Text of the
letter sent in December 2011 to the bishops of the Archdiocese of
Oklahoma City
December
11, 2011
Most Reverend Paul Stagg Coakley, Archbishop of Oklahoma City,
Most Reverend Edward James Slattery, Bishop of Tulsa
Most Reverend Anthony Basil Taylor, Bishop of Little Rock
Most Reverend Eusebius J. Beltran, Archbishop Emeritus of Oklahoma
City
Most Reverend Andrew J. McDonald, Bishop Emeritus of Little Rock +
On this the Third Sunday of Advent, we the undersigned greet you
with grace and peace and prayers for your ministry as bishops.
Today, at Holy Mass we heard these words from Isaiah during the
First Reading:
The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor,
to heal the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
to announce a year of favor from the LORD
and a day of vindication by our God.
In the modern era, since the papacy of Leo XIII and the promulgation
of his famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum, the Church has taught with
increasing urgency and emphasis the duties of solidarity and the
preferential option for the poor. These teachings do not mean
that God does not love those who are not poor, but that, among many
things that could be mentioned, Catholics are bound by our
duty as Christians to protect the poor from the depredations of the
rich.
An examination of the present situation, however, shows that in the
United States, as elsewhere, wealthy elites are manipulating the
structures of government in order to benefit their interests.
This comes at the cost of the prosperity of everyone else, and
constitutes a grave injury to the common good. We invite you to
consider these economic facts.
Unemployment
The unemployment rate remains at its highest level since the Great
Depression, with 14 million adults reported as unemployed.
Yet, this figure does not tell the full story. Over the years, the
government has manipulated its methodology in order to define
“unemployment” so that millions of unemployed people are not
counted. The government is deliberately distorting the unemployment
figures, to make the situation seem better than it actually
is. If calculated by historical methods, the actual
unemployment rate is more than double the present reported rate –
22%! That is more than 30 million people! Nearly half of the
unemployed have been out of a job for more than six months. The
median duration of unemployment (about 25 weeks), is near an
all-time high.
The
Corporations
Corporate profits are at all-time highs both in absolute numbers and
as a percent of the economy. CEO pay now runs 350 times the average
worker pay, that’s up from what prevailed between 1960 and 1985,
when CEO pay was typically 50 times that of the workers. CEO pay has
increased 300% since 1990 alone. Corporate profits doubled during
that period, while worker pay increased only 4% and adjusted for
inflation, the minimum wage declined. In fact, after adjusting for
inflation, worker pay has not increased for the past 50 years.
Wages, as a percent of the economy, are at an all-time low.
The Households
The top 1% of households now holds 23.5% of all pre-tax income. The
top 1% own 42% of the financial assets in the US. The top 5%
own 70% of the nation’s financial assets. The bottom 80% of
households owns 7% of the national wealth. Social mobility in the
United States is at an all-time low.
The Banks
During the financial crisis of 2008, very large banks received a
major bailout from the government. Yet, bank lending declined
sharply and has yet to recover. Banks made $211 billion in the first
six months of 2011 by borrowing money from the government at a zero
interest rate and then buying treasury notes and loaning it back to
the government, which pays the banks
interest on the money that it previously loaned them for free!
Oklahoma’s
Situation
+ The bottom 60% of taxpayers pay between 9 and 10
percent of their income in state and local taxes, while the top 1%
pay less than 5%.
+ In 2010, 17% of Oklahomans lived in poverty, the
14th highest rate in the nation. 7.2% of the population lives in
extreme poverty (they live on incomes that are less than 50% of the
poverty level.) The poverty rate for children is 24.5%, an increase
(in 2010) of 9% over 2009. Of working age Oklahomans living in
poverty, 44% work full or part-time.
+ The state income tax is scheduled to be cut in
January 2012. The top 5% of taxpayers will receive 43% of the
benefit from the cut. The next 15% will receive 30%. The remaining
80% of the population will receive only 27% of the value of the tax
cut.
+ In October of this year, the number of
Oklahomans receiving food stamps reached an all-time high – for the
seventh month in a row. 625,000 Oklahomans now receive food stamps –
30% of all children in the state are in the program. In 2010, 7.5%
of state households reported “very low food security”, this was an
increase of 60% from 2005-2007, The number of households reporting
“low food security” was 16.4%, an increase of 13% from 2005-2007
(the national average for low food security is 14.6%).
+ The amount appropriated to provide government
assistance for winter utility bills this year (the Liheap program)
was less than half the amount funded last year.
As these statistics indicate, in the tug of war between labor and
capital, capital has won and those who can afford it the least are
paying the greatest costs.
In consideration of the increasingly dire economic situation, and
the toxic political response to these times from our state and
federal governments, we call upon the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City,
together with its associated Dioceses of Tulsa and Little Rock, to
set aside the year 2012 as a time of special emphasis on the social
teachings of the Church. The Church has an important
contribution to make to the discussion of the current events of the
day, but all too often the Church’s voice is absent because the
laity, whose particular competence it is to implement the social
teachings, have not been catechized and formed in accordance with
those teachings.
One of the great gifts of the Blessed Pope John Paul II to the
Church was a renewed emphasis on the universal call to holiness, a
vocation which pertains not only to individuals, but also to the
Church as an institution. He sought to purify the Church of
historical sins such as the persecution of non-Catholics, by
identifying the problems, showing how those situations were
departures from Christian norms, publicly repenting of those
institutional sins, and resolving that the Church would never be
involved with such things again.
In that John Paul II spirit, we call upon Catholics of
this region, clergy and laity together, to engage in an examination
of conscience concerning how the Church, and its associated
institutions, incorporate our social teachings in the temporal
activities of the Church. In this era, authenticity is an important
concept, and given the widespread ignorance of the social teachings
among both laity and the clergy, the Church should examine itself to
see if it is truly practicing what it preaches.
We further call upon the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and its
associated Dioceses of Tulsa and Little Rock, to demonstrate their
institutional solidarity with the people of this region,
and to support the common good, by moving Church funds and accounts
out of any large multi-state corporate banks where the Church may be
doing business, and to establish their
financial accounts with locally owned credit unions.
+ Unlike banks, credit unions are financial
institutions dedicated to the common good. They invest their
money in the local community.
+ They are governed by boards that are
elected by their depositors.
+ They have maintained their commitments to
local community throughout the financial crises of the past few
years. Their motive is not profit, but service to their communities.
The financial strength of the Church should go towards strengthening
this voluntary network that contributes so greatly to the common
good. If there are parishes in areas without credit unions, we
call upon the Archdiocese to start credit unions in those areas,
that will benefit the entire community.
During the time that it has taken to read this letter, 87 people
have died of hunger and diseases related to impure water. The issues
of justice and peace that we write you about are critical life
issues and the Catholic Church has a moral obligation to do
more to stop this on-going slaughter. One of the most important
things the Church can do in response to the signs of these times, an
action far more necessary than any amount of money donated for
charitable relief, is to make a serious commitment to the catechesis
of clergy and laity in our social teachings and to practice what we
preach about them in the daily temporal life of the Church.
We promise you our prayers and acts of reparation for the many sins
against justice, solidarity, and Creation of this era.
We offer to discuss these issues with you further and can present
additional information if needed.
We place this cause under the spiritual protection of the Venerable
Stanley Rother, who gave his life in defense of the poor in
Guatemala and we pray that his example of fidelity unto death to the
Gospel of Life and Justice will be an example for the Archdiocese of
Oklahoma City, and the Dioceses of Tulsa and Little Rock, to guide
our actions and direct our paths.
+ O God, Who by the preaching and teaching of the Venerable Stanley
Rother
has given us an example of fortitude in the face of injustice and
political corruption,
grant that we who reverence his life and ministry may also imitate
his example of fidelity to wisdom, truth, life, justice, and beauty,
so that we may order our lives and actions in accordance with those
truths
and thereby fulfill our responsibility as Christians to protect the
common good.
We ask these blessings through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Robert Waldrop,
Epiphany Parish, Oklahoma City
Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House
Elise Robillard
St. Mark the Evangelist Parish, Norman
Kevin Hicks
Little Flower Parish, Oklahoma City
Joan Herndon
St. Charles Parish, Oklahoma City
Richard Nowak
St. Alphonsus, Prospect Heights, Illinois
Pebbles Audrey Smith
St. Joseph Old Cathedral, Oklahoma City
Stephen Ellis
St. Thomas More Parish, Norman
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of
Oklahoma
Irmina L. Schnoebelen,
Sacred Heart Parish, Mooreland
Parishes and organizations given for identification purposes only.