A question that seems to come up frequently in living wage discussions is “What is the living wage?” This is sometimes used as a (poor) rhetorical device, tossed out desperately, as if to say the fabled concept is unknowable, and therefore not worthy of debate.

    Or the question is sometimes used to suggest that the “living wage” being advocated has a meaning so rediculous (McMansions, SUV's, a television in every pot) that those who propose it are some kind of bizzare breed that answers the question of, "What do you get when you cross a socialist busybody with a greedy materialist?".

    But it is also a question that can be asked sincerely, and deserves as sincere an answer.

***

    First some thoughts about poverty. I have seen the “what is poverty?” philosophy from the pen of people who elsewhere have proven they really do know poverty when they see it. And there, I saw two types of confusion. First, confusing relative poverty with absolute poverty. Secondly, confusing happiness, contentment, or even resignation, with adequacy.

    I think the church teaching on the living wage deals primarily with absolute poverty, not relative poverty. It isn't about whether a worker can only afford one coat in a society where the norm is to own half a dozen. It is primarily about making sure the worker can purchase the coat he needs.

    As we have seen in previous posts, the living wage does not rest with paying “the market rate”. It follows that however much a worker may be willing offer his suffering joyfully, and find happiness in life even when deprived of basic needs, the church does not allow employers to therefore pay suffering-inducing wages.

    Likewise, we cannot say the worker earns an adequate living merely because he earns as much as anyone in his position always has earned. If generations before him also shivered in the cold for lack of a coat, that does not mean we of this generation are excused from paying coat-wages.

***

    Because the living wage deals with specific, objective human needs, it is not all that difficult to make a good approximation of what constitutes a living wage. Let us look, for example, at what kind of housing a living wage ought to be able to purchase:

    Adequate housing is the kind that keeps out dangerous animals and holds up to reasonably-expected weather conditions. It needn't be flood-proof if it is built in an area that last flooded at the time of Noah; it needn't have its own heat supply if located in a climate where the sun provides all the heat a family could want. But yes, in an earthquake zone, it ought to be built so as to not kill its inhabitants when the earthquakes come, nor to leave them homeless afterwards. There ought to be easy access to safe drinking water, and a means of safely disposing of human waste. And so forth.

    The exact construction details are going to vary from place to place. But if you live or travel in that place (as you would, if you had employees there), you could figure this out fairly readily. If you needed to, you could rely on the ever-useful “what if it were me?” questions. “What kind of housing would I need, if I were one of my workers, and lived in this place?”

    And once you know what it is your workers' wages must pay for, the calculation may be tedious, but it is doable. It is not so difficult to find out what local rents are, and see what sort of housing those rents buy. The amount of rent (or mortgage payment) it takes to inhabit safe, decent housing, that is the amount a living wage needs to cover.

    The calculation is the same for the other human needs. How much does it cost to purchase clothing? To buy nutritious foods? For safe transportation?

    The living wage is, in this respect, terribly simple. Financial advisors are forever telling people to make a budget for personal expenses; the living wage is the bottom line of an adequate but frugal budget.

    This is the kind of the thing the local Better Business Bureau could publish. An accounting firm – the same one that audits your financial statements, for example – easily has the skills to put together such an analysis.  Chances are the workers in question have a fairly good idea themselves, too.

***

    I don't say that living wage calculations are an exact science; people can reasonably disagree over the precise bottom line. Witness the wide variety of housing that Habitat for Humanity builds around the world. Some of that variation must represent a margin of error, or a range of disagreement, in calculating a living wage. (Or in habitat's case, what a living wage would buy, if it were paid – Habitat's clients are the working poor).

    But Christianity isn't a math test. I can't imagine that on Judgment Day Jesus is going to turn to one business owner and say, “You paid your workers too much! Who needs sneakers when sandals will do?!” and to another, “You paid too little! Anyone born after 1970 was supposed to have air-conditioning!”

    On the other hand, it isn't unreasonable to fear hearing our Savior ask, “What part of 'the children shouldn't have to play in untreated sewage' didn't you understand?”

    The essential thing is that we make the effort required, and make it in good faith.  And then that we carry it out.  Better to be off by 5%, but to pay the wage, than to not bother in the first place for fear of an honest error.

***

    This moral burden falls first of all to business owners and managers. In a lesser it way, consumers, too, need to do what they can to support the living wage. The government's part is to put into place those “structures of justice” that support, rather than undermine, this moral imperative.

    Asking “What exactly is a living wage?” is a legitimate question, for those who mean to find, and live out, the answer. A good catholic can have doubts about what role minimum-wage laws should play in it all, or agree to disagree about what sort of meals a worker ought to be able to afford. But the question ought not be used as an excuse for rejecting the moral teaching the church. Rather, because the question can be answered, it behooves us to see it answered and implemented.

Neither Mr. Boy nor I are Vacation Bible School material, but the two girls love it.  Peppy songs, arts and crafts, and a big assembly at the end of the week.  I bribed came to an agreement with Mr. Boy that if he would attend VBS without complaining, I would give him extra Lego privileges.  (Legos are a controlled substance in this household, what with the goat-like habits of the experienced toddler and the aspiring toddler.)

Turns out they have not needed my volunteer hours, at least not yet, despite the stern warning on the registration form that all parents were expected to volunteer, or else.    (Or else: bring snacks.  If there's one things I'm worse at than VBS, it's VBS-snacks.  So I said I'd volunteer.)  Our parish is blessed with an army of professional early-childhood educators, all of them out on leave for the summer and apparently getting restless for lack of activities to lead.  Or something. 

Freed for a couple hours with no responsibilities except  SB (her: first word: "back pack" - she's highly portable), I headed across town to visit a dying kinsman at the hospital.  (Too complicated to explain the precise relationship.).   Love him dearly, and 80-something is way way too early for him to go.

You might think that the peppiness of the VBS-CD -- sent home with each family so the children can learn their songs for that assembly at the end of the week -- might ring a little hollow at a time like this.   But not at all.   As Father said at that first funeral I blogged about earlier this year, "It is for this day that we are baptised".   Choruses of children urging, "Dive into Jesus!" is just the thing right now.

Meanwhile, the Curt Jester has posted a brilliant You-Tube on this whole question of songs with hand-motions. For those of us who are VBS-resistant.

The shepherds hurried away to Bethlehem, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. When they saw the child they repeated what they had been told about him, and everyone who heard it was astonished at what the shepherds had to say.  As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.

Sunday morning our deacon closed his homily with a reminder that we can turn to Mary in our times of need. He mentioned all the bits that can make a protestant really squirm: She is a mother who loves us, that she will answer our prayers, and that she will pray with us to Jesus.

It is understandable that evangelical protestants view all of this as a bundle of blasphemy, wrapped up in idolatry, with a little necromancy thrown in for good measure. And the reason for their concern ought to be self evident: Mary is doing God's work.

Years ago when the SuperHusband and I were first married, I went with him on a business trip to Quebec city. We went to dinner one evening with another person attending the conference, this really entertaining eccentric old guy that SH knew from previous conferences. It was mid-June, so conversation naturally turned to plans for the rest of the summer. Our dinner partner informed us he was going to the Ukraine. (This was in the the early post-cold-war era.) We asked what he was doing there. And he answered very plainly, these are his exact words, “Doing the Lord's work.”

Now neither SH nor I were Christians at that time. We were, however, faithful agnostics, so we understood that God is omnipotent. Or at the very least, He ought to be. Our immediate reaction, therefore, was, “Why isn't the Lord doing it Himself?”

We are no longer agnostics, and know that we can turn to the sacred scriptures to learn exactly what God is like, and how He does things.  

Is He a Delegator?

The answer is yes.

Consider the commissioning of the 72: During his ministry on earth, Jesus went about healing people and proclaiming God's kingdom. And then he turned to his disciples, and sent them out to do the same thing -- heal people and proclaim God's kingdom.  Our Lord gave his disciples the power to do His work.

After his resurrection, Jesus does it again. He turns to the eleven apostles and tells them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven. For those whose sins you retain, they are retained.” (John 20:23). Jesus is here delegating his power to forgive sins. He could have told the apostles to simply direct people to God for forgiveness of sins, but instead He chose to delegate.

Making disciples, healing, forgiving – these are all the Lord's work. And scripture records very plainly that the Lord in turn assigns these jobs to mere men.

There is a logic to this, in that if we are to be the children of God, it makes sense that our Heavenly Father would do what any father does, train his children to do the work of the family.

Therefore though some may disagree over the precise details (a topic for another day), I think there is a general consensus among all Christians that while we are here on earth, yes, we are expected to do the Lord's work. When our dinner partner referred to his pending mission trip to the Ukraine, yes, indeed, he was about to go and do what His Lord had delegated to him. 

I think, however, that a parting ways occurs among Christians when it comes to the question of  what will happen in Heaven.  And this is the root of disagreement over the catholic understanding of the communion of saints.

In the book of Revelation we see the saints in Heaven offering prayers and singing praises to God. Christians agree, therefore, that one of our eternal activities will be something like a giant praise and worship service. Only much, much better. Songs everybody likes, for one thing. Maybe that's why St. Paul tells us to quit our grumbling and complaining – because there's no sense practicing now what we won't be doing later.

And I think that is where catholics (and the orthodox) part ways with evangelicals: Catholics recognize that all this doing of the Lord's work here on earth is not just a way to bide time until we get our new, glorified voices that make us fit for a heavenly choir. We practice doing the Lord's work here on earth, because we will actually be doing the Lord's work in heaven.

Why should Mary, or St. Jude, or any other Christian be given the power to hear and answer prayers and perform miracles? Because they are the grown-up children of God, now working side by side with their heavenly Father. They proved themselves trustworthy with small things delegated to them on earth, and now they are trusted with much greater things in Heaven.

As the first Marian feasts of the new liturgical year approach, the command to honor father and mother presses upon us.   Curiously, I’ve never heard an evangelical (protestant) Christian cite the biblical mandate to honor Mary, the Mother of God, even though it is in the Bible plain as day.   Here is a quick summary of the biblical basis for the Christian practice of honoring Mary:

1)      As we have seen, the Ten Commandments require us to honor father and mother.

2)      The Bible tells us that Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, is in fact the mother of all Christians.

3)      Therefore, since Mary is our mother, and the bible commands us to honor father and mother, all Christians have a biblical duty to honor Mary.

Where does the bible tell us that Mary is our mother?  We see the notion introduced at the cruxifiction:

But in this instance Mary is being entrusted to the apostle John, not necessarily assigned as mother of all Christians.  It is in the book of Revelation that we see Mary called the mother of all believers.

The book of Revelation, also called the Apocolypse, is the written account of a vision that the apostle John had.  In Revelation chapter 12,  John sees “a woman, adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, and with twelve star on her head for a crown.  She was pregnant, and in labor . . . the woman brought a male child into the world, the son who was to rule all the nations with an iron scepter”

The male child, of course, is Jesus.  We know from the various Gospels that Mary is the woman who gave birth to Jesus, so the woman in Revelation chapter 12 is, of course, Mary. 

Chapter 12 continues with the story of the dragon (Satan) who wants to consume the child and his mother, but doesn’t, and then the chapter concludes, “Then the dragon was enraged with the woman and went away to make war on the rest of her children, that is, all who obey God’s commandments and bear witness for Jesus.”

So there it is.  We Christians – those who obey God’s commandments and bear witness for Jesus – are the other children, aside from Jesus, of that woman, Mary, who gave birth to Jesus.

It’s a truth we might have reasoned out implicitly, given that we Christians are adopted sons and daughters of God, and it follows that if we are to be brothers and sisters of Christ, we would be not only children of the Father, but of His mother as well.  That’s how adoption works.  But we needn’t rely only on logic to come to this conclusion, since the book of Revelation lays it out explicitly.

Mary is our mother.  We are commanded to honor mother and father.  Therefore, we who strive to obey God’s commands must take active measures to honor Mary.  One way Catholics do this is through various Marian feast days, not unlike the way we honor our biological mothers with birthdays and Mother's Day and so on.

Meanwhile I feel a new verse to the old song forming in my head . . . "Mary's my mother, this I know, for the bible tells me so . . ."  Feel free to complete if the spirit moves you.

In anticipation of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception coming up this Friday (a holy day of obligation, for those who didn’t realize), I want to put down a few of the thoughts I’ve been having lately about this and related issues.  I don’t know whether I’ll get as much written out as I’d like by then, but here’s the first bit. 

The command to honor father and mother comes right after the commands about worshiping God.  There are two things that I think are very noteworthy for Catholics. 

The first is that this command follows on the heels of the admonitions against idolatry.  Sometimes in an admirable zeal to avoid idolatry, certain Christians will go overboard  - remember the original iconoclasts, for example.  The commandment to honor father and mother – mere humans, mere creatures – is a reminder that alongside the worship due to God alone, it is right and good to honor certain people.  Not to treat them as gods, but to honor them nonetheless.

The second thing I think is noteworthy I have mentioned before: the command to honor father and mother is a positive command – something to be done, not something to simply avoid doing.  We often talk about it in terms of avoidance – don’t talk back to your parents, or don’t say bad things about them, or don’t neglect them in their old age.  But the actual command is not simply to avoid bad behaviors, but to carry out a good one.