| Social action workers tackle international
fissures, domestic stress
By JOE FEUERHERD
Washington
Bishop Wilton Gregory of Belleville, Ill., president of the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops, is not a very good golfer. But when a friend
recently invited him to play “at a very, very exclusive country
club,” he jumped at the chance.
“While I was waiting to get to the first tee, another member
of the club asked me if I would go and get his clubs,” Gregory told the
500-plus attendees at the Feb. 9-12 Catholic social ministry gathering.
“He simply presumed that any black face at that club would necessarily be
on staff.”
Gregory did not say how he resolved the problem. He did, however,
offer a comment: “It was a helpful reminder to me -- bishop, president of
the USCCB, and widely recognized public face of the Catholic church in the
United States -- that much work needs to be done to heal racism and its many
attitudes.”
Healing racism, promoting peace, and staving off cuts in social
programs provided the substance for the four-day gathering.
Attendees heard big themes. Moral theology professor Fr. Bryan
Massingale urged genuine commitment to diversity in the church. Fr. Bryan Hehir
discussed “a world broken” by war and income disparities.
Participants heard nuts and bolts briefings on issues ranging from welfare
reform and agriculture policy to aid to Africa and Iraq.
As the diocesan social action workers prepared to bring their case
to Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives scheduled consideration of a
welfare measure church lobbyists consider punitive. Kathy Curran, policy
adviser in the Office of Domestic Social Development for the USCCB, urged
conference participants to push to restore benefits to newly arrived immigrants
and promote “flexibility” in the work requirements for welfare
recipients so that training and education count. In addition, she said, food
stamps and Medicaid benefits should be continued for at least one year after a
family leaves the welfare rolls, and two-parent families should not be
penalized in the legislation.
A Feb. 11 letter to members of the House from Hehir, president of
Catholic Charities USA, and Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, reiterated
those themes. The letter also found fault with provisions of the legislation
that would allow states to turn their food stamp programs into block grants --
considered a much less stable funding source than the current formula -- with
spending frozen at 2001-03 levels. “Limiting food stamps spending to
2001-03 levels makes it unlikely that a block grant state would allow legal
immigrants to receive food stamps,” said McCarrick and Hehir.
In other briefings, conference participants heard that:
• Post-war Iraq faces huge humanitarian challenges.
War would add 900,000 displaced Iraqis to the 1 million already displaced
within the country, with an estimated 600,000 to 1.5 million heading to
neighboring countries. Iran, Syria, Jordan and Turkey have indicated their
borders would be closed if war breaks out and the U.N. plans to evacuate the
1,000 representatives it has in Iraq should hostilities erupt, said Christine
Tucker, the Egypt-based Middle East regional director for Catholic Relief
Services. Meanwhile, Gerard Power, director of International Justice and Peace
at the U.S. bishops’ conference, argued for alternatives to war, including
more stringent U.N. weapons inspections, a U.N. mechanism to keep Iraq from
gaining access to oil reserves, and for the world community to pay more
attention to more immediate threats to world peace, such as North Korea.
• Federal crop subsidies may help to sustain U.S.
farmers, but the low prices their crops get on the open market depress prices
worldwide, sending poor farmers elsewhere into an economic tailspin, a U.N.
Food and Agriculture Organization official said Feb. 10. “You’re not
going to get growth to alleviate poverty unless you do something about
agriculture,” warned Charles H. Riemenschneider, director of the North
American liaison office for the FAO.
• Catholic social action leaders should press their
representatives in Congress for at least $2 billion in the 2004 budget for
global health needs and $1.7 billion for food and development aid. Gerald
Flood, counselor to the U.S. bishops’ Office of International Justice and
Peace, reminded the group that the total U.S. foreign assistance annually today
is only one-1,000th -- 0.1 percent -- of the U.S. gross national product.
Back on the home front, Dennis Rivera, president of the New York
City-based Service Employees International Union Local 1199, told the
participants that health coverage should be viewed “as a birthright, and
not a privilege for those who can afford it.” He urged support for union
organizing efforts as an effective way to eradicate poverty.
Catholic News Service contributed to this report.
National Catholic Reporter, February 21,
2003
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