Bishop Hubbard to address "Faith for a Fair NY"

Bishop Howard Hubbard will be on of the featured speakers next month at the 1st Annual "Faith for a Fair NY" Teach-In, to held from noon on October 22nd to 1 p.m. on October 23 at the Dominican Retreat Center, Latham. The event is sponsored by the Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State and the New York State Council of Churches.
According to the announcement:

This is an opportunity for people of faith from around the state to network, learn, and take action around issues of social justice. 

Keynote speakers:

Kim Bobo, Executive Director and founder of Interfaith Worker Justice
The Most Rev. Howard Hubbard, Bishop of Albany and long-time economic justice advocate

Participants will choose from workshops covering a diverse range of issues including:

Quality education
Immigration Reform
The Farm Bill and SNAP
Creating living wage communities
Interfaith organizing

Join with people of faith throughout the state to come together to build relationships and work towards meaningful change. Each person plays an important role in the struggle for social justice in New York State, and it is only together that we will fully realize our vision for dignity, equality and economic security for all New Yorkers. I look forward to greeting you at the Retreat Center as together we put our passion into action. 

Costs: $75 for commuters, includes 4 meals
$125 for overnight guests-lodging and 4 meals vegetarian options available at every meal. 

Register by October 15 by sending payment (check made out to Labor-Religion Coalition of NYS) and contact info to:  

The Rev. Brooke Newell 

PO Box 203 

Jay, NY 12941  

Questions? Please call Rev. Newell at 518-946-2573 or email her at brooke@cjgreen.net

Bishop’s Labor Day Reflection

Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard has used his monthly column in The Evangelist to address income inequality, the importance of unions and other issues of importance to both business and labor:

As Labor Day approaches this year, there are both some hopeful and some ominous signs. The unemployment rate has fallen to 7.4 percent, the lowest since 2008, as the economy has added jobs for 34 consecutive months.  

But as Bishop Stephen Blaire, the author of our U.S. bishops' 2013 Labor Day statement, writes: "Over four million people have been jobless for over six months, and that does not include the millions more who have simply lost hope; for every available job, there are as many as five unemployed and underemployed people actively vying for it. This gap pushes wages down - half of the jobs in this country pay less than $27,000. Over 46 million people live in poverty, 16 million of them children."  

Furthermore, income inequality has grown at an alarming rate. In the 1960s, the average compensation of an American CEO was about 25 times the average compensation of a production worker. That ratio rose to about 70 times by the end of the 1980s, and to around 250 times these days.  

Equally distressing is the growing income disparity between the haves and the have-nots. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrialized country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is the "land of opportunity."

The entire column is here.

Labor-Religion Coalition and the fiscal cliff

The Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State, co-chaired by Bishop Howard J. Hubbard, has issued the following statement on the impending "fiscal cliff":　

As the nation faces an austerity crisis (or so-called fiscal cliff), religious communities are highlighting their concern for the individuals and families living at the economic margins. We call on our political leaders to adopt solutions that support the most vulnerable, promote the common good, and establish a fair system of taxation and distribution.
Such solutions must include:
Allowing the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest to expire on December 31.
Protecting the social safety net, including social security, medicare and medicaid.
Creating good jobs through investment in education, public transportation infrastructure and other community-building initiatives.
Take Action

Please call your Senators and Congressional Representatives.

You can call them using this toll-free number: 888-659-9401
Tell them to eliminate the tax cuts to the wealthiest 2% in our nation and fund social safety-net programs that allow people to live in dignity.

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard writes about increasing the minimum wage in today’s Times Union:

If the minimum wage is raised to $8.50, 880,000 workers in New York would directly get a raise, while another 200,000 who have wages just above the proposed new minimum would also see a wage increase as employers adjust overall pay structures. This translates into more than $600 million in additional economic activity, which means more jobs, according to an analysis by the Fiscal Policy Institute.

By raising the minimum wage, we begin to discern the path toward dignity and respect for all members of our society that faith and justice demands. We also make the practical choice to balance wages and boost the economy. The working people and lagging economy of New York cannot wait any longer.

I urge the governor and Legislature to address this pressing issue either in a special session this year or as a priority item in 2013. That would give all New Yorkers something for which to be grateful.

The entire article is here.

Bishop Hubbard’s monthly column in The Evangelist offers a reflection on Labor Day, the minimum wage, and the need for labor unions, among other subjects:

This past Monday, we celebrated our annual Labor Day, in which we were reminded -- as Blessed Pope John Paul II pointed out in his 1981 encyclical, "On Human Work" -- that "labor is essential to our identity as human beings and a tangible expression of our dignity," as well as a concrete way we can cooperate with the creator and bring into fulfillment the dream God has for all of creation.

Certainly, this Labor Day, which in the recent past has been more associated with picnics, the end of summer vacations and the opening of schools than with its initial intent, presents us with some sobering realities.

The unemployment rate remains at more than eight percent, the longest stretch of such high joblessness since the Great Depression. Further, millions of working people are struggling to pay their monthly mortgages; thousands of college graduates are struggling with crushing student loan debt; formerly middle-class folks are now feeding their families with food stamps; and, over the past 30 years, there has arisen a growing income inequality which has led researchers to conclude that the United States is the most economically unequal country in the advanced world.  

In 1986, the U.S. Catholic bishops sought to address the issues confronting our economy in the light of Catholic social teaching, with a particular focus on poverty, unemployment and the relationship between the American economy and world economies.

The entire column is here.

Facts worth considering

In his monthly column in The Evangelist, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard discusses important issues facing Congress and the New York State Legislature, and he does so with facts and statistics rather than the rhetoric that seems to cloud so much of what passes for political dialogue these days. Some of what he writes:

. . . from 1979 until the eve of the Great Recession, the top one percent of Americans received 36 percent of all gains, while the median income of non-elderly households actually fell. In fact, the top one-tenth of the one percent received more than 20 percent of all after-tax income between 1979 to 2005, compared to 13.5 percent enjoyed by the bottom 60 percent of households. In other words, the total of new income going to roughly 300,000 people was one-and-a-half times the size of the total going to roughly 180 million people.

. . .  

from 1979 to 2007, after-tax income grew by 275 percent for the one percent of the population with the highest income. More startling still, out of this small group of one percent - namely, the richest one-thousandth of the population, or 0.1 percent - it rose by 400 percent.  

. . .  

What is even worse is that the rise of poverty in our country has occurred as corporate CEO compensation ballooned from 24 times the average worker's wages to 300 times that amount. Just six members of the Walton family alone, whose patriarch founded Walmart, now have as much wealth as the bottom 30 percent of the entire U.S. population.

The rest of his column is here.

TV Clip of Bishop Hubbard Discussing the Minimumm Wage

New York’s Catholic Bishops are adding their support to the push to raise the minimum wage. They say the working poor are unable to get by on the current amount, and need help to get ahead. Recently, Albany Bishop Howard J. Hubbard appeared on YNN’s Capital Tonight to discuss how the Catholic Conference is trying to build support for the bill. You can watch the interview here.

Nun Thanks Bishop

Sister Doreen Glynn, Justice Coordinator for the Sisters of St. Joseph Albany Province, has a letter in today’s Times Union in which she thanks Bishop Howard J. Hubbard for his leadership:

Just hours after learning the sad news that the Vatican has ordered the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the organization representing 80 percent of U.S. Catholic nuns, to reform itself and place itself under the orders of an archbishop and two bishops, I read about our own beloved Bishop Howard J. Hubbard using his time and energy to speak on behalf of the poor.

Thank you, Bishop Hubbard, for giving me hope. Thank you, Times Union, for your coverage of our bishop addressing a panel of Senate Democrats about the gap between the rich and the poor in the state and nation ("Hubbard: Pay gap threatens social justice," April 19). Along with other faith leaders, Bishop Hubbard was advocating for raising the minimum wage.

The entire letter is available here.

Bishop Hubbard supports hike in minimum wage

Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard told a panel of Senate Democrats that the growing gap between rich and poor runs the risk of undoing decades of social justice gains.

"We are currently witnessing a massive transfer of wealth from a once-vast working middle class to very few rich," said Hubbard, speaking in his role as co-chair of the New York Labor-Religion Coalition.

The bishop joined other progressive faith leaders as the first set of witnesses at a forum Wednesday for supporters of a state minimum wage hike.

You can read more here.

Poverty panel Tuesday

Albany Bishop Howard J. Hubbard will discuss poverty in America on Tuesday, March 27 at 7 p.m. in the Hospitality Center of St. Joseph’s Provincial House, 385 Watervliet-Shaker Road (Route 155), Latham.

Bishop Hubbard will discuss today’s conditions in light of his years of direct service to the poor as a priest in Albany’s South End, his long service with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, and his current position as Chair of the United States Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace.

Also speaking will be Chris Parsons, Director of the ASPIRE program for the Schenectady City Mission, who will present ideas on what local residents can do to assist those in need.

A free-will offering will be taken up for Catholic Charities’ emergency food services fund.

The session is sponsored by the Commission on Peace and Justice, St. Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry, and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.

Bishop Hubbard on political engagement

Today’s Times Union carries an abridged version of the homily that Bishop Howard J. Hubbard delivered on Tuesday at a Mass coinciding with the Public Policy Day for New York Catholics, organized by the New York State Catholic Conference. Here is an excerpt:

However, when entering the public debate people of faith cannot claim moral superiority for our position simply because we quote from the Scriptures or church teaching. We owe the public a careful accounting of how we have come to our moral conclusions, and we must translate our faith-based positions into language that can serve as a basis for civil discourse in a religiously pluralistic society.

The inclusion of explicitly religious moral values in the public debate requires us to keep the moral factors central to it and to set an example of how this can be done with sensitivity and rationality. We must demonstrate that we can keep our deepest convictions and still maintain civil courtesy. We must show that we can test others' arguments but not question their motives and that we can presume good will even when we disagree strongly.

There is an equally important battle to be won within our church itself, namely, that of the legitimacy of Catholic social justice advocacy, which is as much a part of our tradition as the proclamation of the word and the celebration of the sacraments.

Many Catholics are unaware of the church's social teaching, and Catholics are also the least likely of the faith groups to participate in civic engagement. We are more comfortable in running food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters for the homeless than in advocating with our elected representatives for public policies that will address the root causes of poverty and injustice.

Many, especially some in the media, portray the Catholic community as being concerned only about abortion or issues of human sexuality. We are proudly concerned about these issues because they deal with the sanctity of life. Indeed, we have addressed this explicitly in our opposition to the radical reproductive health care act. Yet we are also gravely concerned about the education of the young, service to the poor through food programs, affordable housing and employment, creating a viable path to citizenship for newly arrived immigrants and assisting to inmates in their reintegration in the community,

You can read more here.

Public Policy Day Report

The Evangelist has an article on Public Policy Day at the State Capitol in Albany, as well as a meeting the bishops had with Governor Andrew Cuomo the previous day.

Ahead of the lobbying day on Monday, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of the Albany Diocese, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the New York Archdiocese and their fellow New York State bishops met with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders at the state Capitol.

During the closed-door meeting, the bishops thanked Gov. Cuomo for restoring a new sense of trust, confidence and fiscal responsibility in state government.

Bishop Hubbard said that the bishops monitor about 70 public policy issues, but pared the list down for their audience with the governor. Among other topics, they addressed:

• safe and affordable housing for the poor;

• farmworkers' rights;

• affordable and accessible day care;

• job transportation in rural communities;

• job training in prisons and for low-income people;

• funding for prison chaplains;

• Catholic education; and

• the public assistance grant.

Cardinal Dolan said Gov. Cuomo was "very attentive" and "well-briefed" and recognized the Church's role as a voice for the voiceless.

"In general, we [bishops] come up here to affirm and encourage" elected officials, rather than protest and oppose, Cardinal Dolan said. He added that meetings with governors are usually positive, but "with Gov. Cuomo, they're particularly friendly and substantive."

The entire article is here.

Poverty video

Our Catholic faith calls us to protect the poor, such as the 1.4 billion persons who live on less than $1.25 a day and 46 million poor persons in our own country.

Bishop Howard Hubbard discusses poverty and politics in this video.

Try a little kindness this Lent

In his monthly column in The Evangelist, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard writes about one way we may enter into the season of Lent, which begins today:

In a past era, we were encouraged "to give up something." The key to Lent, however, is to view it less as a burdensome obligation and more as an opportunity to do something positive. Indeed, a good theme song for Lent would be Glen Campbell's "Try a Little Kindness."

Jesuit educator Rev. Peter Schineller opines "that kindness entails an ability to reach out beyond our own situation, good or bad, to show compassion toward others."

Such kindness doesn't have to take on dramatic forms. It can be as simple as a pleasant greeting at the checkout counter, to the bus driver, to the bank teller, to the security guard at the mall or to the person entering church with us.

It might find expression in listening to our spouse, children, coworkers or friends more patiently and sensitively. It might heed the advice of Rev. Adolfo Nicolas, superior general of the Jesuits, who suggests that before speaking you should ask three questions about what you will say: "Is it true; is it kind and gentle; and is it good for others?"

The entire column is here.

The 1,000 Faith Leaders Initiative

Albany Bishop Howard J. Hubbard, in his role as Chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is one of the early signatories to a letter on a letter to President Obama urging the Administration to embrace economic justice for the world’s poorest with international financial reform and debt cancellation.

The letter is an initiative of the Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of more than 75 religious denominations and faith communities, human rights, environmental, labor, and community groups working for the definitive cancellation of crushing debts to fight poverty and injustice in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. From the Jubilee website:

This spring, Jubilee is bringing together faith leaders from across the country to advocate for debt relief. Our goal is to gather more than 1,000 signatures on a letter to President Obama urging the Administration to embrace economic justice for the world’s poorest with international financial reform and debt cancellation.

With you and your faith community’s activism, we can continue to break the cycle of debt that impoverishes countries and their citizens.

What is the Faith Leaders Initiative All About?

The letter calls for:

- An extension of debt cancellation
- A neutral platform for future decision making around debt
- The establishment of responsible standards of lending and borrowing
- Reducing the need for loans by stemming illicit resource flows and mobilizing grant assistance
- Transform International Financial Institutions to make them accountable to the people most affected by their decisions

Jubilee USA has been reaching out to high-level faith leaders from all over the country urging them to sign on to the letter.

You can learn more here.

Bishop Hubbard addresses global poverty

Albany Bishop Howard J. Hubbard has recorded two public service announcements for radio, addressing the need to protect lifesaving foreign assistance in the federal budget. You can listen to them here, under the heading “What’s New”. And you can learn more, here.

Renewing the Earth

St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Delmar invites you to dinner and an evening with Bishop Howard J. Hubbard, Congressman Paul Tonko, and Riobart E. (Rob) Breen, Director of the Franciscan Ecology Center at Siena College on Monday, October 17, at 6 p.m. in the School Cafeteria, 42 Adams Place in Delmar.

The evening's topic is "Renewing the Earth".

For more information or to make reservations, please call the Church Office at 439-4951.

Bishop Hubbard's Labor Day Message

In his Labor Day message, published in The Evangelist, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard writes about the debt ceiling debate in Congress and how it might affect Americans. He writes:

On this Labor Day weekend, we are particularly concerned about how the action already taken last month and under consideration between now and Nov. 23 will affect America's workforce.

With the economy faltering and 25 million people in need of full-time work, almost everyone wants Washington and other governmental entities focused on how to create jobs and to get the economy going, not on slashing spending for the rising number of poor children and homeless, while sheltering tax havens for millionaires and billionaires.

More than four million Americans have been out of work for more than a year, the largest number of long-term unemployed since World War II; yet Congress has gone on a summer recess without extending unemployment benefits to their out-of-work constituents.

What is particularly distressing is the growing disparity of wealth in our country. In their new book, "How Washington made the Rich Richer - And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class," John Hacker, a political scientist at Yale University, and Paul Pierson, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, posit that we have experienced a "30-year war" in which the long, slow struggle through the 20th century for greater equality of income and wealth has been reversed.

They note that, from 1979 until the eve of our current great recession, the top one percent have held 35 percent of our nation's wealth. Between 2001 and 2006, the top one percent amassed more than half the gains, while the median income of non-elderly households actually fell.

In fact, the top one-tenth of that one percent "received over 20 percent of all after-tax income gains between 1970 and 2005, compared with the 13.5 percent enjoyed by the bottom 60 percent of households."

In other words, the total of new income going to roughly 300,000 people was one and a half percent the size of the total going to roughly 180 million people.

In the last four decades, these authors conclude that our democracy has become the most economically unequal nation in the advanced world. Meanwhile, the working and middle classes have either fallen behind or kept up by going into debt and having more family members work longer hours.
. . .

Every Pope from Leo XIII to Benedict XVI has underscored that economic injustice, not economic growth, is the cornerstone of our Church's teaching. The Church condemns the social and personal damage done when employees and their families are treated as voiceless underlings or disposable parts.

Just last month, during his travels to World Youth Day in Madrid, Spain, Pope Benedict denounced "the profit-at-all-costs mentality" that has contributed to our current economic crisis. He noted that "people must be at the center of the economy, and the economy cannot be measured only by the maximization of profit, but rather according to the common good."

That is why Catholic social teaching has upheld the rights of workers to organize and to bargain with employers for a living wage and decent medical, disability and retirement benefits. Therefore, with workers under so much pressure and unions facing open attack - most recently in the state of Wisconsin - it is helpful, this Labor Day, to recall three fundamental themes of Catholic social teaching on labor:

1 Human dignity is achieved through work.

2 In a world of powerful corporations and weak borrowing power on the part of workers, unions are necessary for achieving a fair and decent livelihood for workers and their families.

3 The principal role of the government is to protect the common good by safeguarding and implementing the rights of working men and women.

It is true that unions have sometimes abused their powers, and when this happens they must be held accountable. "But without them," as Commonweal magazine editorializes, "who holds employers accountable?"

The rest of the message is here.

Food and faith

Bishop Howard J. Hubbard, as Chairman of Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, together with Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, who is Chairman of the Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, recently sent a letter to the Chairman and the ranking member of the House Appropriates Committee about the moral and human dimensions of the current FY 2012 Agriculture Appropriations bill. They wrote, in part:

On behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, we write to address the moral and human dimensions of the current FY 2012 Agriculture Appropriations bill. We express our deep concerns that the current proposal calls for significant cuts to both domestic and international food aid, conservation and rural development programs. These proposed cuts will greatly affect programs that serve hungry, poor and vulnerable people in our nation and around the world.

In For I Was Hungry and You Gave Me Food: Catholic Reflections on Food, Farmers and Farmworkers, the U.S. Catholic bishops wrote, “The primary goals of agricultural policies should be providing food for all people and reducing poverty among farmers and farm workers in this country and abroad.” Adequate nutrition is a fundamental human right. It is in this context that we urge you to support just and adequate funding levels for agriculture policies that serve the hungry, poor and vulnerable while being good stewards of our land and natural resources.

We wish to clearly acknowledge the difficult challenges that Congress, the Administration and government at all levels face to get our financial house in order. In light of growing deficits, Congress faces difficult choices about how to balance needs and resources and allocate burdens and sacrifices. However, a just spending bill cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.

As pastors and teachers, we offer several moral criteria to help guide difficult budgetary decisions:

1. Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.

2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.

3. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times.

The rest of the letter, with the recommendations of the bishops, is here.

Bishop Hubbard on the federal budget

In his monthly column in The Evangelist, Bishop Howard J. Hubbard addresses current budget negotiations in Congress, and discusses them in terms of Catholic social teaching:

Congress is presently negotiating deep spending cuts in the federal government’s fiscal year 2011 budget.

Last week, as chairperson for the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, I and Bishop Stephen Blaire, who chairs the Episcopal Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, visited key members of Congress to express our concerns that the cries of the poor and vulnerable at home and abroad are not being heard.

We realize that times of fiscal restraint demand shared sacrifices. Strategies must be developed to raise adequate revenues, eliminate unnecessary spending, meet defense needs and address the long-term costs of health insurance programs in a fair and just way.

Burden on poor
But the principles of Catholic social teaching insist that cuts be shared so that those who are most vulnerable do not bear the primary burden for reducing the deficit. Indeed, in a time of austerity and fiscal restraint, “the least of these” have a special moral priority.

Unfortunately, in the current debate to date, the poor are being asked to bear a disproportionate share of the proposed cuts. The vast majority of the cuts come from the non-defense, discretionary portion of the budget — only about 12 percent of the total budget — which funds the majority of social welfare, education and other anti-poverty programs at home and abroad.

Fiscal responsibility is important and our current budget deficit must be addressed. However, shared sacrifice should guide budget cuts, not reliance on disproportionate cuts in programs that serve poor persons.

Cruelest cuts
Current proposals fail the moral criteria of Catholic teaching to protect the poor and advance the common good. Some of the largest proposed funding cuts include:

• $1.08 billion from Head Start,

• $800 million from International Food Aid,

• $100 million from Emergency Food and Shelter,

• $2.5 billion from affordable housing,

• $875 million from International Disaster Assistance,

• $1 billion from community health centers,

• $2.3 billion from job training programs and

• $904 million from migrants and refugees.

We are very apprehensive about the reductions contained in the present proposals. There is projected to be only about three percent in overall cuts, but 27 percent in poverty cuts for international assistance.

The rest of this article is here.