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“The Church has already suffered from too many losses and scandals. May we not add more pain and shame,” Sullivan wrote in a letter directed to Martino, sent to Times-Shamrock Newspapers on Tuesday.
Last month, the diocese announced the Scranton Diocese Association of Catholic Teachers would not be recognized as a collective bargaining unit, and instead the diocese is implementing an employee relations program.
On Tuesday, Sullivan, who has been a priest for more than 50 years, said he had been reluctant to write to the bishop publicly, and did so only after he received no response from the diocese.
“I feel that I have something to say,” he said.
In his academic research, Sullivan has studied the church’s teachings on labor and its involvement in labor-management controversies.
Now, he can examine the controversy in his own backyard.
In an advertisement published several times in newspapers last week, Martino wrote that he is not ignoring Catholic social teaching — which historically has been supportive of workers’ right to unionize — and instead is focusing on related factors, including the strained finances of the diocese.
“Yes, there is fragility, but why must the teachers have to suffer financially and be denied not only their moral right to unionize, but also their moral right to an adequate living wage — a bedrock of Catholic social teaching?” Sullivan wrote.
The diocesan employee relations program includes employee councils made of wage and benefit, health care and grievance committees. Employee representatives have already attended orientation.
Martino’s public statement “reveals the handiwork of the management consultant firm hired, to establish an ‘employee relations program,’ which is widely recognized simply as a ‘company union,’” Sullivan wrote.
With company unions, moral rights are taken away from employees, and they are afraid to speak out, to protest or to strike, Sullivan wrote. Employers of Catholic institutions should be of a higher caliber than those in industry or commerce, he added.
“Whatever the arguments and differences, the feelings and memories of the past, let there begin again negotiations with mutual respect and cordiality,” Sullivan wrote.
The teachers union appreciates the support of Sullivan, and hopes other priests who have expressed support privately will do so publicly, union President Michael Milz said.
“I think we need their courage and their commitment to do what’s best for the community,” he said.
Also on Tuesday, teachers and union supporters began circulating petitions that will be sent to Pope Benedict XVI. Union officials will also seek the support of elected representatives in the diocese’s 11 counties.
“We’re trying to make the bishop come to the realization, he just made a mess of things,” Milz said. “If he’s a real man, he’ll come around to see that that’s the case.”
shofius@timesshamrock.com
