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By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Only a handful of lawmakers attended Red Mass, the Catholic
Church's ceremony to pray for wisdom and guidance for public
servants, at the downtown Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace today.

Welfare cuts
worry Catholics

A priest at Red Mass urges the
state to consider what this will
mean for the poor

By Richard Borreca
Star-Bulletin

Worried that an estimated 3,000 Hawaii families will lose welfare benefits next year, the Catholic Church in Hawaii is looking at the effects of welfare reform on Hawaii's poor.

At the Red Mass this morning at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace, the Rev. William O'Neill, a Jesuit priest, urged the state to consider welfare reform in terms of the actual people who will lose benefits.

The Red Mass is a religious tradition in Hawaii since 1955. It is a public ceremony presided over by Bishop Emeritus Joseph Ferrario as the Catholic Church prays for the Legislature and local public officials.

"One wonders if, if in looking at the facts of welfare policy flat on, we are not tempted ... to lose sight of the poor themselves," O'Neill said.

"For partisans of the left as well as the right, the poor too readily become objects of policy, not political subjects."

By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Bishop Emeritus Joseph Ferrario presides over Red
Mass at Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace today.

O'Neill, a faculty member of the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif., told legislators and government officials that "what is required is not pity, which benefactors bestow on their supplicants, but compassion, the hard grace of love."

The issue, however, is a complicated one, according to former Rep. Joe Souki, who was one of a handful of legislators attending the service.

When the new federal welfare laws remove the estimated 3,000 Hawaii families from welfare, the state is likely to be asked to pick up the costs. But the state can't afford it, said Souki, a former speaker of the House and former finance committee chairman.

"It just can't do it, not if you want to improve education, pay the federal mandated hospital costs, comply with the Felix-decision for special education," Souki said.

In order to reduce state welfare costs, several years ago the state House attempted to completely cut off general assistance welfare payments, but the effort proved too unpopular and was never approved by the entire Legislature.

Souki added that this year the Legislature will have to decide whether it can risk raising taxes in order to increase welfare benefits.