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About The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 19, 1987)
PAGE 5 — The Georgia Bulletin, February 19,1987 Msgr. George G. Millions For two decades, pollster George Gallup Jr. has surveyed American Catholics to better understand their attitudes, practices and lifestyles. Now, teaming with Catholic jour nalist Jim Castelli, Gallup presents these findings in a fascinating book titled “The American Catholic People: Their Beliefs, Practices and Values” (Doubleday). In the areas I know best, some of the Gallup-Castelli find ings are disappointing, but not surprising. Take the at titudes of American Catholics on trade unionism. Gallup and Castelli report that “while the new Catholic af fluence has not caused a callousness toward the poor, it has contributed to a distancing of American Catholics from the labor movement — despite the fact that 23 percent of Catholics live in families with a member who belongs to a labor union and that 34 percent of all union members are Catholics. While Catholics remain more supportive of unions than do Protestants, the gap is narrowing.” This is mainly due. I suspect, to the fact that many second, third and fourth-generation Catholics moving up the economic ladder are persuaded that unions are no longer needed. But they are wrong. Their relative affluence (owed in part to the earlier struggles of organized labor) blinds them to Higgins The Yardstick Need Union Protection the fact that millions of today's workers badly need union protection. And a growing number of American workers who thought they were moving up the economic ladder now find they are slipping back into poverty. Many affluent Americans make much of the fact that millions of new jobs are created every year in the United States. They seem not to know, or care, that a sizeable percentage of the jobs created in the past several years pay poverty-level wages. Economist Barry Bluestone of the University of Massachusetts and Bennett Harrison of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology dealt with this problem graphically in a Feb. 1 New York Times article titled "A Low-Wage Explo sion: The Grim Truth About the Job Miracle.”' They report that since the early 1970s, average wage and salary incomes adjusted for inflation have been declining for nearly all population groups and in most industries. "Even more dis turbing,” they point out, "is the proliferation of low-wage employment. Between 1979 and 1985 — the most recent years for which government data are available — 44 percent of the new jobs created paid poverty-level wages.” This development is not restricted to minorities and women. “Since 1979,” Bluestone and Harrison write, “nearly three-quarters of the net job gains of white men have been at the low end of the spectrum — more than for any other demographic group." There is no easy solution to this problem, but Bluestone and Harrison are dead right to conclude that “in the absence of a new wave of labor organizing in services and of govern ment policies to expand high-value-added production, wage standards for a substantial fraction of American working peo ple likely will continue to erode.” In the light of Catholic social teaching, unions would re main essential even if the vast majority of workers received adequate wages. That is to say, unions are the normal voice of labor, necessary to the common good. While we may hope that the abuses which occasioned the rise of unions a century or more ago will ultimately disappear, it does not follow that unions will thereby lose their function. Instead, they will be freed from unpleasant, though tem porarily necessary, adversarial tasks, to devote all their time to a better organization of socio-economic life. This is standard Catholic social teaching. Copyright (c) 1987 by NC News Service K lvan J. Kauffman * Optimism Scientists have recently discovered there are two basic ways human beings respond to adversity. One is to assume there's nothing we can do about the problems in our life, and then to blame ourselves for being inept. The other is to assume that when bad things occur it’s because either we or someone else made a mistake, and to respond by figuring out what went wrong and what can be done to prevent it in the future. The psychologists engaged in this study call these our "ex planatory styles." Those people who view problems as something to be solved are described as “optimists,” and those who automatically view any problem as hopeless and therefore a personal defeat are called “pessimists." What has drawn a good deal of attention to these studies in recent months is hard evidence that optimists as a group have much better health, both physical and mental, then pessimists — especially in older age — and furthermore that optimists tend to get better grades in school than pessimists with the same intelligence scores. Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, who created a test to measure how "pessimistic" or “optimistic we are (most of us are a mixture of the two), concluded after Does Work studying groups of both grade school and college students that "actual achievement is a function not just of talent but also of the capacity to stand defeat." He says, “What you need to know about someone is whether they will keep going when things get frustrating.” The biggest problem pessimists have is their feeling of helplessness. Since they believe that regardless of what they do things will turn out badly it makes no sense for them even to try to deal with their problems. When things go wrong they automatically see it as one more proof that “I can't do anything right.” Optimists on the other hand, although they don't believe they can do anything they want to, do believe there is always SOMETHING they can do. They see both themselves and others not as victims, but as participants in society, and when something goes wrong they assume it's because a wrong decision has been made — a decision which can be corrected. Mother Teresa for example says, “God doesn't cause poverty: we do, by our refusal to share.” And because she looks at poverty in that way she is able to do something about it. Although she works in the midst of the world's greatest Making Peace suffering she stands for hope. What has given optimism a bad name are those who believe that not only do our problems have solutions — they have EASY solutions. That kind of naive optimism, which was , so popular in the Victorian Era, is now almost sure to produce the comment, “Oh, be realistic." The pendulum has swung so far the other way in our day that we equate realism with pessimism. But Mother Teresa is neither naive nor pessimistic. She ob viously doesn't believe poverty has an easy solution, but she does believe there are things we can do about it. There is after all no difficulty so great it makes love impossible. At bottom everyone's optimism or pessimism rests on what they believe about ultimate reality. Is the world a lonely little ball that just happens to be floating around on a mean ingless journey through infinite space? Or is it something God created and cares for, person by person and minute by minute? It takes courage to believe — to really believe, the way Mother Teresa believes — but the evidence is it’s not only good for your health and your grade-point average, it’s good for the world. IRS Sheila Mallon Choose Life Abortion's Second Victim More and more often, the Pro-Life office hears from women who are suffering from guilt and depression, who feel angry, exploited, abused and confused by the depth of their anguish over an abortion. It is called Post-Abortion Syndrome, a rather technical phrase which refers to the trauma a woman goes through after an abortion. Sometimes it is years before the enormous price she has paid exacts its toll. Women Exploited By Abortion (WEBA), is just one group ministering to women who have had abortions. All of the women in WEBA are the victims of this violent process. Most of them have suffered years of self-denigration. Some have had related drug and alcohol problems and many have con sidered or attempted suicide. At a pro-life meeting in the Catholic Center last October, we heard from two women whose odyssey through the depths of depression had led them to come forward with their stories. There were few dry eyes when one young woman told of how her high school teacher in Gwinnett County told her to have an abortion because it was just a “glob of cells.” Her at tendant grief and pain and the long struggle to overcome them were resolved when she accepted healing through the grace of Christ Jesus. As a church we are only just beginning to become aware of the enormous price that abortion inflicts upon the second "victim,” the aborted woman. In a recent article Father Ed ward Bryce, director of the bishops’ Office for Pro-Life Ac tivities, said that the "many factors that structured her (the aborted woman's) unique situation are continually rearrang ed by the mind remembering. As in a kaleidoscope, the original picture keeps changing. What were her big con siderations diminish in importance. Previous great expecta tions have turned to dust. Mind games that blocked the memory no longer work. And there is pain and fear in the face of reality, the death of her child.” Father Bryce calls upon pastors to extend their hands to those who are "stumbling along in the valley of the shadow of death — the abortion death — and lead them into the way of peace.” Many people believe that abortion is a trivial process, with only the occasional woman suffering from depression or pro longed guilt. Psychiatrists and psychologists are finding otherwise. Sometimes the process comes to a head in a relatively short period of time. More often it can be years before the process of denial is over and the woman faces in pain and turmoil the actuality of the act of abortion — “the taking of the life of her child.” As one woman put it, “For women who say they don’t regret killing their babies, I say, Wait,’ it took me five years to break through the stage of denial.” A member of WEBA remarked that, “once a woman becomes a mother whether or not she gives birth to that child, that dead child will be a part of her life as long as she lives." It is not just the mother who suffers. Sometimes it is the grandparent, who helped obtain the abortion; the boyfriend or husband, who insisted on it, or the friend who counseled it. It affects marriages and future children who suffer from the added burden of a mother's unresolved and perhaps unacknowledged grief over the loss of her unborn child. It might be of interest to report that Post-Abortion Syn drome is not at all a uniquely “Catholic” problem. Over whelming research evidence calls for a ministry to these women in every faith tradition. There is an excellent book which will be of help to those dealing either personally or otherwise with the problems of post abortion trauma. It is ti tled “Abortion and Healing — The Cry To Be Whole,” by Father Michael Mannion. It may be obtained from the Arch diocesan Pro-Life Office or ordered from N.C.H.L.A., 1430 K. Street N.W., Suite 800, Washington, D.C. 20005. The cost is $4.50. Fourteen years after abortion became legal we are seeing much more than the tip of the iceberg. An avalanche of women suffering grief and guilt is beginning to spill over into our society. Abortion is a cruel and terrible crime against humanity. It can never be trivialized, but we must remember that it is a crime against the humanity of the child AND its mother. We are called by Jesus to reach out in compassion and forgiveness to the woman who recognizes her guilt for the terrible act and who seeks forgiveness for it. There are truly two victims of abortion and each parish should be making some attempt to bring about reconciliation between these hurting women and an all-forgiving God. As Father Mannion says, “The Author of life must heal the loss of life.” Only by accepting God’s love and forgiveness can the woman be healed, for peace is the reward of love, guilt is the companion of sin.
