Fighter with a Heart: Writings of Charles Owen Rice, Pittsburgh Labor Priest.

For over sixty years, Monsignor Charles Owen Rice has been the quintessential labor priest: on the right side of every picket line and at the head of every march for justice and peace in western Pennsylvania. The title of this collection of his laser-eyed columns, gleaned mostly from the Pittsburgh Catholic, is inadequate. Rice has been a fighter who employed far more than his eighty-seven-year-old heart: a quick mind, Irish tongue, steadfast will, right spirit, and apparently sturdy bones.

Should a young academic, under the spell of the present laissez-faire tide, be tempted to rewrite the history of American labor to discredit it as a misguided or outdated cause, he could do no better than to seek out Rice as fact checker and father confessor. For he would save himself considerable (and perhaps eternal) embarrassment. Rice was there when much of twentieth-century labor history was happening, not in the library but in the homes of workers, in the steel mills, in mining towns and automobile plants, and even in cemeteries and Catholic hospitals. This volume juxtaposes his crisp reports from those dramatic times with later reflections. The latter not only contextualize earlier events but broaden - sometimes even alter - Rice's own youthful enthusiasms and judgments.

Rice was/is a tough priests' priest. That is, he is the genuine article: pastoral, practical, and prophetic. Steeped in the social doctrine of the church, his mettle was honed by religious self-discipline and proven in action. His most recent columns reaffirm his commitment to just causes and to the long haul.

A man of the people - many of whom are pictured in the excellent photographs that enrich the volume - Rice's most eloquent writings are his tributes to an eminent line of reformist labor leaders, all of whom he knew personally, some of whom he buried. He never shrank from taking on the high and the mighty, be they J. Edgar Hoover, George Meany, or Andrew Greeley. Yet still more striking in this collection is Rice's lack of cant. Despite his partisan views and involvements, his columns are examples of reportorial objectivity. Even more impressive, they display a willingness to reevaluate past assessments and overturn them when necessary, including his long-held but overheated anticommunism.

Charles Owen Rice took the measure of his times and judged them with priestly care and accuracy. May he be emulated.

Patrick Jordan is Commonweal's managing editor.