References for Theme: Catholicism
- Cornwall, Jeffrey R; Naughton, Michael J
- "Who is the good entrepreneur? An exploration within the Catholic social tradition" (2003)
(p.68) Yet, what in entrepreneurship makes the entrepreneur good? John Paul II (1981) explains that without consideration of the subjective dimension of work, “it is impossible to understand the meaning of the virtue of industriousness, and more particularly it is impossible to understand why industriousness should be a virtue” (Laborem exercens, #9). Standing within the virtue tradition of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, he states that industriousness, as well as ingenuity, creativity, frugality, and so forth, can only be virtues if they “make us more human,” and they can only make us more human if we are helping other people become more...
- "Who is the good entrepreneur? An exploration within the Catholic social tradition" (2003)
- Finn, D
- "Human work in Catholic social thought" (2012)
(p.878) Theologically, Catholics hold a “sacramental” view of the material world—convinced that material things can be “translucent to the divine light”—a conviction that forms the basis not only for the seven sacraments but also for religious art and beautiful churches. For economic life, the meaning of the goodness of creation is that our work—whether growing wheat, doing laundry, or managing a business—has religious significance. It is religiously important, another reason for our reminding ourselves of the dignity of work, even menial work.
- "Human work in Catholic social thought" (2012)
(p.880) In unions, workers’ natural right to form associations aligns with the right to participate in decisions affecting their lives. Solidarity, which is to characterize all Christian life, becomes embodied in a particular way in labor unions themselves.
- "Human work in Catholic social thought" (2012)
(p.881) Popes since Leo XIII have consistently upheld Leo’s concern for the ordinary worker faced with the pressures of industrial life, at first with traditional remedies. Forty years after Rerum Novarum, Pope Pius XI, in Quadregesimo Anno, argued for the importance of workers’ associations and like Leo held out the hope for a return to a guild-like organization in each industry that would encompass workers, managers, and owners. This position, known as “corporatism,” held that industrial strife could be prevented if these kinds of cooperative organizations could be created and cultivated. However, history moved in another direction and later papal thought...
- "Human work in Catholic social thought" (2012)
- Gini, Al
- Gregory, Pope
- The Book of Pastoral Rule (2007)
(p.175) And indeed these things cannot be without heavy labour and trouble. But let us remember the labours of those who went before us; and what we endure will not be hard. For We must through many tribulations enter into the kingdom of God (Acts xiv. 22). And, We were pressed out of measure, yea and above strength, insomuch that we were weary even of life. But we ourselves, too had the answer of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves (2 Cor. i. 8, 9). And yet The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to...
- The Book of Pastoral Rule (2007)
- John Paul, I I
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
(p.1) Blessing: THROUGH WORK man must earn his daily bread and contribute to the continual advance of science and technology and, above all, to elevating unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives in community with those who belong to the same family. And work means any activity by man, whether manual or intellectual, whatever its nature or circumstances; it means any human activity that can and must be recognized as work, in the midst of all the many activities of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very nature, by virtue of...
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
(p.10) Having thus confirmed the personal dimension of human work, we must go on to the second sphere of values which is necessarily linked to work. Work constitutes a foundation for the formation of family life, which is a natural right and something that man is called to. These two spheres of values-one linked to work and the other consequent on the family nature of human life-must be properly united and must properly permeate each other.
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
(p.13) In the light of the above truth we see clearly, first of all, that capital cannot be separated from labour; in no way can labour be opposed to capital or capital to labour, and still less can the actual people behind these concepts be opposed to each other, as will be explained later. A labour system can be right, in the sense of being in conformity with the very essence of the issue, and in the sense of being intrinsically true and also morally legitimate, if in its very basis it overcomes the opposition between labour and capital through an...
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
(p.14) The above principle, as it was then stated and as it is still taught by the Church, diverges radically from the programme of collectivism as proclaimed by Marxism and put into pratice in various countries in the decades following the time of Leo XIII's Encyclical. At the same time it differs from the programme of capitalism practised by liberalism and by the political systems inspired by it. In the latter case, the difference consists in the way the right to ownership or property is understood. Christian tradition has never upheld this right as absolute and untouchable. On the contrary, it...
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
(p.2) Work is one of these aspects, a perennial and fundamental one, one that is always relevant and constantly demands renewed attention and decisive witness. Because fresh questions and problems are always arising, there are always fresh hopes, but also fresh fears and threats, connected with this basic dimension of human existence: man's life is built up every day from work, from work it derives its specific dignity, but at the same time work contains the unceasing measure of human toil and suffering, and also of the harm and injustice which penetrate deeply into social life within individual nations and on...
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
(p.3) ... human work is a key, probably the essential key, to the whole social question, if we try to see that question really from the point of view of man's good. And if the solution-or rather the gradual solution-of the social question, which keeps coming up and becomes ever more complex, must be sought in the direction of "making life more human"8, then the key, namely human work, acquires fundamental and decisive importance.
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
(p.4) The Church finds in the very first pages ofthe Book of Genesis the source of her conviction that work is a fundamental dimension of human existence on earth. An analysis of these texts makes us aware that they express-sometimes in an archaic way of manifesting thought-the fundamental truths about man, in the context of the mystery of creation itelf. These truths are decisive for man from the very beginning, and at the same time they trace out the main lines of his earthly existence, both in the state of original justice and also after the breaking, caused by sin, of...
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
(p.6) In fact there is no doubt that human work has an ethical value of its own, which clearly and directly remain linked to the fact that the one who carries it out is a person, a conscious and free subject, that is to say a subject that decides about himself.This truth, which in a sense constitutes the fundamental and perennial heart of Christian teaching on human work, has had and continues to have primary significance for the formulation of the important social problems characterizing whole ages.
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
(p.7) In the modern period, from the beginning of the industrial age, the Christian truth about work had to oppose the various trends of materialistic and economistic thought.For certain supporters of such ideas, work was understood and treated as a sort of "merchandise" that the worker-especially the industrial worker-sells to the employer, who at the same time is the possessor of the capital, that is to say, of all the working tools and means that make production possible. This way of looking at work was widespread especially in the first half of the nineteenth century. Since then, explicit expressions of this...
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
(p.8) It was precisely one such wide-ranging anomaly that gave rise in the last century to what has been called "the worker question", sometimes described as "the proletariat question" . This question and the problems connected with it gave rise to a just social reaction and caused the impetuous emergence of a great burst of solidarity between workers, first and foremost industrial workers. The call to solidarity and common action addressed to the workers-especially to those engaged in narrowly specialized, monotonous and depersonalized work in industrial plants, when the machine tends to dominate man - was important and eloquent from the point of...
- "Laborem exercens" (1981)
- O'Rahilly, Alfred
- Saint Augustine (Bishop of Hippo. )
- The City of God (2009)
(p.297) For our part, we dare not believe that God is affected in one way when He works, in another when He rests. Indeed, to say that He is affected at all, is an abuse of language, since it implies that there comes to be something in His nature which was not there before. For he who is affected is acted upon, and whatever is acted upon is changeable. His leisure, therefore, is no laziness, indolence, inactivity; as in His work is no labor, effort, industry. He can act while He reposes, and repose while He acts. He can begin a...
- The City of God (2009)
(p.378) Do we now move our feet and hands when we will to do the things we would by means of these members? do we meet with no resistance in them, but perceive that they are ready servants of the will, both in our own case and in that of others, and especially of artisans employed in mechanical operations, by which the weakness and clumsiness of nature become, through industrious exercise, wonderfully dexterous?
- The City of God (2009)
(p.444) He so works by His servants, that they are themselves also fellow-laborers with God, as the apostle says, “For we are fellow-laborers with God.”
- The City of God (2009)
(p.805) For if even a human workman, who has, for some reason, made a deformed statue, can recast it and make it very beautiful, and this without suffering any part of the substance, but only the deformity to be lost,—if he can, for example, remove some unbecoming or disproportionate part, not by cutting off and separating this part from the whole, but by so breaking down and mixing up the whole as to get rid of the blemish without diminishing the quantity of his material,—shall we not think as highly of the almighty Worker? Shall He not be able to remove...
- The City of God (2009)
- Volf, Miroslav
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