the social teaching of Pope John Paul II.
In the same address he chided conservative Catholics, saying,
It remains to be seen when, if ever, American conservatives and
neo-conservatives will respond in practice, as opposed to pure theory, to the
popes strong endorsement of trade unions. In recent years, too many of
our leading conservatives and neo-conservatives have been thunderously silent
on this issue. ... The time has come to change course and belatedly come out
loud and clear in support of the legitimate goals of organized labor.
The son of a Chicago postal worker who was a staunch labor
supporter and student of papal social encyclicals, Higgins was born in La
Grange on Jan. 21, 1916. He entered Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago
when he was 13. He took the confirmation name Gilmary in tribute, he explained,
to John Gilmary Shea, a preeminent historian of the American Catholic church,
who was Notre Dames first recipient of the Laetare Medal in 1883.
Ordained in 1940, the young priest studied at The Catholic
University of America, where he was awarded a doctorate in labor economics in
1944. He was invited to serve as a summer replacement for a sick staff member
of the National Catholic Welfare Conference but stayed for 36 years, going
through the bodys reorganization in the late 1960s as the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference.
He was made papal chamberlain with the title of monsignor in 1953
and a domestic prelate in 1959 and was a consultant at the Second Vatican
Council.
He played a key role in the U.S. bishops 1969 decision to
form a special committee to mediate the bitter dispute between grape growers
and the fledgling United Farm Workers union. As a consultant to the committee,
he played a central role in bringing the growers and workers to the negotiating
table in the early 1970s.
Ministry of presence
The committees field representative, who spent countless
days crisscrossing the state with Higgins, was a young California priest named
Roger Mahony, now the cardinal archbishop of Los Angeles. Upon Higgins
death, Mahony said that his legacy as the champion of workers, especially
the poorest of workers, will be recorded in history as nothing but phenomenal
-- and, I am certain, never to be duplicated.
In 1980 Higgins was invited by Catholic University to lecture for
both the School of Social Science and the Department of Theology. He taught
there as a lecturer on labor and social ethics until 1994 and as a professor
emeritus until 2000, when he moved to a nearby retirement home for priests.
But he continued his support for the labor movement. Often in a
wheelchair because of hip problems in recent years, he continued to attend
major union conventions and give his advice when asked.
He often referred to his work in the labor movement as simply a
ministry of presence. When he was asked in a 1994 interview to list
two or three of his greatest accomplishments with labor, he said, I tend
not to think in those terms. Ive always felt that my role, a limited
role, was ... just to be there, to be present, to give them support.
He particularly took heart at the stepped up activity of the
Chicago-based National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice, which in recent
years has revitalized links between religion and labor, as unions moved into
the nonprofit field.
In November, the committee honored him as the labor
movements parish priest at a testimonial dinner at the AFL-CIO
headquarters in Washington (NCR, Nov. 23, 2001).
Bishop Joseph A. Fiorenza of Galveston-Houston, then president of
the bishops conference, told the assemblage of bishops, labor leaders and
friends, If there is a more respected priest in this country than George
Higgins, I have not heard of him. ... Msgr. Higgins has no peers in this
country today who can match his contribution to the Catholic churchs
involvement in social justice for workers.
AFL-CIO President John F. Sweeney said, He has been an
irresistible force in bringing labor and church together. ... We respect him
for his strength, we revere him for his conscience, we stand in awe of his
intellect and we thank him for his love.
Catholic News Service contributed to this report.
Gerald Renner, a former religion writer for The
Hartford Courant, is a freelance writer living in
Connecticut.
National Catholic Reporter, May 10,
2002
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