The Interfaith Coalition for Justice is planning a rally for the Capitol at 10:00 a.m. this Saturday, gathering at the front steps of Grace Episcopal Church and marching onto the square. Here is a letter written by a number of religious leaders in Wisconsin in support of Collective Bargaining.
The Wisconsin Catholic Bishops issued this letter on February 16, quoting Pope Benedict's 2009 Encyclical Caritas in Veritate:
"Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions. Hence traditional networks of solidarity have more and more obstacles to overcome. The repeated calls issued within the Church's social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum for the promotion of workers' associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honoured today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level.
The February 16 letter is a nuanced statement, like one expects from Catholic Bishops. It allows the faithful to read what they want into it.
A portion of the same Encyclical, not quoted in the Bishop's letter reads:
"The Church's social doctrine has always maintained that justice must be applied to every phase of economic activity, because this is always concerned with man and his needs. Locating resources, financing, production, consumption and all the other phases in the economic cycle inevitably have moral implications. Thus every economic decision has a moral consequence."
The economic decisions of the Wisconsin Republicans since January 3 of this year have been to enact legislation to shift the tax burden away from the wealthiest taxpayers and onto teachers and public sector employees. The moral consequence is in the eyes of the created. This creature thinks we aren't really sharing the burden equitably/morally. Read David Brooks' column on budget balancing "burden sharing" in last Monday's New York Times.
Bishop Morlino, in this week's Catholic Herald, tries to straddle the fence in his weekly letter to the faithful, but finally just can't help himself. He ultimately and subtly paints the public employees unions and unions generally as being in the Democratic Party's hip pocket. The man is consistent as a politician. Just like Governor Walker, he doesn't like to back down.
No comments:
Post a Comment