Diocesan
Life Columns
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Bishop Paul's writes a monthly column for the Diocesan Newspaper, Diocesan
Life, edited by Communication
Minister, Bill Lewellis.
For more features from the life of our diocese, check Diocesanlife....ONLINE; and Bethlehem
News.
A few weekends ago Diana and I drove up to Scranton after church
to visit the Lackawanna County Anthracite Museum and coal mine
tour. Hardly a day has passed that I have not thought about that
visit and reviewed the impressions it left. I have done some reading
about the mines and mining since then, and realize that there are
large pieces of Pennsylvania that my mandatory junior high course
in Commonwealth history and geography did not cover.
I am primarily a visual person, so when the guide (whose father
died of Black Lung, and whose grandfather died in a cave-in) turned
out the lights and showed us the amount of light a carbide lamp
(and then a slightly brighter electric lamp) on a helmet provided,
and added that this was all the light the miners had from the opening
of the mine in the 1850s until its close in 1966, I began to realize
what a different world they inhabited.
Long days, mining an eighteen-inch seam on your belly; child labor
starting at age seven; water, dirt, and noise; not to mention health,
safety, and economic questions, made me realize that a turn-of-the
century miners life is not one I would want to live, and why a
convicts being sent to the mines in the ancient pre-industrial
world was a death sentence.
What have we learned? The past is not really my concern, though.
My concern is what use the past has for us who follow Jesus as
we observe another Labor Day. The past teaches that the industrial
world we enjoy was built by the backbreaking labor of millions
of people, supported by the unpaid labor of those who made what
homes they could for them, with little hope for something better.
The past is important because we all need to acknowledge our debt
to those people, not because they made some owners and investors
(possibly ourselves) wealthy, but because they helped build a country,
and for a long time provided much of the economic backbone of our
region. Grim reminders of the past remind us of how much we prefer
to forget what it cost them.
The workplace is by and large a safer and more rewarding place
for Americans than it was for the miners of the 1890s, and most
people now have considerably more options about where and for whom
they will work. Nonetheless, I think that the basic lessons are
still the same.
God made humans social creatures. Most of what we do and enjoy
depends on what people do for us or with us. Accordingly, people
are not to be used, but to be valued for who they are as Gods creatures,
and what they give to one another through their work. That gift
is a continuing of the Creators work. How do we teach that to our
children so that they will continue to build human respect and
community? Our baptismal vows include one to respect the dignity
of every person. How do we help our children realize that faith
in action starts here?
First of all, in the attitudes we model to our children, we must
make it clear that while different kinds of work have different
levels of responsibility, creativity, and reward, and while social
conventions acknowledge this in many ways, everyone has the same
personal worth. Our children need to hear us speaking of people
from any walk of life with respect. They need to see us respect
what is human in those around us, whether they have more or less
education, responsibility, or money than we.
Then, do our children feel, from their early days on, that they
participate in supporting the household, that that is a good feeling?
From the small tasks any toddler can do to the considerable help
that a teenager of either sex can provide, do they have the joy
of knowing that their strenuous or inconvenient efforts have a
material contribution to make? Those of us who have shielded our
children from doing volunteer work for the family or in community
service out of a perception of the status we have attained or inherited
may need to rethink that decision. How else will they learn that
among those who follow Jesus, there are no little princes or princesses,
but that we are members one of another? How else can they learn
that the more privileges one has earned or inherited, the more
responsibility one has?
Finally work cannot be a god. Those whose disabilities or age
prevents them from contributing, many species and some human groups
simply kill or leave to starve. We have learned to respect and
care for them and to help them see that there are many ways to
participate in the community's life. Japan, a country that does
know something about work marks a Respect for the Elderly day each
September. What might a version of that look like in America, brought
off with care and without patronizing?
Anyone who knows me knows that I am very far from being a socialist
my politics are independent and highly pragmatic, and I would never
pretend to have expertise in labor relations. I am convinced, however,
that if we believe that God made us, and made us to work together,
we need to act as if that is true, and value one another accordingly.
When and if that is happening, I am willing to trust the experts
to do much of the rest.
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