Fr Robert Hendrickson (09.05.21)

Dear Friends in Christ,

At the end of the 19th century, many Americans had to work 12-hour days every day of the week to make a living. Child labor was at its height in mills, factories and mines, and young children earned only a portion of an adult’s wage.

Dirty air, unsafe working conditions and low wages made labor in many cities a dangerous occupation. As working conditions worsened, workers came together and began forming labor unions: through unions, workers could have a voice by participating in strikes and rallies and they fought against child labor and for the eight-hour workday.

When John Wesley founded the Methodist movement during the 18th century, there was no “worker movement” the way we’d understand it today. But Wesley preached to and cared for coal miners and other oppressed workers. He also opposed slavery. After Wesley died, his followers continued to work against workplace injustices in rapidly industrializing England, adopting the first Social Creed, in 1908, that dealt exclusively with labor practices.

The Catholic church has been preaching on behalf of workers for more than a century. The landmark papal encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Of revolutionary change”) was published in 1891 and has been described as a primer on the rights of laborers who face abusive conditions in the workplace. This became one of the central themes of Pope John Paul II’s long pontificate. In 1981, he published his own lengthy encyclical, Laborem Exercens (“On human work”). Then, a decade later, John Paul returned to this milestone in Catholic teaching in Centisimus Annus (“Hundredth year”).

Way back in the 19th century, one of the Church of England’s Anglo-Catholic slum priests in London campaigned for better drainage. When he was criticised for this and told to stick to spiritual things, he replied that he cared about drains because he believed in the Incarnation. He also fought for vaccination sites to be out in poor areas of the city too when many were content to let the poor suffer or unaware of the suffering entirely.

The belief that God took flesh in Jesus means we can’t drive a wedge between the earthly and the spiritual.

How we live, what conditions we have and what needs people have is about morality and spirituality. When any of us speak out about such matters in our society, it is showing care for the whole person. It shows care for their family, for their community, and for those who will come after them.

This might be political, as it affects places and people and can challenge vested interests, but it is not necessarily party-political. It would be inappropriate to push one party above another in the name of faith — the Church’s loyalty is to Christ and in seeking and serving him we seek the good of our neighbors and not the success of any political party.

It would also be wrong not to speak of faith matters – of the soul, prayer and doctrine for those are part of the essence of the Church’s inheritance. We do this day after day and week after week, quite rightly. Yet the practical, bodily and emotional needs of a community are also included.

No doctrine could be complete without an accounting for the conditions of those who labor. No spirituality could be considered remotely relevant if it did not also consider the sweat, blood, and tears of everyday people. Jesus did not come to us as a disembodied spirit to sooth only our hearts. He came with sight for blind, healing for the lame, and new breath for those who had died.

We speak and act and organize for the sake of those who labor because Christ came to redeem not just our spirit but our bodies. He came not just to preach charity but to be justice. He came that we might see in the sweat and labor of our neighbor the full dignity and majesty of Christ himself.

So this Labor Day we can give thanks for the long history of the Church’s advocacy for the dignity of labor and commit ourselves to that legacy.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert