Monsignor George G. Higgins was one of the great priests of modern U.S. Catholic history. For decades he served as a key adviser to the nation's bishops, wrote many of their annual Labor Day Statements, and was a persistent advocate of the rights of workers to unionize, even in Catholic schools and hospitals.

Happily, he was recognized more than once for his considerable achievements on behalf of social justice, civil rights and religious tolerance. In August 2000, President Clinton awarded Msgr. Higgins the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the following May he received the annual Laetare Medal at the 150th Commencement at the University of Notre Dame. Alas, George Higgins died a year later, at age 86.

Msgr. Higgins was one of my mentors, albeit from afar. During my seminary days in the 1950s, I was a faithful reader of his weekly "Yardstick" column in the Catholic press, and it was the source of particular satisfaction that I came to know him personally later in life.

Apart from my full agreement with the central commitments of his long and distinguished life as a priest, I shared at least two other things in common with him. George Higgins was a diocesan priest (archdiocese of Chicago) and a weekly columnist for Catholic newspapers and parish bulletins.

The longevity of his column, however, far outdistanced my own. He began writing "Yardstick" in 1945 and continued doing so until 2001, the year before his death: 56 years in all. This column, on the other hand, began in July 1966, a mere 41 years ago. It would take more than a full dose of literary "steroids" to surpass George Higgins' record.

In 1993 Msgr. Higgins, in collaboration with William Bole, published his memoir, "Organized Labor and the Church: Reflections of a Labor Priest" (Paulist Press), in which he cited a number of depressing examples of Catholic hospital and school administrators employing anti-union law firms to keep their employees from organizing.

A few years later I did a column in which the lead paragraph consisted of a reference to that book: "No charge against a religious institution is more cutting that the charge of hypocrisy --- of not practicing what it preaches. It is a charge that has been leveled with increasing frequency at Catholic dioceses and parishes for the way they treat some of their lay and religious ministers, against Catholic schools for the treatment of their teachers and support staff, and against Catholic hospitals for the treatment of their nurses, technical staff and general work force."

Each Labor Day for the past 15 years and only occasionally before that, I have devoted this column to the application of Catholic social teachings to the Church itself. This year is no exception.

Unfortunately, I am aware of no hard data, based on objective social-scientific studies, regarding the state of employer-employee relations in Catholic parishes, schools, hospitals, and dioceses. There is ample anecdotal evidence, however, of continuing abuse of employee rights, often in the form of indirect pressures and outright threats, in Catholic institutions, including even the Catholic press.

Nor am I aware if a document issued eight years ago by the U.S. Catholic Conference's Committee for Domestic Policy, "A Fair and Just Workplace: Principles and Practices for Catholic Health Care" (Origins, Sept. 2, 1999), has been effectively applied and whether its stated hope has been fulfilled, namely, "to create a new paradigm for how labor and management can work together in Catholic health care when workers choose to unionize."

Msgr. George Higgins would have made it his business to find out, and, given his extraordinary connections and resources, he would have had the means to do so. But he is no longer with us.

The three bishop-members of the original committee are three of the U.S. Conference's finest: William Skystad, bishop of Spokane and currently president of the Conference; John McRaith bishop of Owensboro, Kentucky; and Joseph Sullivan, retired auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn.

Although the document focused on Catholic health-care facilities, the principles of social justice espoused therein apply across the board, to all Catholic institutions, especially schools.

In 1971 the Third World Synod of Bishops declared: "While the Church is bound to give witness to justice, it recognizes that anyone who ventures to speak to people about justice must first be just in their eyes....No one should be deprived of his [or her] ordinary rights because he [or she] is associated with the Church in one way or another."

The U.S. bishops cited that very text in their own prophetic pastoral letter of 1986, "Economic Justice for All."

As always, the Church needs to practice what it preaches.

Fr. Richard McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.