Speech

Trumka: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism

Washington, D.C.

Good afternoon. My name is Rich Trumka. I’m president of America’s federation of labor unions, the AFL-CIO, and I’m so pleased to be with you at this critical meeting here at Catholic University, this great center of learning and moral teaching. I’m particularly honored to have been asked to introduce one of the world’s foremost faith leaders, but before I get to my introduction of this truly extraordinary man who will speak to us today on the Catholic Case Against Libertarianism, I want to tell you a story.

I grew up in a small town called Nemacolin, in the coal country of Southwest Pennsylvania. Pretty much every man in my family worked in the mines. My town was a company town, which means the mining company owned everything, every house, every yard, the company store, every square foot with the exception of Our Lady of Consolation Church, which was at the heart of our town’s Catholic community.

The company even paid us with script, not U.S. currency, so we could only shop at the company store. Slavery was illegal, but we weren’t free either.

Before my time, back in the 1920s and '30s, it seemed like nothing and no one could stand in the way of the coal companies’ pursuit of profit. They had a special police force at their call—the Coal and Iron Police. The companies’ private guards threatened, attacked and even murdered miners who tried to stand together to form our union—my union, the United Mine Workers of America.

My dad used to tell me about one time, after company guards broke up a union meeting, a mounted troop of Coal and Iron Police tried to run down him and my granddad. I know just where it happened. My dad and granddad ran through the woods and over a hill and up the steps, and into Our Lady of Consolation Church. Father Simko heard the commotion and came out front with a crucifix raised high like this, and he stepped right between my dad and granddad and the mounted police, who came thundering up the hill and onto the church steps. He held up that cross as a shield and said, “You can’t ride up on these steps. This is a sanctuary!”

You see, I grew up in a community where the church was alive with working people. It was a refuge against injustice, a place of compassion, a flesh-and-blood sanctuary.

I don't need to tell you that a lot has changed since Father Simko raised that crucifix. We formed our union. My dad and granddad both raised families and have now passed away. My father died of black lung from all those years working underground. Like them, I was a coal miner, too, before I became president of my union and then of the AFL-CIO.

Times have changed, yet over the past year, our church has brought newfound vigor to traditional Catholic social doctrine, highlighting the dangers and injustices of our modern economic and political lives. Pope Francis has spoken against mass unemployment and human trafficking—he called it a “scourge.” Pope Francis speaks of work as “both a gift and a duty.” He said, “Labor is not a mere commodity, but has its own inherent dignity and worth.”

Not long ago in Rome, Pope Francis said, “Solidarity, this word that strikes fear in the more developed world. It’s almost a dirty word. But it is our word!”

Pope Francis could not be more right. For more than a hundred years around the world, the labor movement and the Catholic Church have stood together in solidarity for people who labor for a living.

And this is an important time for us to be talking solidarity—especially because we also hear a lot of talk about libertarianism. Even as our church has raised its voice for workers, libertarianism is challenging our church’s very commitment to ideas of solidarity, challenging our ties to each other. Libertarianism sounds like a good thing, it sounds like liberty, but it’s not. It’s the notion that we, as individuals, have no responsibility toward one another, that we can do whatever we want to each other, anything at all, that in a fundamental way we are isolated and cut off from each other, and that whatever happens to each of us as a result is OK.

That idea is a demonstrably false picture of how human beings live meaningful lives, and it leads to an unmanageable world where we cannot solve common problems together. But libertarianism is worse than that. It’s contrary to the core doctrinal understandings of the Catholic faith. And, in the past, both the labor movement and the Catholic Church have stood up against libertarianism, and we must confront it again, and name it for what it is.

Libertarianism is not liberty, as I said. It is a doctrine that makes excuses for human beings oppressing each other. Think about the story I told you about my family. It’s a story about how libertarianism becomes authoritarianism. The Coal and Iron Police enforced a system of private power and inequality that was cloaked in the rhetoric of libertarianism—the idea that the coal company, because it was a private actor and owned everything in our town, could do what it wanted, without regard to the human consequences, and could use violence against its victims when we objected.

Together, the Catholic Church and the labor movement stand for a different moral and political order entirely. We stand for liberty that comes from living and engaging in a democratic society. We stand for communities bound together by solidarity. We believe in the duty to ease pain and to comfort those who are suffering—and not just with kind words, but with action.

That is why I am so heartened by the words of our Holy Father Pope Francis. No one has done as much in as short a time to raise the plight of the world’s laboring millions as he has. With Twitter, with his writings, with his spoken word, Pope Francis has forcefully asserted the foundational teachings of the Catholic Church. From the Vatican, he has opened the door for all believers to experience again the transformative grace of a merciful God.

Some people act surprised at the Holy Father’s teachings. But no one should be. He is holding up and restating the very foundations of Christianity -- the teachings of Jesus Christ. We are connected to each other. We are bound together. Our church must never walk away from the principle that we are sisters and brothers, part of God’s family, and that every person has dignity and worth as a child of God.

And that’s why this gathering is so important here, in this great institution of Catholic learning, where people like John A. Ryan and George Higgins did so much to advance the cause of social justice in America.

Their spirit is sorely needed today. Look outside this hall, around this country, across the globe, where is the spirit of compassion our Holy Father embodies? Where is the moral order we seek, when working people labor harder and harder for less and less, when 11 million immigrants are hounded by the authorities—just as my dad and granddad were hounded—for no crime other than coming to this country with the dream of providing for their families? Where is the mercy for our struggling families?

Pope Francis is speaking for the church I grew up in when he calls for an organized moral response to the injustices of modern capitalism. Pope Francis is not breaking new ground with his concern and love for the world’s poor, but rather embracing cornerstone Catholic teachings at the highest level. Nor is he speaking only to the poorest nations of the earth. We in the United States need to listen very closely, as his message is directed very much at us.

And so we are indeed fortunate today to have with us a man who truly walks the same path as our Holy Father. I'm not a Catholic scholar, but I'm told many of Pope Francis' teachings can be traced to Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez. Just as my father and grandfather taught me about solidarity, Cardinal Rodriguez with his powerful words and humble ways, mentored and taught Pope Francis. Cardinal Rodriguez, who comes to us from Honduras, one of the poorest dioceses in the Western Hemisphere, gave Pope Francis a lasting model of courageous activism and merciful love. He also chairs the pope’s council of eight cardinals, his council of reformers.

Many people don’t know this, but in the 1990s Cardinal Rodriguez almost single-handedly took on the problem of crushing government debt in the developing world, where millions struggled to repay billions in loans squandered by corrupt leaders. I’ve heard it said the Cardinal practically chased the IMF and the World Bank around the globe in his successful search for justice, and as a result millions upon millions of families have clean water and good food to eat, schools to attend and other necessary public services.

Cardinal Rodriguez, I anticipate listening closely to every word you say to us here. I know of and admire your passion and your leadership, and I am told you speak with the pope by cell phone at least every few days. Well, my dear cardinal, when you speak next with Pope Francis, please tell him the workers of America love him and thank him.

My friends, please join me in welcoming the archbishop of Tegucigalpa, His Eminence Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga.