The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1918-05-04
Continued from page IL
The Teaching Function of
the Bishop

/ ne ACdCuIuS uNGGAOM Va
the Bishop
! ally averted, the teachings Of Leo
must be brought home to the workers
of the world and to all the employers
of labor. A great educational cam
| paign should be waged, not only in
our schools, colleges and universities,
but in all our societies of men and
women, in the pulpit and in the press.
The bishop is the natural leader in
! that campaign. His enlightened zeal
will lend it inspiration and his patient
efforts will crown it with success.
Let it be admitted that there are
many and great evils in our present
industrial system. But this is not the
! fault either of the Church or Of the
| system itself 1t is due to. the moral
! degeneracy consequent upon a decay
of religious belief and to the spirit
Of greed and pleasure fostered by the
great industrial expansion of the last
century. In the Middle Ages, when
| the Church held the world in the
| bonds OF Christian unity, she estab>
| lished guilds for the various crafts,
which insured the members justice
and social recognition. The religious
individualism Of the sixteenth century
| opened the way for social and eco
nomic mdividualism. Then came the
French Revolution with its hatred for
all authority, civil and religious. The
guilds declined and finally disappear
| ed. Defenceless and alone, the work
ingman was left to the mercy of a
new school of economics which saw
| in him only the physical energy he
was capable of eXerting. Labor be-
came a mere commodity and was
bought on the market at the lowest
price. In the coal mines of England,
when men seemed to cost too much,
women were put in their places, and
! finally children were substituted for
women. No wonder Leo XIII could
say in 1891, that "a small number of
very rich men had been able to lay
upon the teeming masses of the Ia
slavery itself"
The Laboring Glass.
In the meantime, the Church did
not relax her interest in the laboring
man. From the very beginning OF
modern industrialism she has earnest
| ly espoused his cause. The great Won
Ketteler who led the social reform
movement in Germany was called
the workingman's Bishop" The
London dock-workers will never for
get the friendly interest of Cardinal
Manning, and we are all familiar with
the efforts of Cardinal Gibbons on
behalf OF the Knights of Labor. 1t
was their well-known sympathy with
the wage Garner and their spirit of
fair play to every interest involved
that led to the selection of the late
Archbishops Spalding and Quigley as
arb1trators in two of the greatest
strikes in our history. Organized la
Dor today has no greater friends than
the Bishops of the Catholic Church.
1t is true that labor unions have
sometimes seriously menaced, and
even actually destroyed, the prosper
ity and peace of whole communities !;
that they have resorted to violence
to enforce their demands; that occa-
sionally they have exhibited greater
tyranny than that which they con-
demned in capitalism But such oc-
currences are rare and are not sane
toned by the great body of union
men. Organized labor should be
judged as whole. And taken as a
whole, its aims and purposes are laud-
able, its methods are in the main JUS
tifiable, and the evils that flow from
it are outweighed by it's good effects
To organized labor are due very
largely the improved social conditions
we behold today. The worldngman is
lifted up from the degradation into
which unrestrained competition had
flung him. He is no longer regarded
as beast of burden and his labor q
mere article of merchandise. His hui
man dignity has been reclaimed, and
the reward of his labor must be sufH
cient to maintain himself and his fam
lily in frugal comfort. Respect fol
the laborer as a man, as human be
ing, and reverence for childhood and
, womanhood, now so .emphaticalIy
enunciated in the economic Legislation
of every Christian country in the
| world, is in no mean degree the tri
, umph Of labor unionism and its great
est contribution to the cause of socia
progress.
The Church. through her Popes ant
Bishops, endorses the essentials O.
J modern unionism. These are her sprin
ciples, the principles Of the gospe
itself applied to the social conditions
/ Of the times. The dignity of the in