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We’ve all dealt with them on our rectory doorsteps. But regardless of how much they cuss, throw up and create havoc their human dignity has to be respected.

A few years ago I worked at Resurrection Healthcare providing spiritual and emotional support to drug addicts and alcoholics in recovery. One night a week I was at the emergency room of Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center at Central and Addison in Chicago. I was on-call there to facilitate interventions and assist addicts and alcoholics into rehab after their medical status was stabilized. The other four days of the week I worked at Resurrection’s recently acquired Westlake Hospital in Melrose Park providing spiritual and emotional support for people in recovery programs.

On my Sunday night shift in the emergency room I often not only encountered addicts and alcoholics but homeless people as well especially on the bleakest of winter nights. Many of them were Polish immigrants or of African American descent. Some of them were mentally ill.

They had no family members or friends to count on. They needed immediate food and shelter and someone who would listen.

I found my job at Resurrection meaningful and fulfilling even though I felt like a fish out of water not being in parish ministry. But I felt I was on the front line making a difference in the lives of people most of whom were at poverty level and desperately in need of help. It was during a time in my life when I was pretty discouraged about being a priest. That job helped me get back in touch with why I wanted to remain a priest. However, I began to feel that I was being required to compromise my priesthood in terms of complying with the directives coming to me from Resurrection Healthcare’s management.

I started getting admonished by my manager for “spending too much time with indigent people and not enough time with paying customers.” I often witnessed homeless people as well as alcoholics and drug addicts being turned away from Our Lady of the Resurrection on nights of sub-zero temperatures. It wasn’t just one manager’s misguided zealousness to protect the bottom line. It seemed to be indicative of a systemic plan to focus only on people who “produce revenue”. My manager was apologetic and explained she was under a lot of pressure from the management of Resurrection Healthcare to produce more revenue from the Substance Abuse clients.

Employees from other departments at Resurrection started coming to me. Some of them have since been fired. They were saying things like, “Before Resurrection Healthcare bought this hospital it was a much more Christian place to work.” They were shocked that the new emphasis on making money seemed to be taking priority over the quality of patient care throughout the system. Then employees, both Catholic and non-Catholic, started posing this question to me, “Doesn’t it bother you as a priest that Resurrection Healthcare appears to be turning their backs on the poor?” It bothered me a great deal. Then my year away from active parish ministry was drawing to a close and I knew it was time to go back to a parish. I had choices. The other employees didn’t.

Perhaps I have “survivor’s guilt” but when disgruntled employees went to the union to talk about organizing I felt obliged to support them based not only on my own negative experience of Resurrection Healthcare but on everything the Catholic Church has taught me about the right that workers have to organize in order to receive decent pay and work in safe and clean working conditions without harassment. I have been in the struggle in solidarity with Resurrection Healthcare workers ever since. I’ve spoken to the Superiors of both religious communities that sponsor Resurrection Healthcare but have basically been dismissed. I spoke with an Administrator at Westlake Hospital who also appeared unmoved. Management denies that non-paying indigent people or homeless people are being turned away but I saw it happen several times. Management maintains that no one is being fired for supporting the union but I know people who have been fired for taking a stand. In addition, the Illinois Department of Public Health has some very alarming statistics regarding Resurrection Healthcare in terms of their high prices and high patient mortality rate. Anyone who is skeptical would do well to review that data.

As a priest I am embarrassed and ashamed that Resurrection Healthcare can still call itself Catholic while adopting such secular policies that focus solely on making money. I would like to think there is still charity being practiced there but obviously it has been diminished. The American Federation of State, City and Municipal Employees is the only group presently supporting me and the hundreds of other present or former Resurrection Healthcare employees who are trying to bring justice to this situation.

The Catholic Church has long supported the right of workers to organize. Do we believe unions are infallible? Of course not. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of American history knows labor unions have experienced various forms of corruption over the years. But the Catholic Church has also experienced corruption over the years. The ideals and missions of both labor unions and the Catholic Church are still intact. Various papal encyclicals, pastoral letters and scholarly Catholic works remind us that men and women are entitled to a just wage and decent working conditions. We need to be careful that Catholic Social Teaching is not just taught but that it is practiced most especially in institutions that bear the name “Catholic.”

It’s been a long drawn out fight. In the meantime Resurrection Healthcare continues to buy up more hospitals in the Chicago area. Many employees are asking Resurrection Healthcare for dialogue. Over three hundred nurses currently employed at Resurrection Healthcare have asked to meet with management to discuss the decline in quality care. Most of them have experienced a decrease in pay but an increase in their workload. The management of Resurrection Healthcare refuses to meet with them. In the midst of all the employee pay cuts the yearly salary of the CEO of Resurrection Healthcare has risen to well over a million dollars.

Management of Resurrection Healthcare appears to be demonizing the union and all of us who see it as the only means through which to break through the mess and find a peaceful solution.

Every time the union has held a rally or prayer vigil hundreds of Resurrection employees come.

How could that many employees be wrong? I’m running out of ways to give these people hope.

There are several priests who worked at Resurrection Healthcare and saw the abuses themselves. Other priests have parishioners who either are employees or former patients who have experienced the injustice. The union took out a full-page ad trying to draw attention to the issues. Resurrection Healthcare responded with a bulk mailing depicting themselves as virtuous and the union and all its supporters as sinister. There was even an article quoting a priest of the Archdiocese as saying that none of us priests endorsed the ad. This is simply a lie. I did endorse the ad and the other priests whose names were in the ad endorsed it as well.

To make things even more bizarre, last year I had an elderly uncle with pneumonia who was taken in an emergency to Our Lady of the Resurrection Medical Center. I went to visit him several times and every visit he’d tell me it would take two or three hours for anyone to respond when he pushed the button requesting help. When I asked the nurses on his unit about this they explained that they just didn’t have enough staff anymore to respond quickly to patients. I decided to move my uncle to a secular hospital. He received quality care there.

As an employee of Resurrection Healthcare I watched poverty-level people being neglected or turned away. I’ve seen nurses and other staffers have their pay cut and their workload increased. In the course of my life I have never experienced such a refusal to enter into dialogue over employee grievances by any organization least of all a Catholic institution. The union is the only organization presently supporting my obligation to uphold Catholic Social Teaching. When I was a teenager first learning of the Catholic Church’s support of labor unions and workers’ rights I was inspired as I saw faith being put into action by priests of the Archdiocese like Msgr. Jack Egan and Msgr. George Higgins and others. I always thought about their work at places like steel mills and meatpacking plants. I never thought one day such flagrant human rights violations would take place within a Catholic institution.

The union seems to have a proper understanding of the rights and dignity of the human person. The union gives me hope that one day there will be justice and peace for workers and patients in the Resurrection Healthcare system. Even if Resurrection Healthcare refuses to engage the union in dialogue they still need to address the issue of poor patient care and the grievances of far too many of their employees.