Social Action in San Antonio

Roman Catholic pro-labor liberalism and New Dealism came to the Southwest in a big way this month when the new Archbishop of San Antonio sponsored a two-week School of Social Justice--the first ever held in that section. To it went 147 priests, mostly young, mostly from the San Antonio province. Coatless and often collarless. they sat intent day after day in the sweltering heat, mopping their brows and taking notes. Some things they were taught:

> The social order should be reconstructed by the self-organization of industry, agriculture and the professions--labor always included.

> One way to end poverty is to have the Government do the job. The better way is to have the Government do the job in partnership with economic organizations.

> All men are created fundamentally equal, and so all have a fundamentally equal claim to the goods of the earth.

> Every man has the right to a living wage for himself and his family, derived from "work good for his body and soul." Every wage earner should have a reasonable opportunity to become a property owner.

> Priests should abet "good, clean" labor unions in organizing, cooperate in every way with them. They should also help employers to organize.

>The Church cannot be held blameless for the present "rotten state of economic affairs" because the Church did not act soon enough or strongly enough to avert it.

Typical courses at the school included: "Balanced Income and Balanced Prices," "Industrial Unionism," "Federal Government and Organized Labor," "The Living Wage," "The Right to Strike." Typical literature distributed: housing pamphlets, the fifth anniversary issue of the C.I.O. News, the labor encyclicals of Leo XIII and Pius XI, A.F. of L. brochures, a Department of Labor folder on child labor.

Not all the gospel the priests heard was on the pro-labor extreme "liberal" side. The doctor who discussed socialized medicine was lukewarm in its support. The speakers included not only A.F. of L. and C.I.O. organizers, but also a representative of a local utility and an industrial engineer. And the young lawyer who debated unionism against a C.I.O. man one evening made such sharp points that several times the chairman felt he had to step in and give the laborite a helping hand. By & large, however, the spirit of the meeting was as far to the left as the thinking of the San Antonio Archdiocese had heretofore been far to the right.

Sponsor of the school was the Most Rev. Robert Emmet Lucey. who became Archbishop of San Antonio four months ago (TIME, April 7). Since then he has been saying little but doing much to put his social ideas into effect. He has worked hand in glove with labor leaders, was responsible for bringing a C.I.O. organizer to the city where "poverty is so vast and wages so low." He has laid the foundation for a Catholic Action program to foster adult social-study clubs and a youth movement "to give them an understanding of religious and social problems." He has started a movement for vacation schools for children, and organized a Catholic Welfare Bureau to sponsor relief and health work.

Last week's school of social justice was the high point of his program to date, and he hailed the closing of it as "the end of a perfect two weeks," promising that "we will try to go on and on--this is our beginning."

Schools of social justice have been held frequently throughout the past four years in other dioceses, mostly in the North, and Archbishop Lucey said pointedly: "There is no reason why priests in this region should not have the same educational opportunities as priests in other regions."

To give his priests those opportunities, the Archbishop called on two key leaders in Catholicism's social-action movement: slight, cheerful, quick-witted Father Raymond A. McGowan and dark, youthful, ascetic-looking Monsignor Reynold Hillenbrand. Since 1920, Father McGowan has been assistant director and right-hand man of Monsignor John Augustine Ryan in the National Catholic Welfare Conference's Social Action Department, which trains Catholics in labor, social, economic and church doctrine. Monsignor Hillenbrand, rector of St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein, Ill., was a protege of Chicago's late, great George Cardinal Mundelein--the most eminent labor-lover U.S. Catholicism has ever produced.

The social-action program backed by such leaders takes its cue from the Papal labor encyclicals, considers bad working and living conditions immoral, plans to eradicate them. Cardinal Mundelein most succinctly gave the movement its American slant. "Our place," said he, "is beside the workingman. They are our people; they build our churches; our priests come from their sons."

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