The Working Catholic: Urban Revival and Suburban Poverty

The N.Y. Times recently reported that the population of downtown Kansas City, Missouri has increased 50% over the last dozen-plus years. Entertainment venues, restaurants, the arts, higher education and office firms have likewise invested in downtown. Urban planners and developers there predict downtown residents will double within a few years. Kansas City is just one example of a remarkable trend.

This trend of urban revival was first pointed out to me in the early 1980s when Ed Marciniak (1917-2004), legendary Catholic labor leader and urban character, suggested we go for a walk around Chicago’s South Loop. “The Loop [Chicago’s term for downtown] is gradually expanding and repopulating,” he mentioned as we set out.

These strolls continued over many months to include Little Italy, East Humboldt Park, Cabrini-Green, Chinatown and more. We went to many delis for lunch; chatted with contractors; made appointments with officials, school principals, pastors, community activists, real estate agents and executives. We read hundreds of neighborhood newspapers—both current issues and library collections.

“This is something like gentrification,” Marciniak observed, “but different too.” When we reflected on and then published our findings, we called the phenomenon the new inner city. The trend, we noted, contained opportunity in general. But we also said it contained difficulties for the poor.

The current recession put the trend into a freezer. A booming real estate market peaked in early 2006, but then in December 2008 and following real estate experienced its biggest drop in U.S. history. Now, however, there is a qualified recovery. And thus, the N.Y. Times reporter in Kansas City is the latest of several writers who are resuming the walks Marciniak and I made in the 1980s.

Gentrification is a simplistic term for the changes, writes Alan Ehrenhalt in The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City (Alfred Knopf, 2012). “A better term is demographic inversion,” something not specific to one factor or another. It is rather “the rearrangement of living patterns across an entire metropolitan area, all taking place at roughly the same time.” Ehrenhalt’s examples in Chicago include the South Loop/University Village, Logan Square and a thorough case study of Sheffield/DePaul University.

The current recession did not really alter this trend, says Leigh Gallagher in The End of Suburbs (Penguin Press, 2013). It is the result of lifestyle changes, immigration patterns, global economic factors and more. The appeal of suburban life might persist, Gallagher writes, but the suburban locales of the 1950s to 1970s are passé.

Cautions are in order.

#1. Not all cities will succeed in revitalizing, explains Edward Glaeser in Triumph of the City (Penguin Press, 2011). “Human capital, far more that physical infrastructure” or other components, is the key. It is not primarily a matter of financing a new hockey facility or offering tax incentives to 20 riverside restaurants or putting 15 art studios in abandoned warehouses or bringing back streetcars. Cities attract and retain people rich in human capital (immigrants and young professionals) by facilitating “face-to-face relationships” in colleges, workplaces and sidewalk cafes. Not all cities have enough social opportunity and thus not all will enjoy a rebirth.

#2. These positive trends accelerate the isolation of the poor, making it exponentially more difficult for their children and grandchildren to succeed. Plus, as a subsequent column will detail, an area’s new inner city parallels its aging, poorer first ring of suburbs.

Marciniak and I were disappointed that with an entrepreneurial exception or two the parishes situated in the path of an expanding inner city were pulling the plug, particularly on their grammar schools. So-called pastoral planning seemed limited to the physical status of church buildings and the availability of a priest for that parish. Has the strategic plan of city churches changed much since 1980?  

To be continued…

Droel is editor of INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a newsletter about faith and work.

The Working Catholic by Bill Droel: "The New Suburban Poverty"

The very idea of a suburb in the United States has long been promoted as a safe, affordable family-friendly place; that is, as an alternative to a less-desirable, polluted, somewhat dangerous urban neighborhood, and one dense with rental units. Historically in Europe and Africa a suburb is usually the opposite. There the upwardly mobile live in the city and the working poor live in a city’s outer ring.

Real estate developers marketed the U.S. notion of suburb even before the Civil War, explains Elaine Lewinnek in The Working Man’s Reward: Chicago’s Early Suburbs and the Roots of American Sprawl (Oxford University Press, 2014). At first, the ideal suburb was an area just outside the center city. A neighborhood like Bridgeport in Chicago (home to our White Sox) was a suburb until its 1889 annexation into the city. Riverside, Illinois, was likely the first planned suburb in the country; designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1868. Riverside is 14 miles from Chicago’s Loop, among the first ring of suburbs. A suburban population boom occurred in the years after World War II into the 1970s. World War II also accelerated black migration from the South to Northern cities. In those years, Lewinnek concludes, the promotion of suburbs “merged with ideas about class and race.”

Now the pattern is reversed. Suburbs, writes Mike Gecan in After America’s Mid-Life Crisis (MIT Press, 2009), are “no longer young, no longer trendy, no longer the place to be, no longer without apparent limitations or constraints.” In fact, the number of suburban poor has increased by over twice the number of urban poor within the past 15 years. The median age in all those first ring suburbs (with some exceptions, notably among those that developed prior to World War II) has increased—in some places slowly, other places quite noticeably.

With an increased senior citizen population and with a low attraction rate for young professionals the first-ring suburbs have a “pattern of development [that] doesn’t yield enough tax revenue to pay for the infrastructure needed to support” their current residents, says Leigh Gallagher in The End of Suburbs (Penguin Press, 2013). Add to this picture fragmented local governments, a wholesale restructuring and relocation of job opportunities, changed immigration patterns, global economic factors and more. The appeal of suburban life might persist for some people, Gallagher writes, but the suburban locales of the 1950s to 1970s are passé. Those who presume an idyllic suburbia now look at places “located so far from [the city] that they are not really a suburb of anything.” And those exurbs are hardly immune from new realities.

The first ring suburbs and maybe more so those in so-called collar counties are, says Gecan, in the throes of a “midlife crisis.” Though some remain in denial about this fact, it is “better to face reality,” he advises.

How?  For starters, realize that prosperity is not caused by hardware. Therefore renovating a suburban train station or, heaven forbid, opening an even bigger mall will alone not address the situation.  Likewise demographic trends do not cause poverty. Both prosperity and poverty are a function of political (in the wide sense of the word) and cultural decisions. To be continued…

Droel is editor of INITIATIVES (www.catholiclabor.org/NCL.htm), 

a newsletter about faith and work.

MYSTICISM – FUNDAMENTALISM AND THE SEARCH FOR MORAL – POLITICAL GUIDELINES

Where are we?   

                                                       THE WASTE LAND

   If there were water                                           

And no rock

If there were rock

And also water

A spring

A pool among the rock

If there were the sound of water only

Not the cicada

And dry grass singing

But sound of water over a rock

Where the hermit thrush sings in the pine grass

Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

But there is no water

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, Part V, 1922

                  

                                     

THE HOLLOW MEN

        

We are the hollow men                   

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

                                                          Headpiece filled with straw.  Alas!

                                                              

Our dried voices, when

           We whisper together  

           Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

          Or rats’ feet over broken glass

                       In our dry cellar

T.S. Elliot, The Hollow Men, 1925.

                            Drawings by Elizabeth Snowden, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Mysticism – Fundamentalism and the Search for a Moral Guideline

   How can society make the best political choices?  The search for a proper moral guide is a constant throughout history.  Let us borrow and work with some ideas from E. Gilson, Joseph Campbell and T.S. Eliot.

   When there is a breakdown in philosophy – e.g. realism in whatever form is considered inadequate- then we resort to mysticism and fundamentalism deprived of experience and rational analysis.  The mysticism and fundamentalism serve as a support, if considered needed, for the moralism of survival of the fittest economics or the moralism of those opposed.  Gilson considers the collapse of Thomism in the 14^th century and the enlightenment epoch as examples.  (Gilson, Etienne, The Unity of Philosophical Experience, Charles Scribners. New York, 1950.)  David Hume’s separation of ‘is’ from ‘ought’ still affects our moral considerations.  With Hume we have the danger of The Waste Land (T.S. Eliot poem) of morality without principle perpetuated by Hollow Men (another T.S. Eliot poem).  Joseph Campbell establishes the importance of myth. (The Power of Myth, 1988)  It’s not all about reason; the collapse of myth as well as reason clearly leaves us as ‘hollow men’ in Eliot’s ‘Waste Land.’  Benevolent dictator, Pope Francis, recognizes the desert or The Waste Land.  He proclaims:

In some places a spiritual ‘desertification’ has evidently come about, as the result of some societies to build without God or to eliminate their Christian roots.(Evangelii Gaudium,2013)

   An example of fundamentalism and mysticism:  The Milwaukee New Sanctuary Movement of Voces de la Frontera sponsors a prayer vigil once a month.  We pray for immigration reform and for the families affected.  Our evangelical allies insist that a personal encounter with Jesus fortifies us in our struggle.  But who is this Jesus we encounter but our own creation.  Of course the Jesus we personally create and encounter is for immigration reform, but what else does he advocate?  Pope Francis, with a hollow sound, recognizing the gains of evangelicos in Latin America, suggests the personal encounter with Jesus. 

I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ. (ibid)

  Forget research on the historical Jesus – we can easily create him in our own minds.

   The Waste Land is always a problem, but I argue that we are experiencing the Waste Land as much, or more so than at any time in history.  Bill Droel says that the Roman Catholic Bishops should not present opinions on political candidates at the present time. (previous blog -9-7-2014) I agree.  The Roman Catholic hierarchy is stuck on their fundamentalist views of abortion, contraception, gay marriage, etc.  Good politics depend on compromise and do not spring from rigid fundamentalism or mysticism. 

   Economists Krugman and Reich extricate themselves from the enlightenment economics inspired by David Hume by insisting on a moral dimension of economics that makes sense.  We can debate what makes sense, but an agreement on the ‘common good’ seems possible to me … except if we insist on absolute certainty and therefore are locked into a rigid fundamentalist or mystical belief.  The impending Vatican synod on the family will not establish reason as the rule and make a nuanced explanation of the Natural Law – realistic philosophy has been abandoned even by those claiming to be from the tradition of Thomism.

   What 'makes sense' was considered key to natural law theory by John XXIII.  In his encyclical Pacem in Terris  he quoted Thomas Aquinas, “Human reason is the norm of the human will…” (Part I, #18)  A problem for natural law theory is that derivatives of ‘natural law’ are considered absolute ‘law’ by those who attribute to ‘natural law’ mandates that were considered reasonable at a previous time in history, but are no longer viable.  Such a claim reduces these projected derivatives of the 'Natural Law' which could be bad law, but in fundamentalist belief should be followed.  We then have erroneous natural law placed above civil law.  The Roman Catholic pedophile crisis was partially the result of popes, bishops and priests believing that they were above civil law with a reference to higher natural law circumscribed by even higher Divine Law.  They also sometimes use the mystical approach and refer to Divine law not backed by reason.  Divine Law establishes the need for priests and the sacraments for salvation.  Reason itself cannot be blamed for improper use or mistakes of the past and changes in society.  Perhaps the struggle with contradictions in the rigid church philosophical and theological position, with open debate, can result in positive moral development for the Roman Catholic Church with a return to realism. 

   A way back to realism for the Roman Catholic Church would be a return to Catholic Social Teaching on labor.  The Encyclicals are based on the 'moderate realism' of Thomas Aquinas.  Over the years the Encyclicals adjusted to the times.  A 1950’s Thomism would not work.  It would only fortify philosophical fundamentalism.  What is needed is a philosophy of moderate realism with no absolutes, supported by a theology in awe of being which respects and reveres all creation including human reason and myth as myth.  Rabbi M. Maimonides (1135 – 1204) refused to define God even though it meant that some considered him to be an atheist.   Instead of seeking Roman Catholic identity in fundamentalist beliefs such as anti- gay marriage, anti- contraception and anti- abortion, Church officials could look to the adjusted and adjustable moderate realism of the Encyclicals on labor.  John Paul II wrote that the Encyclicals on labor were part of the 'new evangelization.'  Of course supporting labor would go against the wealthy supporters of the Church.

   We cannot extricate ourselves from the enlightenment and its slavish reliance on statistics without recognizing a place for myth in moral decisions.   While the correct policy or decision may be influenced by myth – stories – conscience, but reason must have the final say. The question is:  does the policy make sense in reference to the common good?

   The official pronouncements of the Roman Catholic Church have avoided Biblical fundamentalism since the Galileo debacle, but philosophical fundamentalism on the 'natural law' now emerges as a serious problem.   Will the Church Hierarchy resort to a renewed desperate grab at biblical fundamentalism?  But there is hope.  The Hebrew people came out of the desert with the law of love and common sense guides for life.

  

The Working Catholic by Bill Droel

Bill Droel is editor of INITIATIVES, a newsletter about faith and work.

Misguided Voters’ Guide

Our U.S. Catholic bishops periodically issue a voters’ guide; most recently in the form of a 36-page booklet, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.” Its next edition is scheduled for Fall 2015—in time for the presidential campaign. In light of themes stressed by Pope Francis the U.S. bishops will edit the guide to give more prominence to the “option for the poor and vulnerable.”

As long as editing is in process, I make this suggestion: Drop the project. No one is waiting to read what bishops think about politics. Citizens who carry their Catholicism into the voting booth already know how they determine their candidates. Further, bishops’ credibility is unfortunately so low these days that their effective witness can only be humble service, not public statements.

There is also some evidence that young adults become further disaffected from the church when bishops and clergy wade into politics. One’s general ideology or politics (liberal or conservative) seems to drive one’s attraction to or neglect of regular worship, write sociologists Robert Putnam and David Campbell in American Grace (Simon & Schuster, 2010). The evidence, at least tentatively, says religious formation does not per se determine political temperament. It is the other way around. Conservatives worship at a higher rate than liberals.

Now for step two in Putnam and Campbell’s argument. Young adults perceive religious leaders who assert themselves in public as conservative—even though Catholic bishops sometimes advocate for liberal policies like immigration reform. Young adults are not in the main conservative, which to them also means intolerant. Thus, they are turned off by religious leaders who get political. “Mixing God and Caesar is bad for both” religion and politics, Putnam and Campbell conclude.  

The bishops, of course, will ignore my suggestion. Their guidance to voters, as “Forming Consciences” says, is not just another opinion. As “the Church’s teachers,” the bishops feel obliged to speak regardless of the reception. Besides, the bureaucratic wheel is in motion and a revised voters’ guide must appear.

OK, here’s another suggestion: Quit telling Catholics to vote for individual candidates based on their positions as they affect “human life and dignity as well as issues of justice and peace.” The bishops want voters “to see beyond party politics…and to choose their political leaders according to principle, not party affiliation.”

We have an adage in my Chicago neighborhood: “Punch the ticket.” It means, vote the party’s slate of candidates. In Catholicism this is called the principle of subsidiarity. The idea is that a middle-range of smaller institutions, including precincts, can buffer individual families from the mega-forces of business and the State. These institutions have been in decline since about 1960. (See again Robert Putnam’s research.) Parishes, ethnic clubs, unions, school associations and the like are nowadays nearly powerless to help ordinary families with health care, legal troubles, job assistance, child rearing issues and the like. Meanwhile the mega-institutions grow more unaccountable and the culture grows increasingly individualistic.

One result is relegation of political parties to event planners. They are little more than entities that throw a convention in one or another city every four years. Candidates count on their party for very little and if elected are accountable only to themselves and the donors who gave specifically to their campaign. Legislation moves slowly, if at all, because legislative leaders have no clout on so-called party members. Ideologues emerge and command disproportionate power because they do not depend on any party’s machine. Compromise is scorned. In telling Catholics to vote for individuals our bishops are further eroding the milieu of mediating structures that were once so promoted by and beneficial to U.S. Catholicism.

The bishops don’t want to say “punch the ticket” because they rightly object to those Democratic candidates (and some Republicans) who favor unrestricted access to abortion and because they object to Republicans who, contrary to Catholic values, support the death penalty, oppose labor unions, impede immigration reform and more. 

The laity need support and guidance as they make decisions in their province of citizenship. A voters’ guide is the wrong tool. For starters our bishops might volunteer to be election judges come November 2016. It would be humble witness to those who enter the polling station.                                                                                                                    

To contact Bill Droel:  write to PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629.