Margaret Melkonian at her home in Uniondale earlier this month. Credit: Neil Miller
Today, the diocesan commission no longer exists, she said. And most of the parish groups have vanished. For the most part, “We don’t hear or see those voices now,” Melkonian said.
Jim Morgo, a Catholic from Bayport and a Suffolk County legislator in the 1980s, also took on the Central America issue. A diocesan priest once gave him the idea of giving immigrants without documentation access to county health clinics without fear of getting deported, he said. Morgo sponsored a bill on it. Three Catholic priests spoke at public hearings in support. Catholic Charities also backed the move.
Those days seem long over, Morgo said. “I don’t see the Roman Catholic clergy as activists as they once were.”
By the 1990s, McGann had the diocese set up a public policy education network, which helped create groups in scores of parishes that focused on local and state issues such as affordable housing, hunger, living wages and immigration. Koubek headed the network from 1996 to 2008, when it was shut down.
“Today there is almost none of that taking place” in the diocese, he said. “We were respected all over the country” in Catholic circles. “All of that was taken apart.”
As recently as 2001, the Diocese of Rockville Centre endorsed a hiring site for day laborers in Farmingville, which had become a national flashpoint in the debate over immigration, Koubek said. Catholic Charities was ready to help fund and run the site, he said. The proposal was passed by the Suffolk County Legislature but vetoed by then-Suffolk County Executive Robert Gaffney.
Some parishes imbued with social justice activism had major impacts on their communities, advocates said. In Wyandanch, the Catholic Church helped found a library, an ambulance company, a day care center, affordable housing and a shelter for homeless people, Thomas said. One of the main priests behind the efforts, the late Rev. Andrew Connolly, met Day as a teenager and remained a lifelong friend.
His work in Wyandanch went beyond the local community: He used to bring parishioners to protests against the Shoreham nuclear power plant, Thomas said. He later worked for 17 years in the diocese’s mission in the Dominican Republic, where the church built schools, latrines and water systems. “That was Catholic social teaching at its best,” Thomas said.
There are various theories as to why social justice work has diminished in the diocese, besides changes in leadership. Rick Hinshaw, a former editor of The Long Island Catholic, the official diocesan newspaper, said part of the reason dates to the clergy sex abuse scandal that broke in the early 2000s.
“I think part of what you are seeing now is such a scale back on everything because of the financial downturn given the scandal,” with decreased donations and eventually — in 2020 — bankruptcy, Hinshaw said.
The church’s position as a moral voice also has suffered, he said. “A major part of the fallout from the scandal was that the church is not really listened to much anymore on public policy issues. It’s a different time and the church’s voice is much more muted now,” Hinshaw said.
The church’s decreased activism extends not just to progressive issues but to more conservative ones such as the pro-life movement, he said.
In the 1970s and 80s “Long Island was the epicenter of the pro-life movement here in New York State and then after Roe v. Wade really one of the national epicenters of pro-life advocacy,” Hinshaw said. “I don’t see that anymore either.”
“I have no doubt that Bishop Barres is a strong pro-life supporter, but you are just not seeing any kind of resources being put into that anymore I don’t think,” he said.
Fasano, the diocesan spokesman, said the diocese is doing what it can, in a range of areas. There is “a growing appreciation for the fact that issues surrounding the sanctity of human life, religious liberty, Catholic anthropology, and our ability to live in accordance with those truths are very much matters of social justice,” he said.
He added that the New York State Catholic Conference and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops — two umbrella groups for bishops — do significant public policy education and advocacy work about which the diocese keeps parishes informed.
Catholic social justice work has not entirely disappeared on Long Island, advocates said. Some orders of nuns including the Sisters of St. Dominic of Amityville and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood are addressing global issues such as the environment, food sustainability and immigration.
A Long Island chapter of Pax Christi, a Catholic peace organization, still advocates for world peace, nuclear disarmament and other issues, though membership is down and efforts to get the diocese more involved have failed, said one of its leaders, Ed Kubik.
Pax Christi has asked the diocese to revive its Justice and Peace Commission, and to hold an annual “Peace Mass” at St. Agnes Cathedral. The diocese never responded, Kubik said.
Fasano said he had no information on the request.
Bart Jones has covered religion, immigration and major breaking news at Newsday since 2000. A former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in Venezuela, he is the author of “HUGO! The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution.”
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Publish date : 2024-10-27 20:59:00
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