Catholic Labor Network convenes vigil for the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker
. . . and other offerings for our newsletter of May 1, 2026
Scroll down for our latest offerings this week, including:
Our latest podcast with Fr. Vincent Pizzuto, author of Contemplating Christ: The Gospels and the Interior Life
Plus a note about our seasonal survey
Describing a present moment “where things are fundamentally uncertain” due to technological advances such as robotics and artificial intelligence, Dr. Meghan Clark observed that when work changes, “something very fundamental and essential about human existence changes.”
Her comments came as part of a vigil for the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker convened by the Catholic Labor Network on the evening of April 30. Joining her to discuss Catholic contributions to labor history and the theological ethic of work were Dr. Joe McCartin, co-director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, and author and activist Andrew Lee.
Clark, a professor of moral theology at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, drew parallels between the radical changes of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries and our current time. She said that Catholics can lend a special perspective to contemporary views on labor and workers’ rights because “we understand work to be a particular kind of thing” that gives a sense of how “humanity shapes the world around it.”
“We are in some way co-creating the world along with our creator” when we engage in work, she said, which “creates an understanding of dignity tied to work.”
“You can’t talk about work without talking about human dignity,” she said, adding that a Catholic conception of work is “not just a paycheck” but a part of how we form our identities and communities.
Clark pointed out how Pope Leo XIII recognized a moment of uncertainty around labor during the late 19th century and “put the full moral weight of the Catholic Church behind the dignity of workers.” He promulgated the encyclical Rerum Novarum, or Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor, in 1891. It is considered a watershed moment in the history of Catholic Social Teaching and a direct inspiration on the pontificate of Leo XIV, who is anticipated to release a major document on labor as a signal statement of his papacy.
Leo XIII’s legacy on labor has been upheld by every subsequent pope through the present day, Clark noted. She referenced Pius XII’s address to the Christian Association of Italian Workers in 1955 where he declared May 1 as the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, John Paul II’s notion of the “subjective nature” of work as set forth in his 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens, and Pope Francis’s assertion in 2022 that “Not enough consideration is given to the fact that work is an essential component of human life, and even a path of holiness.”
McCartin focused on the history of Catholic contributions to the labor movement, particularly the “’seminal” period between the Civil War and the early 20th century.
The history of Rerum Novarum and the application of Catholic Social Teaching to labor issues has “deep roots in the United States experience,” McCartin said. The Civil War ended enslaved labor while “[throwing] open the question of what rights free laborers would have,” he added.
In the 1880s, the organized labor movement began to embrace the slogan “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.” Catholic workers played a key role in this moment of American history and “helped to sharpen the critique” of the “basic lack of rights of working people.”
McCartin shared the story of Edward McGlynn, a Catholic priest and Civil War chaplain. While ministering at St. Stephen’s Church in Manhattan, McGlynn saw the impact of poverty on working people. He helped found the Anti-Poverty Society and supported the Knights of Labor even though it was a Protestant organization.
McGlynn’s support of political economist Henry George for mayor of New York City in 1886 was a bridge too far for some of his superiors. George was the author of the book Progress and Poverty, and his ideas on public land holdings were seen as tantamount to socialism.
McGlynn was excommunicated from the church for a time due to his association with the labor movement. In 1887, Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore stepped in and began to work with the Vatican and the Knights of Labor “to head off a break between Catholics and the labor movement,” McCartin explained. In the 1890s, after the release of Rerum Novarum, McGlynn was received back into the church.
Catholics at this time began to recognize “the need and the right of workers to organize.” Once the teachings of Rerum Novarum were announced, “Catholic Church people in the US played a key role in legitimizing the labor movement” and helping it grow, McCartin said. He cited John A. Ryan’s book A Living Wage from 1906, which defended the policy of a living wage as essential to Catholic Social Teaching.
“The Catholic Church began to take positions on public questions regarding worker rights,” McCartin said. This continued throughout the 1930s, when the church and Catholic Social Teaching were key in legitimizing “industry-wide organization” and “a broader representational presence for workers” in various industrial sectors.
Lee’s comments added a sense of urgency to the vigil, as he brought forth several of the pressing issues facing workers today.
“I’m here to make the claim that the concerns of Rerum Novarum are not merely historical problems” but are of “vital importance to all of us today,” he said.
Farm workers are legally prohibited from organizing unions without even a guarantee of a minimum wage, Lee said. He stated that 67 percent of Americans are one paycheck away from financial ruin and 48 million Americans lack the means to access food necessary for a “healthy, dignified life.”
Lee said that we are living in a new “Gilded Age” with many similarities to the time in which Rerum Novarum was written, yet “we can see resistance blossoming around us today.” He spoke of a recent meatpacking strike in Colorado and an active boycott of outdoor-apparel supplier REI called by its workers.
Workers “are coming together across this country to demand dignified work and therefore dignified lives,” he said.
Lee quoted from paragraph 42 of Rerum Novarum: “the first thing of all to secure is to save unfortunate working people from the cruelty of men of greed, who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making.”
Rerum Novarum does not say that “workers have dignity if their governments allow it,” Lee said. The right to organize is not something “bestowed to us by the state,” but rather a right granted by virtue of people’s humanity, he added.
Michael Centore
Editor, Tomorrow’s American Catholic
Bringing People to the Banquet Table
Fr. Vincent Pizzuto, PhD, is a professor of New Testament and Christian Mysticism in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the (Jesuit) University of San Francisco and an Episcopal priest who serves as vicar of St. Columba’s Episcopal Church and Retreat House in Inverness, California. His book Contemplating Christ: The Gospels and the Interior Life, was published by Liturgical Press in 2018.
In this episode, we speak with Fr. Vincent about the origins of his spiritual journey and discernment of the distinction between “contemplative” and “monastic” vocations, his vision for St. Columba’s as a kind of “contemplative leaven” for the larger church, and the links between the Eucharistic liturgy and the Christian approach to social justice. Along the way, we explore the importance of learning “how to maneuver in the landscape of Scripture,” consider the image of the body of Christ as a means of integrating our various ministries and vocations, and find in the concept of “catholicity” a framework for thinking with, and about, the universal church.
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Anointment, Anonymity, and Abundance
Sarita Melkon Maldjian concludes her essay on the women of the Gospel of Mark: “The knowledge of the Good News through the resurrection and the unconditional clean faith within the heart of a person are, for the Jesus of the gospels, the marks of a true disciple. Mary Magdalene, the anointing woman, the hemorrhaging woman, and the Syrophoenician woman made wonderful disciples and apostles, spreading the Good News as they themselves believed and experienced it.”
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Divine Sisterhood
Douglas C. MacLeod Jr. on Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita’s Convent Wisdom: How Sixteenth-Century Nuns Could Save Your Twenty-First Century Life: “The book is also a social commentary how humanity experiences the world now, where things deemed as essential (like TikTok trends and K-Pop Demon Hunters) are nothing but a smokescreen for more serious issues of capitalist overreach, xenophobia, war crimes, exploitation, and immigration. The nuns prayed to God and Jesus Christ; we now pray to false idols and care more about what makes us comfortable and happy than our religious obligations. Convenience and our insatiable need to constantly be occupied by visual imagery have taken precedence over contemplation, faith, and spirituality.”
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A Seasonal Survey
It’s been four months since we relaunched our journal as Tomorrow’s American Catholic. In that time, we’ve grown by nearly 140 new subscribers, released 14 podcast episodes with over 2,700 cumulative downloads, and issued 14 weekly newsletters anthologizing dozens of weekly offerings, from essays, reportage, and reviews to poems and spiritual reflections. Throughout this, we’ve continued to host and facilitate two weekly Zoom-based small Christian communities to study, pray, and meditate together on the lectionary readings.
We’re making inroads on our professed goal to “help shape a sustained a multimodal conversation” on the idea of “tomorrow’s American Catholic.” But we know that we must continue refining our mission to best speak to the needs, hopes, and spiritual stirrings of our readers and listeners.
This is why, next week, we’ll be sending out a survey to solicit your feedback on what you’d like to see in the next cycle of Tomorrow’s American Catholic—how we can continue to evolve, and how we can better incorporate the voices of those who share in our work. As part of this survey, we’ll also be issuing a “seasonal check-in” episode of our podcast to help guide collective reflection.
Thanks to everyone who’s joined us on this venture so far—we’re looking forward to many more offerings in the seasons to come!