Page 2....February 2002

Father Hugh Cleary, Superior General, and Father Arul Gali, Assistant Superior General, were in Austin for their general visits to the South-West and Southern Provinces.  They had been in Mexico for Marin Hernandez' perpetual profession, the Province January meetings in Houston, a number of South-West Province community houses in California, and finally ending up in Austin.  They left Austin for greener pastures in Phoenix (We hope they found some there!) on Tuesday, February 19.

Father Richard Teall is in the hospital with an infection in his right leg.  The doctors were concerned that it was spreading up the leg.  Richard checked himself in to the Central Texas Medical Center in San Marcos.  Please keep him in your prayers.

Bishop Gregory Aymond gathered some of the priests in the Diocese of Austin to take a look at the strategic pastoral plan that he and many others have been working on.  We know that the number of people in the Diocese of Austin will double in the next 25 years; most of the new people will be Hispanic.  He will  continue to meet with the priests in different parts of the Diocese.

The Hispanic Catholic population will grow in the Diocese of Austin at a rapid rate:

Please keep Father Jim Martin's brother-in-law in your prayers.  He has had a serious heart condition for quite some time.  He is presently living at home with an external heart pump.  Doctors feel that he is too weak for undergo a heart transplant surgery.

Father John Korcsmar traveled to Washington, D.C. for the February meetings.  This is an annual gathering of different Catholic social ministry programs, Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the Roundtable, Catholic Relief Services, and others.  There are a number of departments, agencies, and groups that schedule their meetings at the February meetings since people are already here.  Dan Issing came to the meeting on higher education.

Bishop John McCarthy was there.  He and John Korcsmar were at the Catholic Labor Networking meeting.  That meeting is organized by a priest who still belongs to the merchant marine sailors' union.  The meeting consisted of a number of panels.  The first panel was of three priests and a lay man who had worked with labor groups for many years: Father Leslie Sinclair; Fr. Gene Boyle, SJ;  John Cort; and last--but not least--Father Pat Sullivan, CSC.  Pat had a lot of experience from the JP Stevens boycot and strike, but he is also working on a history of the labor priests.  He gave a good presentation, which we hope will soon be on the web on the Catholic Labor Network website.  We know that globalization has taken place when Pat says we have to move from Irish blarney to global gobbeldygook.

Some of the things other panelists talked about included:

• working with the Interfaith Worker Justice Committee.  This group has been most concerned with workers who are at the bottom of the pay scale: immigrant workers, janitors, cafeteria workers, meatpacking and poultry packing houses, etc.  This group has also been working on the "Labor in the Pulpit" series.  The idea is to reconnect labor unions with churches by inviting workers and union members to speak in churches on or around Labor Day.

• working with Catholic schools and hospitals.  One difficulty is that the Church has supported unions and labor for many, many years.  However, Catholic institutions, even though they might become very large corporations, very often do not want to deal with unions.  Sometimes they even hire "union busters" who come to break up a union or try to keep a union out.

Dr. Scott Appleby from the University of Notre Dame spoke about doing ministry in the context of a wordless society.  He did not mean that people do not use any words, but that the Word is no longer a foundational common text for our experience.  Younger people today do not have the biblical literacy or biblical imagination that people had had for centuries.  

He shared some of his thoughts about our reactions to the Sept. 11 bombing.  He feels people in the U.S. need to be active, participatory citizens in our own country and in the world context.  We do use a large portion of the world's resources, such as oil, and we allow other nations and peoples to remain in poverty as part of the way for us to have the wealth we want at our disposal.

One of the participants in the Social Ministries Gathering is Father Thomas Gannon, SJ.  He presently works at a peace and justice center in Hammond, IN.  He also taught John Korcsmar third-year Latin at St. Ignatius High School, on the west side of Cleveland.  How times fly, and paths cross!!!

Mark Shields (a columnist and frequent commentator--and a graduate of Notre Dame) also spoke.  He pointed out how we are facing major challenges in the war against terrorism.  In the past, such as in World War II, we also faced challenges.  But what is different now is that not all of us are being asked to share in the sacrifice and the burdens.

For instance, in World War II, all four of FDR's sons served in the armed forces and saw combat.  Many national leaders and governors had sons who served and died in combat.  But today, we want to wage war on terrorism, have a recruited army (thus, only the working classes serve), and have a tax break for the wealthy.