MADISON — John Huebscher says that the Catholic Church has “always been tugging at my sleeve.”
“I’ve always been interested in the Church,” he said in an interview prior to his retirement this month as executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference (WCC), the public policy voice of the state’s Catholic bishops.
“I even thought about entering the seminary,” he said. In fact, his pastor encouraged him to visit the seminary in Milwaukee in 1967 and he met the rector in his office.
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The current debate over whether to welcome refugees fleeing the carnage in Syria reminded me of how one leader spoke to a similar situation some years ago.
Clifford “Tiny” Krueger represented much of northern Wisconsin in the State Senate for 34 years from the mid-1940s until 1983.
First a Progressive, then a Republican, Krueger was the GOP Senate floor leader from 1975 to 1981. When he retired, a veteran observer of the Capitol scene described him as “the conscience of the common man.”
That conscience was very evident in May of 1980. Tiny was asked to offer a few remarks at the Memorial Day observance in Rhinelander. Then as now, the issue of whether to accept refugees from another country was a hot topic.
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When he spoke to Congress last month, Pope Francis quietly urged his listeners to heed the Golden Rule of “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
But there is another golden rule. The late Wisconsin Governor Lee Dreyfus liked to refer to it from time to time. Commenting (with disfavor) on the nature of “old school politics,” Dreyfus observed that the golden rule of such politics is “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
We often hear it said that having a job gives people dignity. That is not quite right. The dignity inherent in every human being is a gift from the loving God who created us.
This human dignity is ours when we are too young to work. And we retain it when we are too ill, too disabled, or too old to work or when unemployed.
On the Wednesday after Easter, April 8, Catholics from around the state will meet at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in Madison for Catholics at the Capitol 2015.
When the Wisconsin Catholic Conference (WCC) staff talks to groups around the state, we emphasize that faithful citizenship is a 12-month obligation.
During the latter part of March, Catholics and others who want to be heard on how and where the state should spend our money will have a chance to do so.
They can show up at one of four hearings on the 2015 budget bill. The hearings, conducted by the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance, will take place over a two-week period beginning on Monday, March 23, and concluding on Friday, April 3.
Wisconsin’s laws make for some pretty dull reading. Most laws consist of technical prose defining eligibility for programs and drawing lines between legal and illegal conduct.
But some laws serve a different purpose. Some declare a policy vision for our state or define the scope and mission of what our government should do.
It is in these sections of the statutes that prose becomes poetry. It is there that we Wisconsinites define who we are and what we want our state to be.
MADISON — Charles M. “Chuck” Phillips was a familiar sight at the state Capitol for many years as the first executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference (WCC).
A year ago, the first thing the newly elected Legislature did was to adopt its scheduling resolution for the 2011-12 legislative session.
This resolution defined the floor periods during which the Legislature would meet to debate and pass legislation. In so doing, the legislators determined that they would convene for three “general business” floor periods between January 17 and March 15 in 2012, the last day of regular business for the year.
When they adopted that resolution, our lawmakers had no way of knowing that their session schedule would mesh with Wisconsin’s first ever recall of a governor and recalls of several state senators. But that is what appears will happen and it will affect what lawmaking takes place in these final floor periods.
The cornerstone of Catholic social teaching is that human life is sacred. As such the Catholic Conference evaluates any law, policy, or program in terms of its impact on the life and dignity of the human person.
Catholic teaching on the economy reflects this emphasis on the human person. Pope John Paul II put it quite directly in his 1981 encyclical letter, Laborem exercens. He recalled that the error of early capitalism can be repeated wherever humans are treated as mere instruments or means of production and not as ends in themselves.
