catholicweekly.com.au 17 31, May, 2020 E ditorial & letters Dorin’s World Send your letters to:
[email protected] By the post: The Editor, Level 13, 133 Liverpool St, Sydney NSW 2000 AUSTRALIA I’ll never mentally dismiss a cassock again ... T his week providence put me in touch with a priest. As I was walking my dogs on a lonely and dusty road, I prayed to the Lord that he would allow me to encounter his Real Presence. As I finished my prayer, I noticed a priest, dressed in a cassock, saying the rosary whilst staring up at the sky. At first, I grimaced at his traditional dress but as we crossed paths he simply said: “Domi- nus Vobiscum”. All of a sudden, my heart began to burn with joy as if I was on my way to Emmaus and so I responded (re- membering the prayers of my youth): “Et cum spiritu tuo.” He told me that he would remember me at his Mass that day as I told him I didn’t have a television and was strug- gling to pay for the internet to livestream. I wanted to find some way to thank this ‘priest of the peripheries’ and so thought to share this little story. Thank you, Je- sus, for bringing me your presence in this holy priest and for teaching me not to judge a priest by his cassock. Casey Timboom Wagga Wagga Try a chat with St Joseph D IY has become all rage during this time of the virus. So, perhaps it’s a good time to think about renovating the soul while we wait for the church doors to spring open full-time again. We could start by having a chat with history’s most famous handyman, St Jo- seph, and asking him for tips on filling a few cracks here-and-there, before giving them some licks of spiritual paint. He would probably direct us to that best-selling manual of all time, the Holy Bible, with its ever-popular top ten tips for sprucing up the soul. As for me, well after clearing a few cobwebs from the attic in my mind, I built a prayer work- shop there and repaired some broken thoughts. If you get some wires crossed, don’t worry – there’s always the hotline to the parish church and Joseph’s workmate there will put you back on the straight and narrow - free of charge too. Bob Cameron Malabar NSW Something good always comes out of Africa I t’s clear that Africa’s common chal- lenges in a global environment are still numerous. However, Africa has managed to have the low death rates as of now caused by COVID 19 against all the predictions which were made by World Health Organisation. Whether the low death rates in Africa are caused by weather, luck, geographi- cal location, food diet, effective manage- ment of the virus, we still need to recog- nise and give credit to Africa. This is the positive news that we should cherish fromAfrica and hope that the situation will continue to be like that as Africa defy all odds, predictions and probabilities. Well done Africa. Handsen Chikowore London UK Despite Catholic bashing, silence can be golden T he mainstreammedia behave like a dog constantly barking for attention. Any other matters regarding the Catholic Church are invariably reported with reference to the sexual abuse scandal through which the public view the Church. Some sections in the communities even take delight in Catholic bashing, turning a blind eye to the valuable works and contributions the Church has made to the country and its people such as schools, hospitals, aged care, social and pastoral care. But Catholics put on their best be- haviour when confronted with negativi- ties. Silence is golden. Ina Kite Terrigal NSW Well done, Archdiocese of Sydney, for petition T his is a late letter but I write to congratulate Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP and the Archdiocese of Sydney for mounting the successful pe- tition which resulted in Premier Gladys Berejiklian announcing the inclusion this week of churches and places of worship in permitted expanded social gatherings. While the Premier’s decision was laudable it still begs the question of why churches were not allowed to resume ex- panded operations along with all those other businesses and services original- ly permitted to do so? We are incessantly told that we are all equal but some, ap- parently, are more equal than others. Given that the job of Premiers is sup- posed to be leadership of state govern- ment for the common good and the best interests of all within any particular state, it seems difficult to believe that church- es were simply overlooked or forgotten about as an unintended oversight. What, I wonder, is the actual reason churches were originally excluded? Nevertheless, the Archdiocese of Syd- ney’s response shows other dioceses and states around the country what is possi- ble and what can be achieved. Toby Garcia Lopez Baulkham Hills NSW Seeing possibilities in economic fallout T he US United Steelworkers Union, with headquar- ters based in the heart of the rustbelt in Pittsburgh, is estimated to have approximately 860,000 mem- bers across a range of manufacturing industries in Canada and the US, making it the single largest trade union in the world. In 2009 the Union announced it had reached an agreement with the Mondragon Co-operative based in the Basque region of Spain to explore the possibilities of es- tablishing worker-owned co-operatives in the US and Can- ada, organised on the principles established by Mondrag- on’s founder Fr José María Arizmendiarrieta. Fr Arizmendiarrieta arrived in Mondragon in post-Span- ish Civil War Spain in 1941 to find himself confronted by widespread poverty and economic depression. Fired by the still relatively new development of Catholic social teaching contained in documents such as Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum , his solution had been to establish worker-owned manufacturing co-operatives, philosophically based on concepts such as human solidarity and the inherent dignity of the human person. The idea behind the Mondragon co-operative movement employed the concept of employees owning the companies for which they work and participating in key decisions. A range of ancillary benefits, including healthcare and educa- tion for family members come along with membership. Un- der the Mondragon model, management is sourced as far as possible fromwithin the pool of employees and reports annually not to shareholders but to the worker-owners. Today the Mondragon Co-operative is a multi-faceted entity made up of more than 260 cooperative enterprises, employing approximately 85,000 people, generating annual revenue of nearly A$30 billion and covering the manufac- turing, retail, finance, research and education sectors. In 2012, the USW, Mondragon and the Ohio Employee Own- ership Centre released the detailed model for establishing sustainable jobs using the model of worker ownership and the collective bargaining process. Such a development would be previously unthinkable in a nation such as the US where many neo-conservatives see government intervention or regulation of economic pro- cesses as the practical equivalent to Cold War Communism while the psychological legacy of McCarthyism still lingers on in the widespread suspicion of trade unionism and or- ganised labour as somehow being just one step away from North Korean style totalitarianism. Yet as nations around the world struggle with the mas- sive national debts and unemployment levels caused by the pandemic, the advantages of the economic resilience of co-operative organisations of employment have become clearer to those who are aware of their existence. One key advantage – as was demonstrated by the Mondragon move- ment during the Global Financial Collapse of 2008 – is the ability of collective decisions to accept lower incomes as a temporary insurance against severe economic difficulties – as opposed to unilaterally laying off massive numbers of employees simply in the interests of protecting annual profit margins reported to meetings of shareholders. One potential silver lining to the dark cloud of the economic effects of the coronavirus is therefore the way in which its fallout has forced many to consider new alterna- tives. At the same time, part of the economic fallout of coro- navirus has been the way it has exposed both capitalism and globalisation’s intrinsic flaw: that somehow unregulat- ed market capitalism’s greed should naturally determine social harmony and social justice via the market. In the meantime, the USW-Mondragon agreement offers a clear alternative with an established record of decades of economic resilience and success based on the principle of the primacy of the human person as opposed to capital- ism’s embrace of the primacy of the market. Intrinsic to the co-operative approach is that work exists to give human beings dignity, the direct opposite of capitalism’s assump- tion that human beings exist to make the market and its owners wealthy. When Ford Australia announced its planned 2016 clo- sure of its Broadmeadows and Geelong manufacturing and assembly facilities it was a disaster for Australian manufac- turing, but a disaster that was nevertheless following the inexorable logic of unrestrained and unregulated capital- ism: ultimately, workers, their families and their families’ futures do not count in the eyes or the interests of share- holders and executives. In a time of pandemic, both the Mondragon model and the USW-Mondragon agreement show what might be possible. Now is an opportunity to begin considering the alternatives. LETTERS