Teachers Strike at 10 Catholic SchoolsBy JOHN ELIGON
NYT, 4/5/08
Nearly 200 teachers at 10
Catholic schools throughout the Archdiocese of New York went on strike
Friday, saying that the archdiocese has hindered their efforts to
obtain a new health insurance plan, said Mary-Ann Perry, the president
of the Federation of Catholic Teachers, a union.
The strike could continue next week, Ms. Perry said, if the
archdiocese does not give the teachers the information they need to
obtain a new health care plan through Local 153, the Office and
Professional Employees International Union.
A spokesman for the archdiocese criticized the strike, saying it was
merely a bargaining chip on the part of the Catholic teachers’ union
and that the archdiocese had already handed over a stack of documents
that stood about a foot high.
At one school affected by the strike Friday, Our Lady Queen of
Angels elementary school in East Harlem, some students watched videos
and others played games.
The archdiocese and the union began negotiating a new contract last
May. The contract expired on Aug. 31 without a new deal. In November,
the archdiocese made a final offer. The deal included an increased
premium for health insurance that the union said was too high, so a few
weeks later it began seeking a new health care plan from an outside
group, Ms. Perry said.
That group agreed to do a feasibility study, Ms. Perry said, but
told the union it needed to provide information from its previous plan.
While the archdiocese has provided a lot of information, Ms. Perry
said, it has yet to turn over one of the most vital pieces: the actual
cost of running the plan, known as the utilization cost, from 2007. The
union has repeatedly asked for these figures since last December, Ms.
Perry said, but the archdiocese has provided years-old information.
“The cost of health care makes it difficult for people to make ends
meet,” Ms. Perry said. “This strike is an unfair labor practice strike
in order to get the information.”
But Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the
archdiocese was preparing those documents and had been planning on
turning them over to the union within the next few days.
“First, we have to wait for all the figures to come in,” Mr.
Zwilling said. “Then, we have to break them out for 217 schools, 3,200
teachers. It takes time.
“They’re just using this tactic to try and waste time, I think,
rather than coming to an agreement. This is not going to improve the
offer one bit. The only thing they’ve done is cost themselves a day’s
pay.”
Avery Cardinal Dulles is, of course, a giant. Here's a story about his final McGinley Lecture at Fordham. Were any MOJ-folks there? Any reports? Here's a taste:
In his lectures, which have always been well attended, the cardinal has defended Catholic orthodoxy and explored oft-debated topics.
He said his principal aim in his lectures was "to present and classify the existing opinions" and "to criticize views that are inadequate."
He always tried "to incorporate the valid insights of all parties to the discussion, rather than perpetuate a one-sided view that is partial and incomplete," he said.
"I think of myself as a moderate trying to make peace between (opposing) schools of thought. While doing so, however, I insist on logical consistency. Unlike certain relativists of our time, I abhor mixtures of contradiction," Cardinal Dulles said. . . .
"Western thought," he said, "followed in the path of cognitive realism for many centuries before the revival of agnosticism in the Renaissance." The cardinal repeated Pope John Paul II's admonition that philosophy should seek to "resume its original quest for eternal truth and wisdom."
"Science, we all know, does not rest on a treasury of revealed knowledge handed down in authoritative tradition," the cardinal said. "Science has wonderfully increased our powers to make and to destroy, but it does not tell us what we ought to do and why.
"It does not tell us where the universe came from, or why we exist, or what our final destination is. And yet some scientists speak as though their discipline were the only kind of valid knowledge," he said. . . .
"The most important thing about my career, and many of yours, I feel sure, is the discovery of the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field -- the Lord Jesus himself," he said. . . .
Cathy Kaveny has an interesting essay in the new Commonweal marking the 20th anniversary of John Paul II's Mulieris dignitatem, the apostolic letter on the dignity of women. Kaveny explains that many (most?) Catholic women greeted the letter with wariness because the pope "makes claims about the nature of women that were in fact used in the last century to argue for what most of us would consider to be unjust political, economic, and social subjugation." For example, the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia asserts that:
[T]he political activity of man is and remains different from that of woman, as has been shown above. It is difficult to unite the direct participation of woman in the political and parliamentary life of the present time with her predominate duty as a mother. If it should be desired to exclude married women or to grant women only the actual vote, the equality sought for would not be attained. On the other hand, the indirect influence of women, which in a well-ordered state makes for the stability of the moral order, would suffer severe injury by political equality.
Both the Encyclopedia and John Paul II, according to Kaveny, "strongly defend a divinely ordained difference and complementarity between men and women," and both "are worried about the baleful effects of blurred gender lines." John Paul II cautions that "women must not appropriate male characteristics contrary to their own femine originality." But what, Kaveny asks, are those characteristics? Are they the same as those that were identified in 1912 -- impacting women's claims to equality in the educational, employment, and political spheres? If they're not the same, on what basis does John Paul II accept the traditional anthropological claims regarding gender, yet resist the traditionally espoused implications of those claims? As Kaveny puts it, "We know that Pope John Paul didn't endorse [the Encyclopedia's] view. We just don't know why he didn't."
I realize that there will be an entire conference dedicated to Mulieris dignitatem this fall, but I'm wondering if anyone has initial thoughts on Kaveny's important questions.
A little while back, Fr. Neuhaus generously wrote the following in First Things: "Lexington Books has just published a volume called Civilizing Authority: Society, State, and Church. Edited by Patrick McKinley Brennan, it is a collection of essays written in response to Arendt’s claim [about the disappearance of authority]. Each is worth reading." As so often happens, I find myself in agreement with Father.
I hope you'll treat yourself and others to a copy or two here or elsewhere. In addition to the foreword by H. Jefferson Powell, it includes chapters by Cardinal Dulles, Joseph Vining, Michael J. White, Glenn Tinder, John Coons, Thomas Kohler, Russell Hittinger, J. Budziszewski, Steven Smith, and Brennan.
