Rev. Sirico was recently quoted in an article by Our Sunday Visitor titled, “Unions, yes. But when the Church is the employer?” The article utilizes various historical examples to describe the relationship between United States Catholic Church leaders and institutions with their employees. The article seeks to demonstrate a strained relationship between Church leaders and their employees by citing historical examples, such as the 1949 gravediggers strike in New York.

When Catholic social teaching is discussed in the article, Rev. Sirico weighed in:

But Father Robert Sirico, president of the free-market think-tank, the Acton Institute, said there is a popular distortion about how Catholic social teaching views unions. Even in the 1949 gravedigger strike, Father Sirico said, Cardinal Spellman acted only after the union had already rejected a 3 percent raise offer. There were also 1,000 bodies waiting to be buried in the cemetery. “This should be a clear example of the legitimacy of breaking a strike,” he said.

Father Sirico said that if there is any problem in the Church institutions’ dealings with workers, it is that employees are often kept on even if their performance is deleterious to the mission. He said it is incumbent upon Church administrators to make efficient use of their money since the faithful has entrusted them with those resources.

Click here to read the full article.

To read more on Catholic social teaching on unions please click here to read Rev. Sirico’s Acton Commentary, “Catholic teaching’s pro-union bias,” which was also published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 1, 2011.