If you were raised Catholic, you could be forgiven for thinking sometimes that the best way to live your faith in the world might be through some kind of work in direct service or social justice advocacy. It’s true that Catholics put a lot of stock in the corporal works of mercy: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and all those good works outlined in the Sermon on the Mount.
So what are your options if your talents are best expressed through a career in business or in sectors outside those “good works” style jobs? Are you doomed to compartmentalize your faith? To treat it as something that happens after hours or on weekends? No way.
It can seem as if Catholic social thought criticizes the world of profit and commerce, most recently focusing on the ecological and social harm that unbridled capitalism can create. But the church also recognizes the necessity of commerce and business and the good it can do as a means of bringing work to the jobless, distributing the gifts of creation, and improving living standards in the world’s neglected corners.
Pope Francis may have developed a reputation for looking askance at the global free market; indeed he has been a frequent critic of an “economy that kills” or a “throwaway” system that excludes too many, reduces workers to economic inputs, and disregards the ragged effects of capitalism on creation. But his broad criticisms do not mean that he does not recognize the role that global business has in promoting human development, alleviating poverty, and bringing the essential goods of a free market system to all who can benefit from them.
The pope’s recent encyclical, Laudato Si’, indeed focused on the great harm to creation that a ceaseless and careless global materialism may effect, but the pope also spoke of business in the same encyclical as a “noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world.”
Business, he said, “can be a fruitful source of prosperity . . . especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good.”
Pope Francis joins a long line of Catholic theologians who state that any career has the potential to be a vocation. He encourages those who embark on corporate careers or as entrepreneurs to remember that Catholic success in business is not measured by gross profits or quarterly bonuses, but by a meaningful impact toward the common good. Does your business protect creation or contribute to a system of sustainable development? Does it protect the human dignity of its workers and offer them a just wage sufficient for their daily needs and the care of their families, as well as savings and recreation?
Francis has been acutely concerned with job creation around the world, especially for the world’s young people who have been enduring historic rates of un- and underemployment.
In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico in February, the pope told both business leaders and factory workers that employment is a social good that offers opportunities for Mexico’s young to avoid dead-end labor, or worse, a turn to the easy money of drug trafficking and crime.
“At first sight, [workers and business leaders] can seem like adversaries,” Pope Francis said, “but they are united by the same responsibility: seeking to create employment opportunities which are dignified and truly beneficial for society and especially for the young people.” He bemoaned the paucity of education and employment opportunities confronting young people in modern Mexico. “This poverty and rejection becomes the best breeding ground for the young people to fall into the cycle of drug trafficking and violence,” the pope said.
Here is the contemporary challenge for corporate managers. Businesses can do a world of good, Catholic teaching suggests, but only when the free market’s invisible hand is guided by mercy, respect for creation and human dignity, and a commitment to the common good of all who participate in it.
This article appears in the May 2016 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 81, No. 5, page 42).
Image: Flickr cc via Romel Jacinto
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