Catholic Labor Education On The Great Lakes

About This Essay

Published in the New York History Review on January 16, 2015, this essay profiles Fr. John Boland and the labor college he founded in Buffalo, which became one of the most significant Catholic labor education institutions in the Northeast United States.

Fr. Boland was a Catholic priest who understood that the Church's social teaching could only influence the lives of working people if it was communicated in practical, accessible terms. The Diocesan Labor College of Buffalo offered evening courses to working men and women on topics including labor economics, collective bargaining, parliamentary procedure, and Catholic social doctrine. It trained a generation of Catholic workers who went on to leadership roles in Western New York unions.

Dr. Lubienecki draws on the Boland Center archives, diocesan records, and union papers to reconstruct the college's history. The essay is one of the more accessible introductions to this important but underexamined institution.

Publication Details

Publication: New York History Review Date: January 16, 2015 Read online: NYHR Blog

The Boland Center

Dr. Lubienecki founded the Boland Center for the Study of Labor and Religion in honor of Fr. John Boland. The center is dedicated to the scholarly examination of the relationship between religious institutions and the labor movement, and it publishes popular history writing in this vein.

Learn about the Boland Center View all public history writing