Religion & Law

This story, out of Scranton, raises tricky questions.

More than 200 supporters, many from regional union locals, joined a noon rally outside Diocese of Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino?s residence to mark the one-year anniversary of the fight to unionize local Catholic school teachers. Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers President Michael Milz handed out green and black arm bands.

?Black is the color of mourning, and without a doubt we are here for that sorrowful purpose,? Milz said, repeating the claim that Martino rejected more than a century of Catholic Church support for organized labor when he rejected the request to unionize.

Yes, the Catholic Social Teaching tradition "support[s] organized labor."  It does not follow, though, that a Catholic bishop should support the unionization of teachers in the Catholic schools of his diocese.  (Obviously, he should do all he can -- and all Catholics in the diocese should support him, financially, in this effort -- to pay hard-working Catholic teachers a good, just wage.  But unionization comes with more supervision and intrusion by the secular authorities; the Bishop could, quite reasonably, not want to be put in a position of submitting questions about teachers' hiring, firing, promotion, etc., in the hands of others.