One of the most attractive elements of the Catholic faith is its teachings, especially those which relate to social justice and the dignity of all creation. One of its least attractive elements is the way so many of its official institutions contradict and resist those teachings. Many become Catholic because of the ideals they hear being presented, but others, including such converts, lose faith when it seems the institutional church does not takes its teachings seriously. It is even worse when Catholic institutions, like Catholic hospitals or universities, fight against Catholic teachings in secular courts, trying to claim religious exemption to do so. Religious liberty is abused when Catholics invoke it as a way to circumvent official Catholic teachings, such as those related to social justice. Sadly, this happens all too often, such as when various Catholic universities resist unionization. They claim religious liberty as an excuse, thinking it will allow them to win in court, making sure the justice system will not interfere in their activities, even when what they do is deny rights proclaimed by the church. Kaya Oakes, writing for Religious Dispatches in 2017 explained this problem in her article, “Union Busting For God: Catholic Colleges Invoke ‘Religious Freedom’ To Violate Catholic Teaching” (6-23-2017):
Unions, which provide adjuncts with better wages, more job security and in some cases health insurance, would seem to fall right in line with Catholic teaching on social justice. But the religious freedom argument has also been made at Loyola Chicago, Seattle University, DePaul University, and many other Catholic colleges, where the religious orders who run these schools argue that allowing faculty to unionize would pose a threat to their religious mission.
Amy Littlefield, writing “Union-Busting In The Name Of God” for The Nation (4-13-2020), showed how many Catholic (and other Christian) institutions try to use religious liberty exemptions as a way to undermine worker rights:
Religiously affiliated institutions, from Catholic universities like Boston College to for-profit corporations with Christian owners like Hobby Lobby, have used arguments about religious freedom to win exemptions from an array of laws intended to protect workers over the past decade. Many of these cases concerned the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employer health plans cover birth control. But religious corporations have expanded such requests to seek ever-broader power over their workers, including the right to underfund employee pension plans and bust unions in the name of God.
This is a major problem. It has made its way into the Catholic healthcare system, which are now being run following business concerns, circumventing their original Catholic principles to do so, as Katie Collins Scott pointed out in her article in the National Catholic Reporter, “Large Catholic Health Care System Engaged In Union Busting, Union Claims” (10-11-2023):
Over the past six months, SEIU Healthcare Michigan — representing diagnostic imaging techs, lab assistants and technologists, social workers, housekeepers, dietary workers and medics — has filed dozens of unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board.
Allegations center on two hospitals, several outpatient labs and a nursing home and include claims the Catholic health care system engaged in bad-faith bargaining, illegally fired workers and unlawfully withdrew recognition from a union.
Nurses, likewise, have filed charges against Ascension Health, for a similar reason, as the National Nurses Organizing Committee explained (9-28-2023):
On Sept. 27 Saint Agnes nurses filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleging that management’s tactics to interfere with their efforts to unionize are illegal. The charges will lead to a federal investigation into the hospital’s conduct related to the organizing campaign. The unfair labor practice charges include:
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Unlawfully threatening to withdraw and withdrawing benefits from employees because of the union’s representation petition;
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Unlawfully making promises and/or granting benefits to stifle the union’s organizing campaign;
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Unlawfully soliciting grievances to stifle the union’s organizing campaign;
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Maintaining an unlawful no-solicitation policy and/or unlawfully enforcing its no-solicitation policy to bar off-duty employees from discussing the union;
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Unlawfully surveilling employees engaged in union or other protected activities;
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Unlawfully denying Weingarten representatives for nurses called into investigatory meetings related to union activities;
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Making unlawful messages to employees that the selection of a union would be futile because the employer has a policy that it will not bargain over certain mandatory subjects.
The way many Catholic institutions, from universities and schools, to hospitals, fight against basic rights declared by the Catholic Church is a terrible problem. Gaudium et spes (¶69): is very clear:
Among the basic rights of the human person is to be numbered the right of freely founding unions for working people. These should be able truly to represent them and to contribute to the organizing of economic life in the right way. Included is the right of freely taking part in the activity of these unions without risk of reprisal. Through this orderly participation joined to progressive economic and social formation, all will grow day by day in the awareness of their own function and responsibility, and thus they will be brought to feel that they are comrades in the whole task of economic development and in the attainment of the universal common good according to their capacities and aptitudes.
St. John Paul II continued to promote the value of unions and the need to protect their rights in Laborem Exercens (¶20):
Catholic social teaching does not hold that unions are no more than a reflection of the “class” structure of society and that they are a mouthpiece for a class struggle which inevitably governs social life. They are indeed a mouthpiece for the struggle for social justice, for the just rights of working people in accordance with their individual professions. However, this struggle should be seen as a normal endeavour “for” the just good: in the present case, for the good which corresponds to the needs and merits of working people associated by profession; but it is not a struggle “against” others. Even if in controversial questions the struggle takes on a character of opposition towards others, this is because it aims at the good of social justice, not for the sake of “struggle” or in order to eliminate the opponent. It is characteristic of work that it first and foremost unites people. In this consists its social power: the power to build a community. In the final analysis, both those who work and those who manage the means of production or who own them must in some way be united in this community. In the light of this fundamental structure of all work-in the light of the fact that, in the final analysis, labour and capital are indispensable components of the process of production in any social system-it is clear that, even if it is because of their work needs that people unite to secure their rights, their union remains a constructive factor of social order and solidarity, and it is impossible to ignore it.
The Catholic Church, in its official, teaching capacity, promotes workers’ rights. It declares health care is a right. It says unionization is a right. But many of its institutions seem to be more interested in profit than they are in engaging a Catholic sensibility. They try to justify themselves, proving themselves to be but sophists trying to explain their desired outcome with the worst kinds of reasoning. For example, many try to suggest they cannot cooperate with evil, and so their denial of health care or similar rights, lies with the fact it would entail remote material cooperation with evil. Their logic could be used to deny paying workers any money because of the evil they could do with it. Catholic teaching does not say remote material cooperation with evil can or should be used to deny the greater good, and for good reason; it can’t, because if it did, it would lead to quietism for there will always be some sort of remote material cooperation with evil if one works in and with human society (due to our interdependent relationship with each other).
The way many Catholic institutions deny basic rights is a farce, and the kind of farce which causes many Catholics to become weary, not only of such Catholic institutions, but the institutional church itself. For when they see officials, such as bishops, do nothing when institutions under their authority use religious liberty claims to deny basic rights, they question the integrity of the church itself. Indeed, they begin to see such corruption lies at the heart of the institution itself, and so they think issues like the sexual abuse crisis is actually follows a feature of the system instead of being an outlier which runs against it.
The difference between what the church says, and what it does, is a great challenge, and for many, is enough to want them to cause distance from the church. When they bring up their complaints, they feel as if they are being gaslit by the institution and its defenders. Jesus constantly spoke out against such hypocrisy. He saw how it led to many people flee from the religious institution of his time. He did not fight those who felt as if they had become outcasts but rather, he joined himself with them, and made his place with them. Today, we should expect him to do the same. Catholics, who still love their faith, must fight for it, promoting its teachings even when Catholic institutions and officials do not do so, Bishops need to listen to the laity, not rich donors, and make sure those who are given official Catholic status do not undermine basic, fundamental rights proclaimed by the church. Catholics need to confront bishops who don’t do so (obviously, in as charitable a fashion as possible). While the problems cannot all be solved by the laity, as many of them are just as corrupt, until bishops take the laity seriously, especially those disenfranchised and hurt by Catholic institutions, the concerns will not only remain, but they will grow and become much, much worse, leading to more and more people feeling disenfranchised and leaving the institution for good.
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