Born on January 21, 1916 in Chicago, George Gilmary Higgins attended the city’s Quigley Preparatory Seminary, then went on to St. Mary of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois. One of his classmates at St. Mary’s, civil rights activist John Egan, said that “There was a certain conscience that George had already developed through his years in the minor seminary, because of his dad’s influence, but it didn’t emerge fully until he was in the major seminary.” When he attended seminary, “through his studying, his reading, his conversations, he began to develop this overwhelming interest in the social teachings of the church, in economics, in laws governing everything from wages to working conditions.” As Egan noted, the 1930s context was a hotbed of such thinking, the influence of “Monsignor John A. Ryan in Washington, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, all of the things that were going on with organized labor and the New Deal, the papers were full of this, day after day, the Wagner Act, the NRA [National Rifle Association], the sit-down strikes.” Through his father’s influence, young George had already become well-versed in these topics, and he followed up on them quite naturally.[1]
Higgins’ interests and intellectual abilities attracted the attention of his seminary teachers, including Monsignor Reynold Hillenbrand, who taught at both Quigley and St. Mary of the Lake. A classmate of Higgins’ said that Hillenbrand’s influence of all of them was “phenomenal,” “the priests of the diocese regarded him as a kind of saint. He was in the middle of all the great movements. And he recognized George’s potential, too. He had a special regard for him.”[2]
[1] Gerald Costello, Without Fear or Favor; George Higgins on the Record (Mystic, CT: Twenty-third Publications, 1984), 7-8.
[2] Costello, Without Fear or Favor, 7.
Hillenbrand recommended that the Chicago Archbishop, Samuel Stritch, send Higgins along with several of his classmates to The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. for further studies in 1940. Higgins studied economics, political science and sociology at the University, capping his work with a doctoral dissertation in 1944, “Voluntarism in Organized Labor in the U.S., 1930-1940.” Hillenbrand had thought that sending Higgins and the others for further schooling would result in the improvement of the seminary faculty in Chicago, as the young priests returned after their education. But Higgins liked Washington, D.C. He was able to meet and study with figures like Monsignor John A. Ryan, who had done pioneering work in articulating a Catholic justification for minimum wage legislation, and was advising members of the Roosevelt administration. Father Francis Haas, who later became the Bishop of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and served as the Dean of the School of Social Science at the time, “was active in things like labor arbitration, and he was wonderful in the way he’d bring me into things,” says Higgins—he himself would later become involved in labor arbitration in his work with the United Farm Workers in the 1960s and 70s. Haas introduced Higgins to Father Raymond McGowan, who, with Father Ryan, ran the Department of Social Action of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. One of the original departments of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), the Department of Social Action was established to promote the social thought of the Roman Catholic Church and to interpret, under the guidance of the bishops, applications of that thought to the complex social questions of the world. It operated primarily as a service department for Catholic lay organizations, the Catholic press, schools, religious, and laity. It also served as a clearinghouse for the dissemination of the most progressive thought in the field of social action. There was a special focus on industrial, international, and interracial relations as well as rural life, social work, and the study of communism. The principal tools in this effort were the papal encyclicals and statements of the American bishops on social and economic matters. Soon after its creation in 1919, the Social Action Department began to sponsor addresses and lectures, publish books and pamphlets, and conduct conferences and institutes.[1]
When Higgins had nearly finished the doctoral program at Catholic University, McGowan asked him to come and work for the Department of Social Action, as Father John Hayes, who had served as an assistant to McGowan had become ill and had to leave Washington. Though initially Higgins was asked to stay only for the summer, he ended up working for the Bishops’ Conference for 36 years, not leaving until his retirement at age 64 in 1980. After his “retirement” he continued to serve as a consultant to the Conference’s Department of Social Development and World Peace, and he agreed to lecture for both the School of Social Science and the Department of Theology at CUA until 1994.[2]
[1] Costello, Without Fear or Favor, 9-10; Historical note, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops/National Catholic Welfare Conference Records, Department of Social Action finding aid: http://archives.lib.cua.edu/findingaid/socact.cfm.
[2] Costello, Without Fear or Favor, 10-11.
In his position at the Conference, Higgins became known by many as the “Dean of Catholic Social Action.”[1] He began as the Conference’s “labor man,” the one the bishops went to for guidance and leadership in matters related to labor. When McGowan died in 1962, Higgins was appointed chair. He used the position to advance not only labor-related justice from the Catholic perspective, but economic justice generally, as well as civil rights and interfaith relations.
In 1945, he took over the writing The Yardstick from Fr. Raymond McGowan. The Yardstick, a weekly commentary on economic, labor, and social problems, was syndicated to the Catholic press by the National Catholic Welfare Conference News Service, now known as the Catholic News Service. In 1984 the Catholic Press Association gave him its St. Francis de Sales Award for his journalism. In 1992, after writing the column weekly for 47 years, he modestly reduced the column to every other week. Higgins announced his retirement from The Yardstick in the September 2, 2001, Labor Day column, after 56 years.
Outside the NCWC, Higgins took part in numerous activities to promote Catholic social thought. He was elevated to Papal Chamberlain with the title of Monsignor in 1953, and was named a Domestic Prelate in 1959. Upon the advent of the Vatican II Council, Higgins used his experience and knowledge for the Preparatory Commission on the Lay Apostolate and as a Consultant to the Council. He attended all four sessions of the council, 1962-1965. He was on the drafting commission for its document on the laity, the first U.S. priest to receive such an appointment.
[1] Costello, Without Fear or Favor, chapter 3.
Outside the NCWC, Higgins took part in numerous activities to promote and inform on Catholic social thought. He was elevated to Papal Chamberlain with the title of Monsignor in 1953, and was named a Domestic Prelate in 1959. Upon the advent of the Vatican II Council, Higgins used his experience and knowledge for the Preparatory Commission on the Lay Apostolate and as a Consultant to the Council. He attended all four sessions of the council, 1962-1965. He was on the drafting commission for its document on the laity, the first U.S. priest to receive such an appointment.
Higgins was a champion of human rights and economic justice, especially farm labor where he was the moving force in the Church's support for Cesar Chavez and his union movement. He served in several committees, including the Bishops' Committee for Catholic-Jewish Relations, the Bishops' Committee on Farm Labor, Chairman of the United Auto Workers Public Review Board, member of the American Arbitration Association, Executive Committee member of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, member of the Board of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Fund of the United Farm Workers, and Advisor to the Chairman of the U.S. Delegation to the Belgrade Conference on Human Rights. In addition to these activities, Higgins wrote numerous book reviews and articles for many publications, particularly Commonweal and America.
On August 9, 2000, at a White House ceremony, President Bill Clinton honored Msgr. Higgins with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. Msgr. Higgins was selected because of his nearly 50 years of service to the cause of justice for workers and his widespread recognition as the "labor priest" and point man for the American Catholic Church in this regard. He was honored with the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal in 2001 and died on May Day, 2002, after a long illness. He was widely mourned as a tireless champion of the labor movement and a progressive voice in the Roman Catholic Church.