Not according to the Catholic Conference of Ohio. The Catholic Church has long supported school choice measures, particularly for disadvantaged children. But it also has been historically aligned with the labor movement, as evident in this excerpted statement from the Ohio bishops on proposed legislative changes to their state’s collective bargaining laws for public employees:
The Catholic bishops of Ohio encourage leaders in government, labor and business to pursue changes that promote the common good without the elimination of collective bargaining … [Economic] justice places the good of the person at the center of all economic activities … It challenges society to measure the moral effectiveness of our economic practices by how well they strengthen families and provide for the poor and vulnerable. This social doctrine has long recognized that all people have the right to economic initiative, to productive work, to just wages and benefits, to decent working conditions, to organize and join unions or other associations, and to engage in collective bargaining.
Social justice also reaches public education, as the bishops write in a separate entry on their Web site:
Parents—the first and most important educators—have a fundamental right to choose the education best suited to the needs of their children, including public, private and religious schools. Government, through such means as tax credits and publicly funded scholarships, should help provide resources for parents, especially those of modest means, to exercise this basic right without discrimination.
