Priests, Pickets, Pickle Workers

In Pittsburgh live three Catholic priests who believe that Mother Church can meet Radicalism, her archfoe, on its own ground. One night last week they assembled 300 followers in the Pittsburgh Lyceum to hear about their month-old Catholic Radical Alliance. With 200 working members, these priests have attempted to get into labor strife wherever it was thickest. Their activities had been featured on the front pages of the Pittsburgh Catholic, and last week that official organ of conservative Bishop Hugh Charles Boyle printed the Alliance's appeal for funds. Excerpts:

"The [Labor] movement is a sound and healthy thing. It could be made the first step toward an integrated, Christian social order. It is a definite fact that Communist agents are active in the field. . . . If, however, an intelligent, Christian social doctrine be intelligently and zealously propagated in the movement, the Communists will not have a show. Understand, we see the need for Catholic participation in the movement if there never were such a thing as a Communist, but as things stand now there is need a hundredfold.''

The Catholic Radical Alliance founders and leaders are Rev. Charles Owen Rice of St. Agnes Church in Pittsburgh, Rev. Carl P. Hensler of St. Lawrence Church and Monsignor G. (for George) Barry O'Toole, 50, strapping, hearty Benedictine builder of Catholic University in Peiping, until last fortnight head of the philosophy department at Pittsburgh's Duquesne University. Monsignor O'Toole and the two younger priests patterned their Alliance after a group in Manhattan led by Dorothy Day, onetime Socialist, and Peter Maurin, onetime French hobo, whose radical Catholic Worker competes with the Daily Worker in Union Square. Radical Catholics Day & Maurin maintain a House of Hospitality and an Easton, Pa. farm commune for Catholic proletarians. What they call "the dynamite of Catholic teaching" and submit as an alternative to Communism is contained in the labor encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, the most timely point being that both pontiffs agreed that workers have not only the right but the duty to organize in unions of their choice.

Not without opposition from lesser Pittsburgh priests, the Radical Alliance quickly found a local strike in which to interest itself, that of the Canning & Pickle Workers' Union against Heinz Co., which had recognized a company union for collective bargaining. Fathers Rice & Hensler went down to the pickle workers' picket line, hoisted signs declaring "The Catholic Radical Alliance supports the Heinz strikers." Horrified, the pickets begged the priests to cover the word "Radical" on their signs. Night before an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board, the three priests appeared at a mass meeting of Heinz workers, Monsignor O'Toole telling his predominantly Catholic audience that "modern finance-capitalism" is as Godless as Communism. The Pickle Workers' Union (A. F. of L. affiliate) won the election hands down.

Next the Radical Alliance bestowed its blessings upon a C.I.O. strike, that of workers in the Loose-Wiles Biscuit plant in Lawrenceville, Pa., and last fortnight the zealous trio of churchmen made a quick dash into the great and grim labor war in Steel (see p. 11). At Struthers, Ohio, while Monsignor O'Toole and Father Hensler looked approvingly on, Father Rice stood in the rain, harangued encouragement at strikers of Youngstown Sheet & Tube's coke plant. Ohio priests who had kept mum on or disapproved the C.I.O. were discomfited to learn that once more the Radical Alliance had the approval of higher church authorities, obtaining permission to invade the diocese from Bishop Joseph Schrembs of Cleveland. Back in Pittsburgh last week, Fathers Rice and Hensler busied themselves lecturing, answering catechismal questions such as:

Is the present economic and social system a good one? "No."

Is the Church the friend of the poor?

"Yes, the real friend of the poor, though some of her members don't act like it."

Monsignor O'Toole, known to be dissatisfied with the conservatism of Duquesne, last week announced his resignation and his appointment to Catholic University in Washington, whence he will continue to direct the Radical Alliance and, presumably, help finance it as he has done from the start.

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