Optics

“Optics” seems to be used more and more to describe “how things look,” which is what I guess from the context. Like any jargon, it’s annoying. So I’ll focus on it and find things I like the look of.

What about those teachers? I am amazed by statewide teacher actions. Here in Pennsylvania, teachers in wealthy districts earn more than those in “cash-strapped” communities. It’s hard to imagine them all going on strike to raise the bottom. But in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and now Arizona teachers have united and closed schools all over their states. Whatever you think about withholding labor, it worked to push legislators and governors to not only raise their salaries but to increase funding for their schools and students. I like teachers. I have been one. And the optics? Many more women than men are there in their red shirts. Education is more important than fiscal obstinacy. RED for ED.

Another labor issue which, unfortunately, did not result in such a vibrant optic is the agreement between Georgetown University and its graduate students to have a vote on whether to join the American Federation of Teachers, the union that has taken as its mission to organize contingent academic labor. There are several little complications in this. I was a union organizer in my former life as an adjunct professor, so I am always suspicious: what management giveth, management can taketh away. Because this agreement is private, the election will be out of the framework of the National Labor Relations Board. But given that President Trump will make new appointments to this board very soon, this is not all bad. I have confidence in the Georgetown Alliance of Graduate Employees (GAGE) and its supporters, who used every argument in the Catholic social justice catalogue to reverse the administration’s earlier position. Our heritage here is so easy to forget or to ignore, but Joseph A. McCartin in Commonweal summarizes past failures in Catholic higher education to recognize labor rights, and provides a succinct treatment of that social justice catalogue. Watch for the election in the fall with optics similarly celebrating the students’ victory.

And optics is just what you’d expect from Vogue, right?

Bishop Michele Birch-Conery during Mass with her community in the chapel they use in Windsor, Ontario, a few miles from Detroit. Photo by Giulia Bianchi

This article is so much fun to read and to see, from the first lines: “You can spot a priest from a mile away. The black shirt with a white clerical collar is one of the holiest uniforms of them all and it’s one that, at least as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, is reserved only for men” to the comments by Reverend Sandra Sykes, the designer of Collared Clergywear, about her clothing that will “free women clergy to feel more like themselves at work.” Yes, working women priests.

Women’s ordination is a labor issue, too, though most women who are called think of it as a vocation. But as a labor issue, it defies the usual “laws” of supply and demand. Right now there is a low supply of priests, but “management” remains obstinate in the face of great demand, and, like the universities, is doing everything it can to find replacement but generally contingent labor. That means easily let go. Low-paid. Non-union. For years, advocates of women’s ordination have dreamed about a general strike. If all the women volunteering and working for Catholic parishes and institutions went out, the loss of their labor would rouse the general population to insist on justice for them. If all the women and men who favor women priests walked out, ordination would happen in a moment.

We could have our own RED for ED moment. Oh, wait, we are being urged to. The We Are Church International movement, the worldwide coalition of church reform groups, is asking Catholics to celebrate Pentecost (May 20) by wearing “a red stole, a red scarf, a red top! … PLEASE take a photo of your group, your partner, or a selfie if you are on your own, and email it so that we can publish it online to Colm colmholmes2020@gmail.com or Martha Martha.heizer@inode.at” Having hundreds of photos online is a general strike in the internet age – we are standing strong to express our “belief that the Holy Spirit lives in all of us!” Please join these spirit-filled, happy folks and wear your red on Pentecost!