Is The System Reformable?
Henriot, Peter J.
of employment that have been largely federally funded. These funds are not flowing as abundantly as they once were for two reasons: 1. the Congress has correctly decided that much social...
...CCUM, headquartered at Notre Dame since Egan moved there in 1970 from Chicago, is not so much an "organization" as a "connection" - - a means of linking numerous Catholic personnel, priests, religious, and lay, who are involved in a variety of practical social action...
...As a result CCUM, along with the charismatics, will probably be returning in ever-greater numbers next year to Notre Dame PETER a. HENRIOT (Father Peter 1. Henriot, S.I., is a Sta// Associate at the Center o/ Concern, Washington, D.C...
...Monsignor Jack Egan, a long-time leader in social ministry and founder and chairperson of CCUM, said that he was "sick and tired of simplistic answers to changing large institutions--we need to be sure that we are asking the right questions...
...The problems faced at the meeting are the problems which must be faced in our larger society if any significant change is to come: 1. Women.mAt the conclusion of the seminar reports, the "women's caucus" took over the plenary session to protest continued sexism in CCUM...
...His resignation and that of Barrera de Irimo, both of whom had proposed plans for stemming the critical economic crisis in Spain, will have an immediate effect upon what the government does about the situation...
...Such an analytical approach was a notable shift from CCUM's previous meetings...
...Our "peculiar prosperity"--consequent upon entry into war and sustained military production down to today--has rested on a series of myths which are now beginning to collapse...
...But the prospects for a stiff spine among these same men in the face of depression-generated social troubles are not encouraging...
...What do meetings of Catholic charismatics and Catholic social activists have in common...
...Social ministry, according to Hehir, is not peripheral but pivotal to the task of the Church, and he saw pa~cular relevance of this fact to the U.S...
...He promised decrees "allowing for separate assoeiat.ions of workers and management within the officially sponsored un!ons which are now the only legal ones in Spain...
...The bishops said, "We wish to carry out our duty free of pressures...
...By providing a wide-ranging forum for exploring approaches to social change, CCUM must ultimately open itself to the charge of being frustrating to most participants...
...The freedom of large corporations to plan, profit, and reduce competition in this country is no longer held in check, Barnet said, by the traditional "countervailing powers" described by John Kenneth Galbraith and others...
...Labadie declared that the Falange would defend their views against all "conspirators...
...And Senator Alien of Alabama, a prime exponent of old Southern ways, stands a pretty good chance of winning a seat on the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over civil rights and related legislation...
...Barrera de Irimo warned the liberals that if more of their leading government representatives quit, the Council of Ministers would be left completely in the hapds of the Right...
...His speech had been approved by Generalissimo Francisco Franco, chief of state, who presided over the occasion...
...In addition, the Congressional climate shows signs of changing--for the worse...
...How to get a handle on those right questions was the primary purpose of the four-day meeting...
...Key among the myths mentioned by Burner is that we have a "free market" economy subject only to the scientific hand of government regulation...
...This was followed by the resignation of eleven senior Information Ministry officials and threatened resignation of other officials...
...A new concordat was then pending...
...3. Theological reflection.mSomething new was tried during the issue seminars: theologians were invited to offer input in the course of discussion...
...Previous meetings have been more of a "supermarket" of action strategies, offering workshops on ad hoe plans and projects...
...Social activists struggling for justice in this country repeatedly find themselves up against the massive fact of the maldistribution of income, wealth and power in U.S...
...Although the official announcement gave no reason for the resignation, government sources said he took the action to protest against the purge of liberals from key posts...
...system within which these strategies, plans and projects operate...
...So too, the annual assembly of the Catholic Committee on Urban Ministry (CCUM)-though nowhere as large a meeting as that of the charismatics-has been growing each year...
...He refused to attend the Falange anniversary ceremonies...
...What are the connections between this fact and the social disorder and human suffering which community organizers, social workers, inner city pastoral 20 December 1974:254 teams, educators, and others engaged in social ministry regularly confront?And how do these connections relate to the overall economic system which presently reels from inflation, unemployment, and global pressures...
...The social ministry context for the CCUM discussions was set in speeches by J. Bryan Hehir, director of the United States Catholic Conference's Division for Justice and Peace, and Philip Murnion, director of the Office of Pastoral Research of the Archdiocese of New York...
...Situations such as this, of course, have to change...
...At the same time, this frustration is breaking new and necessary ground for the church in this country...
...Barnet's suggestions for change,--his answer to the question "is the system reformable...
...He said: "The government maintains conditions which permit (the Church) to discharge without bonds the sacred mission and the exercise of its apostolate, but recognizes with the same firmness, that which interferes in questions that, going over the temporal horizon of the community, are reserved to the justice and decision of the civil authority...
...The annual gathering of the charismatic movement has grown in size and enthusiasm each year, and now fills up the Irish football stadium...
...church as it attempts to come to grips with social change in this country...
...economic system and to ask: is the system reformable...
...We must ask ourselves," he said, "whether the manner in which we o~ganize social ministry does not simply exacerbate our current malaise by organiTJng coalitions of power in which people may be responsible to one another but not/or one another...
...Otherwise, Arias Navarro called for "popular participation in political and social a f f a i r s . . , as wide as possible excluding only those who excluded themselves by resorting to subversion and violence...
...Honor guest was, Prince Juan Carlos de Borbon, who has been chosen by the 81-year-old Franco as his successor...
...He asserted that "a new bill on local administration" would "be presented to the Cortes before May 31...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 FREEDOMS IN SPAIN IqAKING NO HASTE HrL u Barcelona President Carlos Arias Navarro's program for freedoms for Spain is dead...
...He also declared for "a bill establishing the right of political associations so that they may appear in national political life...
...The strength of labor unions has declined with the internationalization of the economy, the check provided by diversity in the business sector has decreased with the increasing disappearance of small businesses, and the "business-government inter-lock" has rendered impotent any effective government regulation...
...Still another indicator of weakened Congressional resolve occurred in late November...
...We need to dymythologize General Motors and the Pentagon just as we did the papacy and the chanceryV Primary analysis of the economic system was offered by Richard Barnet, a founder and director of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and coauthor of an important up-coming study of multinational corporations, Global Reach...
...The program, proposed to the Cortes on February 12, when Arias Navarro assumed office, was liberal in every aspect, except in regard to the Catholic Church, which was the object of his eriticism...
...O'Brien urged that there was a need to shatter the veils of mystery which hang around corporations and the economy...
...This followed statements on social justice made by Cardinal Enrique y Tarancon, archbishop of Madrid...
...In many ways, CCUM's meeting was a microcosm of the macrocosm which is the U.S...
...This must be high on the agenda of social activists in the next decade...
...It is evident that those who wish to legitimate the discussion of socialism in this countrymamong whom I include myself and many others who attended CCUM--will have to challenge the activists to more strategic thinkCommonweal: 255 ing while themselves being open to more pragmatic considerations...
...Francisco Labadie made this assertion in his keynote speech at ceremonies marking the 41st anniversary of the founding of the Falange, Spain's fascist party...
...Hehir's message was a strong emphasis on the 1971 Synod's statement that action on behalf of justice was a "constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel...
...A "compromise" reminiscent of the infamous Compromise of 1877 that marked an end to Reconstruction...
...Interestingly enough, opposition to this discussion came not from those who feared "atheistic Communism" but from those who preferred immediate, pragmatic, ad hoc solutions within the system to what they considered theoretical, ivory-towered considerations of a new system...
...The latter advocated complete separation of Church and State, the end to the right of the Spanish chief of state to name bishops, and asked that the Church cease to be "an instrument for any political or partisan purpose...
...soc!ety...
...Steel, which is fundamental in building apartments, business and factory buildings in this country, went up 52.3 percent...
...Both seem to prosper on ,the campus of the University of Notre Dame...
...Close to 600 persons attended the 1974 CCUM meeting, Nov..10 to 14, 100 more than last year's gathering and up markedly since the 35 attendees of the first meeting in 1970...
...However, Pio Cabanillas Gallas, the Minister of Information, was recently fired, with vice president and housing minister, Antonio Barrera de Irmo, then resigning in protest...
...Catholic community of the alternative of democratic socialism...
...The experiment was not altogether successful in every instance, but it did provide occasionally useful and insightful data...
...As a result 20 December 1974: 25"6...
...According to Burner, the United States never really recovered systemically from the Great Depression of the 1930's...
...dissenters, who will remind us of posterity's inevitable judgment...
...Murnion presented a complex and provocative analysis calling for attention to the social values of community amidst the struggle for social change...
...Despite the election of Ms...
...2. Coalition politics.--There was frequent call for working with labor and ethnic groups in order to assure that effective organization takes place to confront the economic system...
...Senator Brooke, a conferee, did refuse to agree to the matter...
...These funds are not flowing as abundantly as they once were for two reasons: 1. the Congress has correctly decided that much social science "research" is hokum and if hokum is to be financed let it be by others such as the Rockefeller Foundation...
...It has not progressed...
...Members of a Senate and House conference, compromising differences over a major deficiency-appropriation bill, agreed on language that, for the first time by statute, would prohibit federal funds from being cut off to school districts practicing racial discrimination...
...Among the eleven who resigned was Under Secretary of Information Marcelino Oreja, 39, who has stressed the need of press freedom and political liberalization in Spain...
...What brought the social activists to Notre Dame was a challenge to take a hard look at the U.S...
...A ferocious struggle may occur next year in the Congress when legislation is introduced to make it clear that collective bargaining contractual provisions, relating to lay-offs ("last hired, first fired"), take precedence over any equal-employment or fair-employment statute...
...School busing is another indicator...
...Relating especially to unions (where many Catholic ethnics are to be found) has not marked many recent Catholic social efforts...
...Such a provision has been successfully resisted for many years...
...At least that seemed to be the reaction of several of the working seminars which were designed to view the economic system through the "lenses" of specific issues such as hunger, poverty, mass transportation, housing, land use, and the global marketplace...
...These reforms, although limited in scope, would grant epochal freedoms for Spain...
...These seminars did explore strategies to implement Barnet's recommendation for political change which would be locally-based and which would utilize economic issues to organize the "have-nots"-- now more than ever a potential majority of people in this country...
...In outlining the process for this meeting, David O'Brien, an historian at Holy Cross and CCUM .board member, suggested that some probing examination of the alternatives of our political economy was called for today...
...Further resignations were stopped only by the personal intervention of Prince Juan Carlos...
...He was one of the major economic experts named by Arias Navarro...
...The President's voting record as a House member is a poor one in ameliorating the condition of the dispossessed...
...The Congress needs dissenters who appeal to the intelligence of a future day...
...4. Socialism.wThe need repeatedly emphasized for a frank, open, and creative discussion in the U.S...
...church's celebration of the 1976 Bicentennial under the theme "libertY and justice for all...
...Cardinal Nareisco Jubany Arnau, archbishop of Barcelona, and others and the statement of all the Spanish bishops, "The Church and the Political Community...
...One, granting greater freedom of the press, went into effect almost immediately...
...He asked for greater "communal commitment" on the part of social activists...
...These associations, or parties, would operate within the National Movement, the only legal political entity in Spain...
...One thing the effort did make clear was the need to develop more pastoral theologians who are at ease with this type of dialogue with activists...
...Peggy Roach as new executive director, elements in the programmranging from composition of the panels to celebrants of the liturgies--failed to reflect that over 50 percent of the participants were women...
...SISYPHUS 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 URBAN MINISTERS .IS THE Su REFOBIvIABLE...
...Instead, he insisted, the economy of the United States is dominated by a set of oligopolistic corporations, which do not compete in price, which grow even larger through mergers, and which are increasingly global in their operations...
...Particularly, since busing has become a divisive issue in Northern cities-Boston, Detroit, Denver, Wilmington, etc...
...That'U be a bitter one, if unemployment continues to rise...
...What's ahead for the poor among minorities...
...2. t h e federal budgetmakers' axe is falling first on social-sector programs, rather than on the military...
...Under the present system, the unions include labor and management under one roof in an effort to eliminate class struggle...
...Forecasts are risky, but Northern liberals in Congress are losing their stomach for another sustained defense of busing as a part of public-school integration efforts...
...If it were a football game, President Ford and the sports-minded members of Congress would nod their heads approvingly at any coach who chalked on the locker room board something along the lines of "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" or some such Frank Merriwell-ism...
...did not seem to match the radical character of his analysis of the problem...
...But in the past year the leaders of CCUM felt a need for a more substantive look at the total U.S...
...Despite the pleas, Francisco Fernandez Ordonez resigned as president of the National Institute of Industry, the nation's biggest employer and developer...
...The cost of construction alone increased 22 percent in the first six months of this year...
Vol. 101 • December 1974 • No. 10
