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Catholics argue university anti-union efforts go against religious teachings
By Aleja Hertzler-McCain
February 11, 2025
Matthew Shadle, a moral theologian, and Charles Russo, a Catholic legal scholar at the University of Dayton, called anti-union positions at Catholic universities “hypocritical,” given Catholic teaching, and Meghan Clark, a Catholic moral theologian at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, said Marquette is exercising “the right to violate its own religious principles and tradition.”
Clayton Sinyai, executive director of the Catholic Labor Network, an organization with offices at Georgetown University promoting Catholic social teaching on unions, said that today Catholic leaders of higher education are trained to avoid unionization, saying administrators “are formed not in Catholic doctrine but in schools of management, business and administration which counsel ‘union avoidance’ — or in plain language, union busting.”
Claiming protection from unions under the First Amendment, he said, communicates “that they are too Catholic to be subject to the civil law, but not Catholic enough to honor Catholic social teaching voluntarily, of their own accord.”
