Early Challenge to Care for Workers

I do remember one thing that he used to do with us. He sometimes would grab the Sunday paper and read the business section to us-we would be maybe five or seven or eight. He would look to us and say, "What do you think of that?" We just sat there staring, wondering when we would get out to play. He said, "Those sons of bitches! They have taken workers from down South (General Motors or Ford, whatever the company was.) They've brought them up to Detroit or Minneapolis. They're using them as strike-breakers. Six months from now, they'll let 'em go." My father never, never swore. That was the toughest swear word I think I ever heard him say.

His Conversion Experience

My faith made sense for the first time, intellectually. There was a coherence to the faith through the Exercises. On the other hand there was also somehow more mysteriously the confrontation. I saw myself to be a little bit more dishonest, to be manipulative, to be all of these negative qualities that I talked about. I realized I was spiritually a sick man, although people thought I was sort of pious in some externals. At the end of the weekend, I said, "I can't go back to work. I'm just scattered, traumatized."

The Labor Guild: Last of its Kind

The Guild is the last of the so-called Catholic labor schools in the United States to survive. It's really not a Catholic labor school in the traditional sense, because the Guild is a membership organization, which was originally Catholic trade unionists, about a thousand, pious, and it was very Catholic. But it had a good school. The school was its principal program, plus Communion breakfasts and an occasional conference. That was in the '50s. The Guild had been formed in 1945 by Cardinal Cushing. His father was an MBTA [Boston's transportation system] man, and so Cushing was very strongly pro-union.

Success at Getting So Many Involved

That's been a success-to get all of these people involved in labor issues. We've had a lot of conferences around drug and alcohol abuse, around safety and health issues. We have had the dinner, which gives visibility to the values that we speak about.
We've worked well with the cardinals. Another one of the blessings has been the four cardinals: Cushing-very strong. Medeiros-very strongly pro-union and for the immigrant community. Law was very strong on social justice and most articulate on that. O'Malley is also strong.
Another success has been for the Society in the sense that provincials and everyone else have been very supportive of our work. Over the years we have enjoyed the support of the superiors of the various New England Jesuit communities.

Due to death or sickness some of these selected readings have been read by someone other than the author. This page contains one such replacement.