Catholic Worker Symbol
The person in the middle, Jesus,
is not recorded in the Gospel
as a real worker. He also
was not a Catholic

Today in the newspaper there was a story about how our former Archbishop, someone I was blessed to know a little bit, was finally publishing his memoirs and being a Benedictine priest was moving to an Benedictine abbey in New Jersey. A reporter asked him if was going to work in one of the many abbey missions. Is response was simply “I am 82.”

Since I am 66 I cannot use my age as an excuse for my work or not working. For example, today I worked hard in the garden but if someone was to describe my work they would not include this work. Neither would they include my work in peacemaking, cooking, shopping or helping friends in need.

It seems to me that work has come to mean in this society something you do for money or honor. So a professional athlete or actor “works” while the softball player or the local theater actors plays.

I have mentioned before that when I was “unemployed” in the past and someone asked me what my work was I used to say ‘nothing.’ That was a joke I did not mind. But now that I am retired from work for employment I find myself working even harder at times than when I worked for money. True it is more enjoyable, since it is work of my choice, but I now have a hard time saying my work is nothing.

I now have a taste how women who work hard at home, cooking, shopping, cleaning, raising children felt when all the work they did was not considered real work. A “working woman” usually means a woman who works for employment.

Rich people who do charity work often are considered working since they work for honor.

Once I was at the Catholic Worker house of hospitality when another Archbishop of Milwaukee was visiting. One of the young men there at the time described the Catholic Workers as not being always Catholic or Workers. Now working at a Catholic Worker house of hospitality is difficult work, but by the standards of society, since is not for employment, it is not real work.

We need a new category of real workers to include all of us gardeners, peace and justice activists, cooks, shoppers, workers in houses of hospitality and so-called ‘retired persons’. I would like to say we are ‘do-nothing workers’ but that might get misunderstood in our society to mean ‘no good workers.’

Tomorrow morning I am going to work on the DMZ community garden and in the afternoon work on my gardens. Maybe I should use this non-work time to reflect on what to call this work! Any suggestions, all you ‘do-nothing workers?’

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