'Labor Priest' Msgr. (Charles Owen) Rice dies at 96

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05318/606197.stm

Msgr. Charles Owen Rice, known as Pittsburgh's "Labor Priest" for his decades of activism on behalf of working people, died yesterday at Vincentian Home in McCandless. He was 96.

Msgr. Rice marched on picket lines and led labor protests starting in the 1930s, joined arms with Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and was an early opponent of the war in Vietnam.

His forceful and opinionated writings appeared for years in the Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper, and Bishop Donald Wuerl once joked about the volume of mail the columns generated.

A series of small strokes had left him frail in recent years, but he was able to attend a celebration of his 70th anniversary as a priest in July 2004 at St. Anne in Castle Shannon, his home church. He was given a standing ovation during the Mass, which was celebrated by Bishop Wuerl and more than 40 priests, some of whom worked with Msgr. Rice through the years.

[meow2u3]

1. May God rest his soul

A real Christian has gone (God Willing) to receive his reward for sticking up for those who couldn't stick up for themselves.

[NoPasaran]

2. The people have lost a true friend

[iverglas]

3. the social gospel

The tradition that this atheist was reared in, in Canada. It has, unfortunately never taken root in the US to the extent it has elsewhere.

The passage I've reproduced at the bottom, from a giantish thing I certainly haven't read all of and am not adopting anything else from, is a good useful summary of the principles behind the social gospel movement (liberation theology, and worker priests and other manifestations, in the RC church) and how it developed.

I'd never heard of this individual, but there are definitely some good folks in various Christian churches and I've worked with a number. Heh heh, I guess I'm a classical social democrat, as also described by that site:

Social Democrats, on the other hand, tend to regard people as people; thus, while they may be opposed to capitalists as capitalists, they can still see them as individuals and human beings who are involved with a bad and unjust system.

... or oppose clergy as clergy, but still recognize the good ones. Rice sounds like he was one of them.



http://husky1.stmarys.ca/~wmills/course203/6Socialism.html

Social Gospel

- this was a logical extension and combination of postmillennialism and “liberal” theology.

- if God is immanent rather than transcendent, then ‘original sin’ becomes relatively unimportant because God is present in all life and in everyone; even the most depraved has some spark of the divine.

- everyone has the potential to be a good person. Obviously, not everyone is good. Why not? The divine spark can be nourished and grow or it can be stifled and even perhaps snuffed out entirely. What determines what happens? The environment of the family and society determines what happens.

- the purpose of life and of society, as well as of religion, is to foster and develop this divine spark by encouraging people to do good and by creating a better and ideal environment for people in order to permit this.

- in this view, sin and evil came about because the divine spark not only did not grow and blossom but because society frequently created conditions which inhibited people from doing good; the divine spark was dampened and in some cases, practically extinguished (i.e., poverty and poor conditions brutalise people).

-as a result, reform of society is a prerequisite if the divine in people is to be developed and realised. Also, the achievement of the Kingdom of God, the elimination of sin, etc. is possible only by changing and improving society.

- as a result, many Christians (especially clergymen) began to have a good deal in common with many socialists; they were repelled by the evils of industrial, competitive society, they looked to cooperation as a better alternative and some even looked back to the early Christian Church as a kind of ‘communist’ society—at least an example of communalism. In fact, many were prepared to join with socialists in political action to reform and transform society from greedy and selfish capitalism to cooperative socialism. This was the social gospel.

- the social gospel first affected Protestants in the 19th century; it was strong in Germany, Britain, and North America. In Canada, the C.C.F. and N.D.P. owe a very great deal to this tradition—J. S. Woodsworth and Tommy Douglas are only two examples of a large number of former clergymen in this tradition.
<Tommy Douglas: father of Canadian medicare and grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland, of course>

- it emerged much later in Catholicism as it was restricted and condemned by the Vatican; yet flickers emerged in 1920s. Much of revolution in the Catholic Church since the 1950s has been an eruption of ‘social gospel’ concepts—priests and nuns who joined the U.S. civil rights marches, worker priests, support for asbestos strikers in Quebec in early 1950s, and recently, the ‘Marxist’ priests in Latin America. About 1980, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops developed a policy statement on social policies which contains strong criticisms of capitalism and capitalist society. That statement has a number of strong social gospel elements in its basic concepts.

[mazzarro]

4. God speed Msgr. Rice - may you rest in perfect peace (n/t)

[patrice]

5. God Bless him. There used to be priests like that around.

My Mom and Dad fell in love with one in Coffeyville Ks; he preached to the refinery workers like my Dad. He supported Labor and he was a Populist and I was named after him. His name was Fr. Patrick Quinn.

Back when the Church was different . . . .

Hare Krsna!

[senseandsensibility]

6. kick

Thank you, brother. I am glad to hear about this activist priest. I hope he rests in peace. I must admit I have been disappointed with my local priests. Although the Pope has come out against the war, the priests in my community don't join in peace vigils. There is a small group of women activists who stand in front of our local Catholic Church every week to protest the invasion. It is a somber, dignified candlelight vigil. No one from the Church joins them.