Guest Post: "In"Human Resources in the Archdiocese of Portland.

 Here is a guest post from Mary Havlicek.  There is a concern with Human Resources and its fit into Catholic tradition in how we treat people. 

The biggest concern VOCAL has is that there has to be a TEAM at the highest levels of the Archdiocese of Portland. With dignity and value for each staff that we have hired with our collection plate money: a TEAM for Christ.

Here is Mary's contribution to a grave concern.  Thanks.


"Something has come to my attention which you might find interesting and you might want to put it on your blog: the phenomenon of “human resources”.

Let us consider an aspect of the business world that has crept into the Church in some places such as the Archdiocese of Portland Oregon.  It has the very sinister title: “Human Resources”.  “HR” functions as if human beings are now just a commodity; something expendable which you use up and discard like other resources such as water or electricity or paper. 

This is NOT a Catholic or Christian concept.  It takes no account of the infinite value and dignity of the human person.  Instead it treats people as a “resource”; something which can be used for a time to profit the corporation, and then thrown away.  Why then does the Portland Archdiocese utilize this anti-Christian anti-human business model?

Human Resources departments are always on the prowl for someone better to fill each position in any given corporation (excepting their own positions of course).  Consequently, no one’s job is safe.  Imagine if you were a young man today working for a corporation with a Human Resources department.  You could expect that at some point down the road, you will be terminated by HR and your job given to someone perceived to have more “talent”, i.e. ability, qualifications, experience, good looks, good connections, good personality, energy, or just plain greed. 

Your life has a certain instability about it.  You hesitate to do anything more permanent such as buy a house, get married, or have children, because  in the back of your mind, there is this nagging feeling that you could loose your job at any moment and you could not support any of these things.

To experience firing at the hands of HR is demeaning and destabilizing to the one being fired, destabilizing to his/her family, destabilizing to the business or corporation which does the firing, and ultimately destabilizing to society.  

How many young people just live in “relationships”, not marriage.  How many children are born into these unstable “relationships”.  Does the instability of the workplace have anything to do with this phenomenon?  Of course it does.

HR only seems to care about corporations.  It’s only interest in workers is how they may be used to advance the profits and expansion of their given corporations.  They are not for, but against, humans.  Why has this devilish concept been allowed to creep into our Catholic Archdiocese?

Human Resources departments which exist in chancery offices or pastoral centers function as a kind of opposite thing to the 2013 Labor Day Statement of Bishop Stephen Blaire, chairman of the US Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.  To quote Bishop Blaire: “Ethical and moral business leaders know that it is wrong to chase profits and success at the expense of workers dignity...They know they have a vocation to build the kind of solidarity that honors the worker...” 

Ok.  There you have it.  (Arch)dioceses which have Human Resources departments must somehow completely reform these departments so that they actually benefit workers, or these departments must be completely done away with.  (And in any case, the term “Human Resources” must be chucked.  What a derogatory term!)"

Mary Havlicek