Pittsburgh 'labor priest' Msgr. Rice dead at 96.
Msgr. Charles Owen Rice, Pittsburgh's "labor priest" who championed numerous social causes for seven decades, died Nov. 13. He was 96.His funeral was to be Nov. 18 at St. Anne Church in Castle Shannon, Pa., where he was pastor for many years. Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh was to preside at the Mass.
"Charles Owen Rice should be remembered for his feet and his fire--the footfalls on all those picket lines nationwide and the passion of his oratory on behalf of workers," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said in an editorial Nov. 15. "He should be celebrated for his seven decades of devotion as a priest to the causes of peace, equality and economic justice."
"More than just a union supporter in Western Pennsylvania, Msgr. Rice was an American social activist of the 20th century," the paper said.
The Depression and the labor movement of the 1930s awoke the activist in Rice. In one of his newspaper columns, he described what he brought to the struggle for workers rights: "Mine was a rip-roaring, no-holds-barred denunciation of the steel magnates and the infamy of great wealth."
He brought the same intensity to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and marches and teach-ins against the Vietnam War, He continued to speak out against unfair work practices and protested steel plant shutdowns through the 1980s and joined striking workers of The Pittsburgh Press in 1992.
He wrote a column for the diocesan Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper for more than 50 years and hosted a radio program on two local AM stations for several decades.
Throughout his activism he remained a parish priest, serving as pastor at numerous places including St. Joseph in Natrona, Immaculate Conception in Washington, Pa., Holy Rosary, in Homewood, and finally St. Anne in Castle Shannon.
In a statement issued Nov. 14, Wuerl called Rice "a tireless worker on behalf of civil rights and peace, a local, national and international voice for justice. Msgr. Rice always brought to whatever issue he faced a deep faith conviction, a love of the church and a love of his priesthood.
"For over seven decades, Msgr. Rice was always a priest and pastor first. He took the best of the church's teaching and applied it to the worst of situations and made them better. In the image and likeness of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, he always stood by God's people, with God's people and for God's people," Wuerl said.
Born in New York in 1908 to Irish immigrant parents, Charles Owen Rice graduated from Duquesne University in 1930. He went on to what was then St. Vincent Seminary in Pittsburgh and was ordained in 1934.
Then-Fr. Rice was one of the founders of the Catholic Radical Alliance in 1937 and St. Joseph's House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality. That same year he joined his first picket line at a Heinz plant in Pittsburg. His appearance at the Heinz plant along with two other priests caused an uproar. They were denounced from pulpits, particularly by clergy whose parishes had been helped by Heinz.
From then on Rice was intimately involved in the labor movement and a frequent sight on picket lines. In 1938, he delivered the invocation at the founding convention of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a forerunner of the AFL-CIO.
In the 1940s, he became a leader of anticommunist forces inside the labor movement, a role about which he later expressed regret.
"I very much regret that I wasted so much time and energy on it [anticommunism]. ... I wish there was a stronger communist presence in the trade unions today," Rice said in The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America, a 2001 book by Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz
"In the 1960s, the shoe was on the other foot. I was redbaited to a farethee-well because of my stand on blacks and on the Vietnam War. To tell you the truth, it felt great," the book quotes Rice as saying.
The late Msgr. George Higgins, who until his death in 2002 was known as America's labor priest, called Rice "the premier labor priest in the United States and one of the best labor columnists."
The University of Pittsburgh Press released a collection of Rice's writings, titled Fighter With a Heart in 1996. [Dennis Coday is an NCR staff writer. His e-mail address is [email protected]. Catholic News Service contributed to this report.]
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| Title Annotation: | Charles Owen Rice |
|---|---|
| Author: | Coday, Dennis |
| Publication: | National Catholic Reporter |
| Article Type: | Obituary |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Nov 25, 2005 |
| Words: | 734 |
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