Millions of workers are being denied the honor and respect they deserve because of a lack of jobs, underemployment, low wages and exploitation, according to the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. “Earlier this year, Pope Francis pointed out, ‘Work is fundamental to the dignity of a person.... It gives one the ability to maintain oneself, one’s family, to contribute to the growth of one’s own nation,’” said Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, Calif., in the U.S. bishops’ annual Labor Day statement.

“Unfortunately, millions of workers today are denied this honor and respect as a result of unemployment, underemployment, unjust wages, wage theft, abuse and exploitation,” Bishop Blaire said.

“The economy is not creating an adequate number of jobs that allow workers to provide for themselves and their families,” Bishop Blaire said. “More than four million people have been jobless for over six months, and that does not include the millions more who have simply lost hope. For every available job, there are often five unemployed and underemployed people actively vying for it. This jobs gap pushes wages down. Half of the jobs in this country pay less than $27,000 per year. More than 46 million people live in poverty, including 16 million children.”

In his message on behalf of the bishops’ conference, Bishop Blaire quoted from the Second Vatican Council’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”: “While an immense number of people still lack the absolute necessities of life, some, even in less advanced areas, live in luxury or squander wealth.”

“How can it be said that persons honor one another when such ‘extravagance and wretchedness exist side by side’?” he asked. Those words, Bishop Blaire noted, “seem to be just as true today.”

Bishop Blaire also quoted from Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical “Charity in Truth” (2009), which also dealt in part with the specter of inequality. “The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner,” Pope Benedict said, “and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone.”

The bishop noted how workers’ issues are tied to other issues. “High unemployment and underemployment are connected to the rise in income inequality,” he said. Such inequality erodes social cohesion and puts democracy at risk. “The pain of the poor and those becoming poor in the rising economic inequality of our society is mounting,” he added.

“Whenever possible we should support businesses and enterprises that protect human life and dignity, pay just wages and protect workers’ rights,” Bishop Blaire wrote. “We should support immigration policies that bring immigrant workers out of the shadows to a legal status and offer them a just and fair path to citizenship, so that their human rights are protected and the wages for all workers rise.”

Bishop Blaire also commented on the importance of unions in the bishops’ statement, noting that the “rise in income inequality has mirrored a decline in union membership.” He said, “Since the end of the Civil War, unions have been an important part of our economy because they provide protections for workers and more importantly a way for workers to participate in company decisions that affect them. Catholic teaching has consistently affirmed the right of workers to choose to form a union.”

Secretary of State John Kerry and the U.S. State Department significantly raised the bar for both the ambitions and the expectations for upcoming negotiations between West Bank Palestinians and the State of Israel. One wild card in the new discussions, which have set the laudable but so far elusive goal of a comprehensive Middle East peace deal, will be the response of Palestinians in Gaza and the strip’s political leadership, Hamas. No peace agreement can be truly comprehensive if it leaves out Gaza, Robert M. Danin, the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, stressed during a discussion of the renewed negotiations on July 30.

Palestinian and Israeli representatives finished an initial two days of talks on July 30 at the State Department after prolonged shuttle diplomacy by Secretary Kerry brought them back together for the first time since 2010. Speaking from Washington, Kerry said: “The parties have agreed here today that all of the final status issues, all of the core issues and all other issues are all on the table for negotiation. And they are on the table with one simple goal: a view to ending the conflict.”

Danin was impressed by how high Kerry had set the bar for the Obama administration and how much trust and authority President Obama had placed in Kerry’s hands. Negotiators will be trying to resolve not only the conflict of 1967, but also the “existential” conflict of the 1948 war, Danin said. “That’s a more ambitious goal [than an agreement on borders and security], but the only one that will end the conflict in all ways.”

But in an indication of just how fragile progress in the Middle East can be, just days after the hopeful presentation in Washington, the negotiations were threatened by the preliminary approval given by Israel for the construction of over 1,000 new settler homes in the West Bank. The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat protested the move in a letter to Kerry, deploring the decision as proof of “Israel’s bad faith and lack of seriousness.”

Danin, who has had firsthand experience with the difficulties involved in Mideast negotiations during a two-decade career at the State Department, was generally approving of Secretary Kerry’s strategy so far. Danin believes the tight ship and diplomatic ambiguity maintained thus far by Kerry and his staff should prove valuable assets to negotiations. The most productive final status discussions can only be conducted in secrecy, he said, so that both sides can frankly explore strategies for compromise on neuralgic issues, like the fate of Palestinian refugees and the disposition of East Jerusalem, that would provoke howls of outrage from hardliners in Ramallah or Jerusalem.

Danin suggested that Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel may have been motivated to return to negotiations by two factors: a realization that Israel’s growing international isolation had reached a critical point and perhaps a desire to leave power with a “legacy” achievement. A comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians would be a diplomatic success unmatched by his predecessors. Also the time is coming closer, Danin points out, when supporters of Israel in America will have to ponder seriously the effects of its occupation and settler policy on the nature of the State of Israel itself. “What kind of Israel do we [Americans] want?” Danin asked. “An occupying state is not the kind of Israel we want; it’s not the kind of Israel Israelis want.”Kevin Clarke

As part of the Vatican’s ongoing efforts to ensure that all its financial activity complies with international standards, particularly those aimed at preventing money laundering and possible financing of terrorism, Pope Francis has expanded the role and the reach of the Vatican’s Financial Intelligence Authority. Pope Francis issued new rules on Aug. 8 broadening Vatican City finance laws to cover all the offices of the Roman Curia, including nonprofit organizations operating out of the Vatican, like Caritas Internationalis and Aid to the Church in Need. Pope Francis also added “the function of prudential supervision” to the responsibilities of the F.I.A. The Vatican spokesperson, Federico Lombardi, S.J., explained that the Vatican is trying to ensure that it is not a “potential weak spot” in international efforts to crack down on money laundering, terrorism financing and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Italy’s foreign minister, Emma Bonino, told reporters on Aug. 6 that “it seems” the Italian Jesuit priest Paolo Dall’Oglio, missing more than a week in Syria, “has been kidnapped by...a local version of Al Qaeda.” • The attorney Frances X. Hogan, Jane Marie Klein, O.S.F., and the diocesan leader and social worker Barbara Thorp received the U.S. bishops’ People of Life Award for lifetime commitment to the pro-life movement on Aug. 4. • On Aug. 7 Secretary of State John Kerry appointed the ethicist Shaun Casey of Virginia to head the new State Department Office of Faith-Based Community Initiatives. • Msgr. Robert Weiss, pastor of St. Rose of Lima in Newtown, Conn., and the parish’s St. Virgilius Knights of Columbus Council 185 received the first Caritas Awards from the national Knights of Columbus in recognition of their extraordinary efforts in the aftermath of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School last December. • Pope Francis’ orders restricting the use of the Latin Mass in communities of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate “do not intend to contradict the general instructions” of Pope Benedict, but respond to the congregation’s “specific problems,” said Federico Lombardi, S.J., the Vatican spokesman, on Aug. 2.

Cardinal Albert Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo, Sri Lanka, expressed “shock and distress,” accusing the Sri Lankan military of storming a Catholic church and firing on those inside. They had sought refuge in the church after a protest over the pollution of a local water source was violently dispersed. The cardinal condemned the army’s action in a strongly worded statement read on Aug. 7 during the funeral for one of three people who died in the incident on Aug. 1 at St. Anthony Parish in Weliweriya, a village just outside the capital. Authorities said more than 50 people were injured during the assault. “It was sacrilege for anyone to enter such sacred precincts with arms in their hands and to behave in a violent manner there,” Cardinal Ranjith said at the funeral of Ravishan Perera, 18, a student at St. Peter’s College in Colombo who died after being shot in the head. Cardinal Ranjith demanded that the “those found guilty [should] be punished without consideration of rank or status.”

The number of permanent deacons in the Catholic Church in the United States continues to rise, according to a national survey conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, at Georgetown University. Nationally there are more than 18,000 deacons, about 3,000 of them retired. Many permanent deacons hold jobs outside of the ministry. An estimated 21 percent of active permanent deacons are also compensated for ministry. A small percentage of deacons work full-time in pastoral care in a parish or at a social services agency. Ninety-three percent of active deacons are currently married; 4 percent are widowers and 2 percent never married. About a quarter are in their 50s; 43 percent are in their 60s; and 25 percent are 70 or older. “The statistics are encouraging,” said Archbishop Robert J. Carlson, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations. “But they also alert us to the fact many of the deacons will soon reach retirement age. This suggests a need for bishops to recruit a greater number of men to join the ranks of the permanent diaconate.”