Editorial

Labor priest: Msgr. Higgins' legacy lives on

With so much negative publicity surrounding the recent clergy sexual abuse scandals, we should remember the good being done by many Catholic priests.

One such priest was Msgr. George G. Higgins, who died at the age of 86 on May 1 in his home town of La Grange, Ill. Higgins was known as America's foremost labor priest for over half a century. He was a leading national and international figure not only in labor relations, but also in social justice issues and interracial, ecumenical, and Catholic-Jewish relations.

Popular column. Higgins wrote the column "The Yardstick" syndicated by Catholic News Service for 56 years, from 1945 to 2001. We published his column in The Catholic Herald until he stopped writing it.

The column generated comments - sometimes for, sometimes against Higgins' stands on issues. People either loved him or hated him, but they read him!

When Higgins' health deteriorated, he began to reduce the frequency of his columns. I remember some Catholic Herald readers called and wrote, asking why we weren't running his column every week. We explained that it wasn't our choice.

Higgins frequently devoted his column to labor issues, but he also commented regularly on papal documents and application of church teaching to a wide range of justice and peace issues, human and civil rights, racism, anti-Semitism, and other timely issues.

Helping farm workers. The priest started writing about unjust working conditions of farm laborers in 1951. He played a key role in the U.S. bishops' 1969 decision to form a special committee to mediate the bitter dispute between grape growers and the fledgling United Farm Workers (UFW) Union. As a consultant to the committee, in the early 1970s he shuttled constantly from Washington to California, playing a central role in bringing the growers and workers to the negotiating table, reported Jerry Filteau of Catholic News Service.

A young California priest named Fr. Roger Mahony - now the cardinal-archbishop of Los Angeles - crisscrossed the state with Higgins as a representative of the bishops' committee. Upon Higgins' death, Mahony said, "Msgr. Higgins' legacy as the champion of workers, especially the poorest of workers, will be recorded in history as nothing but phenomenal - and, I am certain, never to be duplicated."

UFW leader Cesar Chavez said that no one in the country did more for farm workers than Higgins. The priest often referred to his work in the labor movement as simply a "ministry of presence." He appeared at the picket lines in bitter labor strikes to deliver an invocation and offer a word of encouragement.

His legacy lives on. Higgins contributed so much to the Catholic Church and the world. He will indeed be missed. As we pray for the repose of his soul, we know, too, that his legacy lives on in others who continue his work for justice and peace.

Mary C. Uhler, editor

Mailbag

To the editor:

	Mailbag policy We reserve the right to edit or reject letters. Limit letters to 200 words or less. All letters must be signed. Send letters to: Mailbag The Catholic Herald P.O. Box 44985 Madison, WI 53744-4985 Fax: 608-821-3071 E-mail: info@madisoncatholicherald.org

I have read Don Lund's reply to your April 18 editorial published in the April 25 issue of The Catholic Herald. Mr. Lund thinks that the vocation situation within the Catholic Church would be solved by allowing priests to marry and women to be ordained.

He fails to recognize that celibacy is not the problem. If it were, why did we go for centuries with huge numbers of vocations in the U.S. where celibacy has always been a priority? It also appears that he is uninformed about the present shortage of vocations in denominations where there is married clergy.

As for his other observation, it is an infallible dogma that the church has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women. A pope could no more reverse this than he could repeal the law of gravity.

The church will survive and flourish with a celibate priesthood. Sooner or later, but in any event, in God's own time, with the constant prayers of the laity, we shall again have ranks of joy filled, healthy celibate priests willing to make this sacrifice. God will wait.

Max Twainer, Madison

Church leaders avoid issue

To the editor:

As soon as I read the very first article in this week's issue (May 2), I felt compelled to make a comment. I am very disappointed and a bit angered that our church leaders would say "attention was drawn to the fact that almost all the cases involved adolescents and therefore were not cases of true pedophilia." Excuse me, adolescents are still minors under the consenting age of 18 and are still considered children.

The definition of pedophilia is "sexual perversion in which children are the preferred sexual object." It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it STILL is pedophilia when we are talking of preying on children under the age of 18!

Further in the article, Cardinal Stafford said "the real problem is homosexual behavior by priests with minors, because many of the cases involved teen-age boys." Again, why are we not saying the real problem is pedophilia among priests?

Why are these "church leaders" trying to skirt the real issue here? These men are pedophiles abusing our children and should be punished to the full extent of the law just as anyone not wearing a collar would be. I hope our "church leaders" get their heads out of the sand and come to grips with this now.

Robyn Hackett, Arena

Income caps affect teachers

To the editor:

John Huebscher is a keen observer of the state political scene and I appreciate his insights. His column of April 18, however, deserves comment.

Public school teachers have the dubious distinction of being the only class of workers in this state that have income caps imposed on them. The Qualified Economic Offer (QEO) is a renege on a promise made by the state legislature when it imposed binding arbitration on teachers' unions and local school boards some 25 years ago. The fact that teachers have made steady gains attests to the fact that their demands have traditionally been more reasonable than local school board offers.

The 3.8 percent cap on salary increases that the QEO imposes is an arbitrary one. It doesn't reflect a changing economic scene which has the cost of health care increasing by 30 or 40 percent or where property values have increased by 10 to 20 percent. Since implementation of the QEO, we have seen a decline in the number of prospective teachers, which will put a severe strain on the schools.

While analyzing the state aid to public schools and all of its ramifications, Mr. Huebscher is also holding out his hand for state aid to private and parochial schools. Where is this money going to come from? Public schools are operating on shoestring budgets now, thanks to revenue controls that limit the amount of spending on the local level. Teachers, living under salary caps, are forced to pay for extras out of their own pockets. For him to want to get a piece of that pie is pretty darn near hopeless.

Jerome Joyce, Madison

Trying to sort out the issues

To the editor:

I have been trying to follow the meeting between the American cardinals and the Vatican staff, including the pope, and I found one comment very interesting and also possibly somewhat valid. The following quote is from Fox News (referring to comments made by Cardinal Adam Maida from Detroit): "Maida, referring to the sex scandal, said: 'I think what the behavioral scientists are telling us, the sociologists, it's not truly a pedophilia-type problem but a homosexual problem.'"

Is it a homosexual problem or a male problem? Or a male homosexual problem? Maybe I am wrong, but aren't most pedophiles gay men? I have never heard of a homosexual woman assaulting little girls. I don't believe the celibacy issue is a cause to this problem either. Nuns are celibate, too. I have never heard of sexual abuse directed toward children of either gender by a nun (or any female celibate).

Maybe your newspaper could explore this angle to provide a better understanding of this theory.

Paul Schulz, Wisconsin Dells