t eanco VOL. 30, NO. 34
•
Friday, August 29, 1986
F ALL RIVER, MASS.
FALL RIVER DIOCESAN NEWSPAPER FOR SOUTHEAST MASSACHUSETTS CAPE COD & THE ISLANDS
Southeastern Massachusetts' Largest Weekly
•
58 Per Year
Labor Day statement
Work changes noted WASHINGTON (NC) - U.S. labor and welfare policies and employer practices must meet the needs of the nation's changing labor force, says a Labor Day statement from the U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington. The statement was issued by New York Cardinal John J. O'Connor, chairman of the USCC Committee on Social Development and World Peace. Labor Day is observed this year on Sept. I. Labor'Day provides an opportunity to reflect on "rapid changes in work and family life," the statement said. It noted that the current draft of the U.S. bishops' proposed pastoral letter on the economy, due to be voted on this November, offers a "comprehensive treatment" of the subject. The statement said Catholic social teaching can contribute to the discussion about government's role in work and family. Papal encyclicals for a century have defended workers' rights and "assigned to government a positive and active role," the statement added. It noted that in the last 25 years the economy has changed, the job market has shifted, workers have been dislocated and more women - married and unmarried - have joined the labor force to help support their families. "The past 25 years have radically altered many basic assumptions about work and family. Men
and women can no longer assume they will have stable employment and lives," the statement said. It said rising rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births also have had an impact. The statement said a major item on the public policy agenda today is welfare reform. Family, it said, "must be at center of this discussion." Current policy offers little support for mothers "at the bottom of the economic scale" to stay home full time with their children, the statement said. For example, unmarried mothers who are poor can go on welfare to stay home full time but have a low standard of living, or they can put the children in day care and take a minimum wage job that offers only a slightly better income. The statement outlined five criteria for welfare reform that would protect human dignity: - Promotion offamily stability. - Adequate levels of assistance. - Opportunity for healthy child development. - Support for eventual self-sufficiency. - Humane administration. The statement said there is also a need for support of families further up the income scale but who, with both parents working, have a standard of living lower than that of one-income families of the preceding generation. Turn to Page Six
NC/UPI photo
"In much work there shall be abundance." Provo 14:23 Pax Christi speakers say
Christianity betrays roots
"THE WORLD wants peace, the world needs peace," declared Pope John Paul II during his 1979 speech to the United Nations. (NCjKNA photo)
BOSTON (NC) - Since the of openly proclaiming the truth of reign of Constantine, the history God," Father Rohr continued. of Christianity has been one of "If we are to become Gospel missed opportunities and betrayal of its nonviolent roots, speakers revolutionaries, we must admit, 20 told the 13th annual assembly of years after the [Second] Vatican Pax Christi USA, the U.S. branch Council, the limits, the ambiguiof an international Catholic peace ties and, in some cases, the full sellout of the liberalism that has organization. characterized much of our church "The history of the world and, sadder still, the history of the since Vatican II," he said. He decried what he called the church has been a history of missed opportunities," Franciscan Father "utilitarian ethic, a pragmatic world Richard Rohr, founder and pastor view," saying, "We have given ourofthe New Jerusalem Community selves to a kind of rationalism in Cincinnati, told the assembly in instead of a Gospel radicalism. I believe there is an innate inertia in Boston. The church must become a "po- bourgeois, middle-class religion and litical alternative in every nation, it's very easy, if not natural, for the including America" and must American church to rest there." Father Rohr added that he felt "stand apart from the lies and biases of culture," he said at the betrayed by those he said "have· not been able to make the move mid-August meeting. "We must admit in our history beyond liberalism to Gospel radof lost opportunities ... the church icalism." Gordon Zahn, national director has been quite anxious to protect its own privileges, its own posi- of the Pax Christi Center on Contion, its own respectability, instead science and War, told the assem-
bly that since the time of Constantine, Catholic contributions to violence have greatly outnumbered its nonviolent contributions. Tracing the history of nonviolence, Zahn commented, is "like trying to trace the migration routes of purple unicorns." Abandonment of the early church's commitment to nonviolence "was the first step along the path that now brought us to the point where the future existence of the world is under direct threat," he said. "Sooner or later," according to Zahn, the church will have to decide between what he called an outmoded just war theory and the pure nonviolent tradition he said is the true origin of the church. "As the weapons and strategies of war become incomparably more destructive, the question grows ever more demanding: Is even a purely theoretical acceptance of war and Turn to Page Six
. .-4