Human Work in Catholic Social Thought

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1536-7150.2012.00845.x
• Date: 01 October 2012
• Published date: 01 October 2012
• Author: DANIEL FINN

Human Work in Catholic Social Thought

By DANIEL FINN*

ABSTRACT. In Catholic Social Thought, work is at the center of issues

related to morality and economic life. It is simultaneously objective

and subjective. Workers are the real agents of production, and there-

fore labor should have priority over capital. The able-bodied have a

moral obligation to work to obtain the things they need, but everyone

has a claim on the basic necessities of life. Hence the property claims

of the well-to-do are not to exclude the poor from what they need.

The property-right claim of stockholders depends on the firm serving

work and the interests of workers. In unions, workers’ natural right to

form associations aligns with the right to participate in decisions

affecting their lives. Numerous groups and organizations have some

degree of complicity in workplace injustice and some degree of

responsibility to address it.

Introduction

The best place to start in considering the view of work in Catholic

Social Thought (CST) is an encyclical written by Pope John Paul II in

1981, Laborem Exercens. Encyclicals are called “letters,” but practically

they are monographs written by a pope on a particular theme. The

first famous “social” encyclical of the modern period was written by

Pope Leo XIII in 1891, and later popes have regularly written on

related themes on the occasion of an anniversary of that document.

John Paul, who himself had been a laborer in Poland before

becoming a priest, argued in Laborem Exercens that work is “at the

center” of the “social question,” that wide ranging set of issues related

to morality and economic life (John Paul II 1981: 2). For him, work is

the door into all these problems for CST. (There is no doubt that much

“work” occurs outside the market, unpaid and generally underappre-

ciated. This includes most definitely the work of caregivers, typically

*Daniel Finn is Professor of Theology and Economics at St. Johns University in

Collegeville, Minnesota.

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 71, No. 4 (October, 2012).

© 2012 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.