Scarboro Missions — SFM Magazine —... -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 2/1/1992
Last Visited: 8/1/2008
Fr. Harvey Steele, the founder of the Interamerican Cooperative Institute (ICI) in Panama, says that for too long justice has been forgotten in the Roman Catholic Church.He feels that it was only with Pope Leo XIII's encyclical in 1891, "The Condition of Labour" that the Church once again occupied itself with the work of justice as so clearly described in the Acts of the Apostles.
"The Christians of the first three centuries lived the ideal form of socialism," says Fr. Steele."It was their means of survival under the tyranny of the Roman emperors.They lived by sharing all their possessions - a cooperative way of life."He goes on to say that this cooperative way of life came to an end when Emperor Constantine, in 312 A.D. made Christianity the official religion of the Empire."Once this happened, Church leaders veered away from their roots and began to adopt attitudes not unlike those of the emperors.The emerging church adopted a double standard, one for the poor, the other for those ruling, much like most Communist and Capitalist societies of today.The church imposes a kind of socialism on many of its dedicated servants while those holding power (men) control a vast organization strongly laced with and tied to Capitalism and as well without much democracy."
Fr. Steele has dedicated his life to social justice and the social teachings of the Church.There were a number of reasons for this, he says.
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Fr. Steele was also profoundly affected by his experience in China, "seeing the incredible poverty and the exploitation of the people by corrupt leaders and the wholesale slaughter of innocent people under the powerful Japanese war machine.All this added to my belief in justice."
Small wonder then that this same priest, inspired in Christ and the Church's social teachings, founded a school that for 27 years has dedicated itself to training cooperative leaders from Latin American agricultural communities.From the beginning the concepts of "Latin American unity" and "Social justice" were guiding principles for the educational and organizational work of the Institute.Fr. Steele's conviction that the Church had a duty to be socially active went beyond the traditional roles of charity and paternalistic work, believing that it was not these that the poor were looking for.He knew from his experience that the poor wanted the construction of new structures in society which might generate human liberty and proscribe exploitation.
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For Fr. Steele, quoting the wise and witty Chesterton, 'Christianity has not been tried and found wanting ...It has not been tried: "I think the same may be said about socialism," he says.
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After many years of service with Scarboro Missions beginning with China in the 1930s, Fr. Steele is now retired and residing at our community in Scarborough, Ontario.His life and work is documented in the video Padre Pablo: Fighter For Justice.
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