Priests' concern on Mersey jobless

FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
H
TE concern for Mersey ' side's 50,000 unemployed. which 33 Liverpool priests, led by Mgr. Canon Thomas G. McKenna (Administrator of the Metropolitan Cathedral) showed in taking part as a group in the TUC's march against unemployment in Liverpool on Saturday last, was strongly expressed again during the weekend meeting of the Archdiocesan pastoral council.
Fr. Kevin Kelly told the council, over which Archbishop Beck presided: "The economy is made for man, not man for the economy."
The Church's response should be on three levels, one of protest to confront the government, the employers and the trade unions who exercise power in this area; one to pinpoint the sin of lack of concern for the rights of others; one of pastoral concern for those suffering as a result of unemployment, to help them face their situation in the light of the Gospel.
"If there is a disease in an area, we mount massive aid. This is a disease," Fr. Kelly said.
Mr. Tom Casey, an active trade unionist, saw the difference between the present situation and the 1930's. "Then there was a Christian ferment among the unemployed coming from Methodists and others whose roots were in the working class.
CONDEMNATION
"Now there is no such Christian ferment. New forces are at work and can be seen in the takeovers like Clydeside. There is new thinking in the working class."
"Where have these new ideas come from?" asked Fr. Michael Ravey (from Kirby, where there is a severe unemployment problem). who represents the younger clergy of the Council.
"All these demonstrations are basically organised by groups of the political Far Left. Whereas I believe we have had a priest in the archdiocese on an international commission for relations with Marxists, we have no contact with such groups here on Merseyside. "Yet many of their leaders are lapsed Catholics, whose ideas and ideals are in tune with the Gospels and the encyclicals, but have not come from them. This is a condemnation of what we have been doing over the years. We should make a positive effort to get in touch with such groups and to bring them into contact with the Gospel.
"We tend to take a middleclass approach from our own position of security. Our lives do not bear witness to their poverty.
"We should be sufficiently humble to acknowledge this and to be prepared not only to walk in their protest marches but to live with and like our brothers."
ADMINISTRATION Fr. James Boirne urged that such men as Mr. Tom Casey should be given an open forum in our Churches to activate our people towards a Christian solution of the problem.
Earlier Fr. Michael Gaine, sociologist. pleaded for an investigation by the various Church commissions to probe the efficiency of the administration of the Church. Quoting the McKinsey report on Liverpool which made sweeping recommendations for reorganisation of local government, he urged that commissions should state quite simply their pastoral objectives and the strategies proposed to achieve them.
"All this calls for a most searching examination of our pastoral aims for those within the Church and our missionary objectives within our own society. If we merely go through the techniques valid 100 years ago, we will be Making a very big mistake."
Fr. Bernard Boardman, however, saw a danger in applying management by objectives to relationships of love and other imponderable and immeasurable factors.
Archbishop Beck accepted a proposal to set up a field study to find out the extent and character of parental involvement in schools, with the aim of clarifying the attitudes of teachers and of the administration of teaching to such involvement.