The following column appeared in the September 5, 2009 edition of The Tablet.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
As we approach this Labor Day, we celebrate not just a civil holiday, but a true spiritual reflection on human labor. Human labor is not a curse as some might interpret it. Looking back on the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Paradise, where God’s injunction that man would earn bread by the sweat of the brow, can be for some a curse. Rather, truly understanding Genesis tells us that men and women are made the stewards of creation and that they are given the world to develop for God who is the Creator.
The responsibility of men and women to work has changed over the past two centuries. In agricultural societies, men and women worked for themselves to grow the food they needed for their family and the other necessities. Now people work for others, not for their own direct benefit, but they indirectly benefit from working for corporations, businesses and the like. Through this process of change, the dignity of labor sometimes has been lost. Communism and socialism viewed humans as tools of production, whereas the Church has constantly asserted that human beings have innate human dignity which goes beyond the work that they perform.
Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, pronounces a sentence that is heavy with meaning. He says, “The laborer is worthy of his hire,” meaning that human labor, indeed, is something to be treated with respect and prized in all circumstances. The laborer is worthy of just compensation which leads to his or her acquisition of the basic human needs: housing, clothing, food and healthcare. Truly, these are basic human rights. The battle of assertion of rights can become a contentious one. As I mentioned in last week’s article, Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” says, “The sharing of reciprocal duties is a more powerful incentive to action than the mere assertion of rights.”
Reciprocal duty in this context is the duty of employers to provide for their employees. When the principle of subsidiary cannot be applied, that is the employers are incapable of doing this, then intervention by another level, for example government, can be appropriate. This has become the core of the current healthcare debate; who should provide healthcare? Clearly for those who are uninsured, it would seem that the government has some responsibility. For those who already receive benefits, government intervention seems unnecessary.
This year, the Bishops’ Labor Day Statement, entitled The Value of Work: The Dignity of the Human Person, under the chairmanship of Bishop William Murphy from our neighboring Diocese of Rockville Centre, is available on the USCCB website, www.usccb.org. It is well worth reading, as it speaks to the current healthcare debate and other labor-related issues.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has set forth criteria for healthcare reform: “The dignity of every human being and the integral development of human society to promote human flourishing. Pope Benedict’s reflections re-affirm the teaching of Leo XIII on labor, focuses with a special emphasis on Paul VI’s passionate commitment to the Third World and the development of peoples.”
For decades, the Catholic Bishops of the United States have incorporated continuous support of genuine national healthcare reform that meets these criteria: a truly universal healthcare policy with respect for human life and dignity; access for all with a special concern for the poor and inclusion of legal immigrants; pursuing the common good and preserving pluralism, including freedom of conscience and a variety of options; and finally controlling cost and applying them equitably across the spectrum of payers. These principles are what the bishops seek in healthcare reform. The Church seeks not to endorse any particular political party, or even any piece of legislation since that is very difficult.
The legislative process, unfortunately, has become a moving target and has been highly politicized. We are not sure what healthcare reform is all about; town hall meetings have proven that. The inability of our elected officials, even our president, to clarify what healthcare reform entails is another problem. Essentially, we know that there are two basic bills, one moving through the United States Senate and the other through the House of Representatives. The Senate bill is 600 pages and the House bill is 1,000 pages. Following passage in each chamber, the bills must be brought to a conference committee that will produce from both bills one piece of legislation which then needs to be ratified by both the Senate and the House before it is signed by the president. That is not the end, however. When the regulations are written to implement the bill, we recognize that the devil is in the details.
We are in a momentous time in our history when the basic right of healthcare could be shared by all. However, we cannot risk basic ethical principles, such as the inclusion of abortion as a healthcare benefit, or the exclusion of consciences of individual medical practioners, or even institutions, not to perform procedures that are against their conscience.
Every day reminds us of the greatness of our American civil society which always has honored the dignity of human labor. When we speak of labor, we recognize that work is always an experience of putting out into the deep. Where does our work take us? Hopefully, as Christian Catholics it takes us even closer to the Kingdom of God, to the person of Jesus Christ by whose work we have been saved.
+ Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio