The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 2, 2007
Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass
of the
St. Thomas More Society
celebrated at
St. Anthony of Padua Church, 1013 Wood Street
Scranton, PA
Luke 14:1, 7-14
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.
It is easy to miss with all the construction going on downtown at the Lackawanna County Courthouse, but if you take the time you will notice on Adams Avenue, behind the Courthouse, a statue of a man named John Mitchell. John Mitchell is from Illinois, the land of my father’s birth and the home of the National League Central leaders, the Chicago Cubs, but he is a hero to the people of northeastern Pennsylvania. John Mitchell is honored on our County Courthouse lawn because he served as the President of the United Mine Workers of America, most notably during the 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike that finally had to be mediated by the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. The strike had dragged on for months by the time President Roosevelt called the mine owners and John Mitchell, representing the mine workers, to the White House. While John Mitchell was willing to compromise, the mine owners were not. President Roosevelt was appalled by the words and the attitudes of the owners, saying later that the only gentleman in the room that day was John Mitchell.
As we celebrate this year’s Labor Day holiday, John Mitchell stands for us as a union leader who never lost his way. Perhaps more relevantly for us he stands as a Catholic who took seriously the social teaching of the Church. That’s right, John Mitchell was a Catholic and all the mine owners were Protestants. And unlike his Protestant antagonists who refused to admit the dignity of every human being, John Mitchell had the Natural Law on his side, or rather, John Mitchell was on the side of the Natural Law. As Pope Leo XIII had articulated in his 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum (On Capital and Labor), John Mitchell knew that workers deserved a just return for their labor, and they had the right to organize to assert and defend that right. Quite simply, their dignity as human beings meant they could not be treated as mere cogs in a machine, chattel for the mine owners to use and abuse.
At the time John Mitchell was only 32 years old. He was not taken seriously, he was ridiculed, and the mine owners even refused to recognize that he represented the interests of the anthracite mine workers. We know today that the claims he made were just. The workers did deserve more money for their labor, and the numbers of hours they worked each day needed to be reduced. However, John Mitchell did not convince the American public of these truths by bombastic speeches and threats to the common good, but by his steadfast humility. As America was shocked by the arrogance of the owners, shocked by their unwillingness even to consider the position of John Mitchell, the public opinion fell squarely on the side of the workers, even as a winter coal shortage loomed. In the end John Mitchell was able to claim victory as the President of the United States, whose admiration John Mitchell had earned, forced the owners to make concessions by threatening to provide coal for the nation by sending the military into the mines.
In today’s Gospel Jesus encourages us to practice the virtue of humility by means of self-abnegation. He says, “Don’t sit down at the place of honor when you are invited to a wedding feast. Rather, sit in the lowest place, lest you be humiliated by your host, who might remove you from the place of honor.” When we don’t esteem ourselves more highly than we ought to, when we don’t engage in self-promotion, we allow others the benefit of seeing our virtue for themselves. That is, when we tell people we’re important and good, as the mine owners did, we contradict ourselves, for an essential part of actually being good is putting others before ourselves. But on the other hand, when we say nothing of our own goodness and are willing to defer to the authority of someone else, as John Mitchell was known to do, people can see our goodness in our willingness to sacrifice. John Mitchell did not tout his own importance, yet we have honored this man from Illinois with a statue on our courthouse lawn. The other men in that room with President Roosevelt one hundred five years ago were from Pennsylvania. Yet do we remember any of their names? Have we erected statues in their honor?
Many in today’s labor movement have lost their way because they have chosen to imitate the arrogance of bygone mine owners, rather than follow the example of humble leaders like John Mitchell. Growing up in the shadow of Bethlehem Steel, as thousands upon thousands of men were laid off in the 1980’s, I heard horror stories about union workers who reported to work only to play cards all day, discouraged their fellow workers from ‘working too hard’, and otherwise sought ways to get something for nothing. Bethlehem Steel did not go out of business only because of such antics, but the arrogance of such workers gave labor a black eye from which it has yet to recover. We can never know, but had the example of John Mitchell been followed rather than ignored, my hometown might still be producing steel, instead of turning the steel buildings into museums.
Labor movements fail when workers become intent to get more than they give. This is, of course, not Christian. Our obligation as followers of Christ means that we among all people are the ones who are willing to give in order that others might receive. We work not only for our own interests but for those of the common good. We seek not to get rich but to provide for our families a just return upon our labor. We do not seek something for nothing, but we insist that our dignity as human beings made in the image of God demands we receive what our labor is worth. We do not promote ourselves at the expense of others, but rather give thanks for the gifts of others that make our lives possible. We do not see life as competition in a perpetual game of one-upmanship, but as a gift we have been given by God to complement the lives of others. These are the ideals of the labor movement as they are embodied in the Catholic gentleman, John Mitchell. As we observe an additional day of rest tomorrow in honor of Labor Day, let us remember his humility, consider the Faith that was the source of his humility, and give thanks that God provides such examples for us to emulate.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.