State-sanctioned gambling is a bad bet.

It takes a special kind of audacity for a priest to take moral swipes at legalized gambling. At least that's what some critics have said when I've aired my views publicly. For example: "Where do you get off taking away people's fun on moral grounds when your own church thrives on bingo and Las Vegas nights? If it's okay for your parishes to make a few bucks on gambling, why not the state? Or is it because you guys just don't care about assuring reliable funding streams for public education?".

No. It isn't that at all. It's what we do care about that makes it necessary to take a moral stand on legalized gambling.

We care about what happens to people in environments awash with lies, broken promises, bullies, and crime. We care about families, neighborhoods, hometowns. We care about the poor. We care about love and stewardship. We care about those who are led into temptation, and about those who lead them there. And we care a lot about the First Commandment, and about the souls of those who have made gambling their god.

This gambling concern isn't new to me. My first casino experience was about 30 years ago, when a conference took me to Las Vegas. I knew the town's history. I knew the mob didn't lay dicey bets. When they invested in all the hotels, irrigation pipes, and light bulbs required to fashion a playground for grown-ups, they knew they were sculpting a money machine out of the sand. I wondered how it worked.

I had a couple of free hours, so I pulled on a golf shirt and went downstairs to explore. When I bought a roll of nickels, a cheerful change lady wished me luck. I picked out a one-armed bandit. (Plunk. Pull. Spin. Nothing. Plunk. Pull. Spin. Nothing. Plunk.) What was the big deal? I looked around. My fellow gamblers didn't resemble the happy, glamorous models in hotel brochures. There was almost no conversation among machine players.

Even table gamers had an elaborate language of hand signals and eyebrow tweaks that dealers understood. Players were largely silent and alone, communicating only with the game, and Lady Luck. The casino itself was its own world: no clocks or windows. No night or day. No distractions from outside.

Young women with spangled costumes and dazzling smiles passed trays of free drinks. (Pull. Spin.) About a dollar's worth of nickels gushed into the stainless-steel bin below, with a surprisingly gratifying sound. (Plunk. Pull. Spin. Nothing. Plunk. Pull. Spin. Nothing.) Maybe if I played three coins at a time, I'd have better luck. (Plunk-plunk-plunk. Pull. Spin. Nothing.) When the glitter-clad lady came by, she offered me a free lunch.

I finally understood how Las Vegas works. I was happy to board the plane for home.

A few years later, I was assigned to a task force made up of leaders from government, business, industry, law, and academe. We were to forecast whether casinos might resuscitate Atlantic City's moribund economy. Our conclusions were well publicized:

* Legalized gambling requires such huge investment in law enforcement and ancillary services that the state's net is always disappointing.

* Legalized gambling doesn't drive out illegal gambling.

* Public support of casinos is beyond the capacity of most local governments.

Nevertheless, city officials promised "the greatest economic turnaround in the history of any American city." The promises didn't come true. Promised jobs were mostly entry-level and dead-end. Promised tourist trade was primarily busloads of day-trippers, unwilling to waste perfectly good gambling time and money on shopping, fine dining, or big-name entertainment. Promised infusions of cash and new security didn't trickle out beyond casino neighborhoods. But murder, prostitution, drugs, rape, mugging, and robbery did.

Some casinos thrived, others failed. Some corrupt city officials went to jail, others didn't. Bankruptcies, homelessness, and domestic violence rose, along with staggering bills for new public services. The promises were broken. Now Atlantic City, whose crime rate is up 40 percent, is enticing gamblers by giving away free rolls of quarters.

In 1974, my own state put itself in the gambling business by launching a lottery. While details vary, I understand our experience is typical among the 36 states that choose this route to beef up budgets and bottom lines. The Illinois promise: Lotto proceeds would be earmarked for public education. It looked like a win-win deal. Just a buck a week for a longshot on a tidy fortune, while millions pumped crucial new hope into our beleaguered public schools.

It didn't work that way. True enough, proceeds flowed into the public-education account. But an automatic withdrawal of a precisely like amount was instantly transferred into the state's general fund. I understand that hasn't changed to this day.

The lottery changed, however. Lotto went from one draw a week to two. When weekly jackpots of a couple of million bucks proved too puny to attract sufficient play, Illinois teamed up with five other states in a "Big Game," with megamillion payoffs. Daily games--three- and four-digit picks--are drawn middays and evenings on TV. There's a proliferation of scratch-off instant games, too, with a broad array of odds, formats, and jackpots.

Lottery officials tacitly acknowledge that the lottery is a regressive tax on the poor: reported sales figures are wildly highest in our poorest zip codes. The state replaced the mob in running numbers. It's not legal, but I understand a few retailers even invite customers to trade food stamps for lottery tickets, sometimes a month's supply at a time.

Those facts seem to have shaped Illinois Lottery merchandising in a way that stretches the edges of both cruelty and credulity. In Chicago's saddest, roughest ghetto, high above filthy sidewalks, above windows that are dark, broken, or boarded, above shoeless toddlers wandering alone, above drug deals on the corner, there's a billboard that shows a huge Lotto stub. Its single line of boldface copy: "This might be your ticket out of here." (It does not say "But the odds are, literally, 12,913,583-to-1 against you.")

It's hard to believe that local decision-makers weren't acquainted with the Atlantic City experience when slick profit prophets blew into their riverboat towns with fabulous promises of tourism, security, and revived enterprise. They must have been so desperate to save their aging, ailing cities that they thought it was worth a shot to try to beat the odds. Troubled communities dreamed of spending the spoils before playing the game. Same old broken promises, same old results: rich state, richer owners, increased crime, more broken dreams and broken lives.

Some things haven't changed. Casino employees still treat every customer like a lucky high roller. Win or lose, gamblers still seem almost transfixed, isolated in their games. They appear to be largely working-class, perhaps older than their Las Vegas counterparts. I'm told that one of the busiest days on the riverboats is the day after Social Security checks arrive.

There are differences, too. No more nickel slots; a quarter is the minimum. Machines accept only sanitized casino-specific tokens, designed to distract players from the fact that they are playing with cold, hard cash. When a machine has consumed a gambler's stash, there no longer is a need to quit the game, nor even to interrupt the mood. He simply feeds a U.S. greenback into a slot on the machine ("accepts $1, $5, $10, $20, $100") for token credit. When greenbacks are gone, too, he can still stay in the game: automated teller machines are peppered conveniently throughout the casino.

Of course many riverboats have been wildly profitable. Of course more casino moguls want to get into the game. Of course there has been fierce competition for licenses and venues. Chicago itself--first by design, then by default--still is without a casino. But state and local politicians gaze longingly at streams of Chicago gamblers making the 20-minute trek across the state line to a couple of opulent boats in Buffington Harbor, Indiana. (It was called "Gary, the murder capital of the U.S." until Donald Trump and his counterparts came to town last year and sanitized its name.)

The tourism promise is all but dead now. Some form of gambling is now offered in 48 of the 50 states, with casinos in 24 of them. More and more airline seat backs feature credit-card-activated video games with cash payoffs for those hard-pressed to postpone the next wager until they reach their destinations. With a debit account established in Antigua, people can gamble 24 hours a day in a virtual casino on the Internet for jackpots in excess of $100 million. Promoters promise that the system will account for 20 percent of the global market by the year 2000, without cannibalizing existing gambling markets.

But gambling competition has been consuming its own. Racetrack officials complain that their purses have plummeted since the riverboats' arrival. They've threatened to go out of business if they're not awarded casino licenses or at least slot machines to shore up sagging profits. Casino operators complain that the profitable enterprises on Native American reservations offer unfair competition. Some boats are petitioning to leave their river-town locations for more profitable venues. Others complain that profits are plummeting because there are no tourists and they've worn out their local welcome.

It's not hard to understand why. A recent study showed bankruptcy rates are 18 percent higher than national norms in counties with one gambling facility, and 35 percent higher when the county sported more than five gambling establishments. The same study reported that 20 percent of compulsive gamblers file for bankruptcy and that 90 percent of those scored gambling cash from credit cards. In fact, of the three major addictions that plague U.S. families--alcohol, drugs, and gambling--gambling is far and away the fastest growing.

Is that because the state has a huge stake in gambling's spoils and uses state funds to promote it? Is that because politicians themselves are accustomed to such lavish donations from gambling interests that they're willing to sell out their constituencies to keep them coming? Is that because state budgets have become so addicted to gambling revenues that they've forgotten their job is to represent the voters who elected them?

Does that explain why--even when polls report that most voters reject the notion of expanded local gambling--politicians (including Chicago's) continue to reject requests for official ballot referenda on casino gambling? Does that explain why the much-ballyhooed national commission to assess how legalized gambling affects U.S. society--including suicides, broken families, bankruptcies, and crime--will count among its nine members the chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, the chairman of the MGM Grand, and a board member of a hotel-employees union that serves the casino community? Is it a safe bet that their participation will influence the results of that two-year, $5 million project? But what's $5 million in a country that wagers more in one year than it spends or' national defense?

It is worrisome indeed. But Chicagoans are not the only ones who are worried. In 1991, when gambling was proposed in California, a coalition formed to publicize gambling's negative social impact. Its conclusions were familiar: crime always accompanies legalized gambling; organized crime thrives in profitable gambling enterprises; the jobs promise is fake; compulsive gambling costs society millions; casinos are a threat to children and family life; gambling is a regressive tax on our poorest citizens. "The claimed economic benefits reflect only a redistribution of wealth and not a net gain," the report concluded.

That study would not even be reportable here were it not for the identity of the sponsor of the antigambling publicity effort in California: it was the Nevada Resort Association that published these alarming casino facts, to avert losing California gamblers in Nevada casinos.

To my mind, and to the mind of the church, gambling is, in and of itself, morally neutral. It assumes a moral charge only when it moves beyond recreation, affordable luxury, or occasional pastime, and becomes a necessity for anyone involved. Anyone--the single mother in the ghetto with a fistful of lottery tickets, betting the babies' formula on a 13-million-to-1 chance at a dream; the gambling junkie, maxing out his credit card and chasing his losses, mouthing the prayer that diagnoses an addict, "God, get me out of this one and I'll never do it again"; or the politician, so far over his head in gambling plunder that he'll lie, cheat, steal from his constituent-family, and forget his job to keep the game going.

Gambling is a moral concern in the United States today precisely because it has permeated the fibers of our social fabric, our families, our neighborhoods, our towns. We no longer have the relief of boarding a plane for home to escape gambling's never-never land. Gambling has become always-and-ever land, its presence artfully mainstreamed and normalized into our everyday home life--in the supermarket, on the street corner, on the tube, and now even on the Internet. Its false promises are everywhere.

Gambling is a particular concern for U.S. Catholics today. Because of the gift of our faith in God's love for each of us, we are charged to care for each other, to learn to thrive in community with one another, to champion the poor and help them on the roads out of poverty.

No longer can we pretend that the emperor is well dressed on the off chance that we ourselves might not be a sucker next time. No longer can we pretend that a government that funds itself on the heartbreak of losers is playing a harmless little game of chance. No longer can we pretend that politicians are "just doing their jobs" as they squander their immortal souls--and those of their constituents--on lies and crime, broken families and broken dreams.

The statistics are in. The time for argument is over. It is not only cynical but also sinful to peddle false hope. God told us that.

Lady Luck disagrees. But only God is God. It is our moral charge as U.S. Catholics to live in whatever way God directs us, to carry his message of real hope, in loving service to all our brothers and sisters. In fact, that's our winning ticket out of here.

Feedback

Do you think U.S. Catholic readers are avid gamblers? Don't put money on it. Only 54 percent of our survey respondents have ever been to a casino, compared to 74 percent of all Americans (based on another recent study). Likewise, only 67 percent of readers have ever played the lottery, while 82 percent of the general public have.

So what makes readers so wager wary? Many say the odds just aren't good enough. "I guess I'm too much of a realist to go after winning big against almost impossible odds," writes Margaret Quilty in Evergreen Park, Illinois. "The casino owners are not in business to supplement the paychecks of the masses."

Male readers are more likely to play the lottery--22 percent play at least once a week, versus 12 percent of women--but casino and bingo attendance is about even between men and women. Only 16 percent go to a casino or racetrack at least once a year, and 10 percent try their luck on bingo night.

By Msgr. John J. Egan, assistant to the president for community affairs at DePaul University in Chicago and a priest with the Archdiocese of Chicago.