When I was growing up, it was almost part of the catechism that Catholics backed labor unions. We were taught that papal encyclicals on social and economic justice put us on the side of legitimate demands from workers. That centuries-old support received new clarity in June of 2009 when Catholic health workers and the U.S. Bishops delivered "Respecting the Just Rights of Workers."

In the spirit of the papal social encyclicals, this new document puts the American Church in support of union rights for the 21st century, which logically includes teachers in Catholic schools. The release of the bishops' document follows on the heels of the unionization of Catholic workers in Boston where employees of Caritas Christi joined the SEIU en masse. Now that the federal government is controlled by Democrats in the White House and in both houses of the Congress, it is fair to ask what unionization means to Catholic America.

The withering of Catholic support for unions became significant during the 1970s when the erosion of religious vocations ripped away a major part of the labor force in Catholic schools and in Catholic hospitals. Lay workers were hired to take their places. Secular salaries drove up the cost for Catholic schools and hospitals, forcing significant numbers of institutions into insolvency. In defense of their interests to adequate pay and benefits, many lay workers within church-run institutions demanded labor unions. But these increased demands for unionization came at a political moment dominated by union-busting presidents like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

The political climate conditioned the response from individual bishops. Among those who resisted unionization, the policies went from NIMBY ("not in my back yard") to downright hostility in declaring that unionization would "mean the end of Catholic education in the diocese."

Now the underpinning of that anti-union stance has been blown away. Cardinal McCarrick, the retired Archbishop of Washington and a leading player in the writing of the bishops' new document, said: "Because Catholic health care is a ministry, not an industry, how it treats its workers and how organized labor treats Catholic health care are not simply internal matters. They are also not just another arena for labor conflict and tactics, but ought to reflect longstanding Catholic teaching on work and workers, health care and the common good."