Prelate's Plan

The Roman Catholic Church ranges from plain people to prelates. A prelate who takes a particular interest in plain people is the Most Rev. Bernard James Sheil, Senior Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago. Shrewd, kindly, soft-spoken Bishop Sheil realizes that the workingman is the backbone of his Church, last year made headlines by supporting C. I. O.'s organization of the packinghouse workers in Chicago's stockyards. Last winter the Bishop did some organizing himself. Last week at Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel the directors of Bishop Sheil's Industrial Areas Foundation (who include John L. Lewis' daughter Kathryn, Merchant-Philanthropist Marshall Field III, the U. S. State Department's G. Rowland Shaw) held their first board meeting.

Proving ground for Bishop Sheil's plan has been Chicago's smelly, run-down "back of the yards" district (subject of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle), whose packinghouse population of 65,000 is almost 95% Catholic. Fifteen months ago, with the bishop's blessing, friendly, chesty Jewish Sociologist Saul Alinsky set up a Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. Aim: to reconcile the potentially conflicting interests of business, labor, politics and religion in a crowded, depressed industrial area. Typical Council results to date: C. I. O. leaders helping the Chamber of Commerce in its membership drive; 1,200 hot meals free each day for undernourished children; a new recreation centre five blocks square; an infant-welfare station which has cut the infant death rate from ten in every 100 to four out of 605.

Organized last month with Sociologist Alinsky's aid was a similar neighborhood council at Kansas City, Kans. Another is now being formed at South St. Paul, Minn. Each council will Support itself, will get advice and technical consultants from the Industrial Areas Foundation. Protestants, Jews and Catholics are on the I. A. F. board of directors.

Foresighted Bishop Sheil founded the first Catholic Youth Organization in 1930, has since seen it become the official organization for all 7,000,000 U. S. Catholic children. The I. A. F., he hopes, will allow all religious groups to join hands in social planning for their communities. Eventually he would like to see outside every industrial area, signs like those planned for Chicago's South Side: "You are now entering the home of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council where Church, Labor and Business join hands in the American way of life."

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