Moral measure of the economy

                                                                                                                       (Source)

Picking up from my previous post, on the dignity of working people and the context for most being the family situation, more needs to be said about the principles each nation should use to judge its degree of success in fulfilling its obligations to all its citizens, and to the international community.

Here is a set of principles that lays a solid basis for making such a judgment:

 

1. The economy exists for the person, not the person for the economy.
2. All economic life should be shaped by moral principles. Economic choices and institutions must be judged by how they protect or undermine the life and dignity of the human person, support the family and serve the common good (see below).
3. A fundamental moral measure of any economy is how the poor and vulnerable are faring. 

4. All people have a right to life and to secure the basic necessities of life, such as food, clothing, shelter, education, health care, safe environment, and economic security.

5. All people have the right to economic initiative, to productive work, to just wages and benefits, to decent working conditions as well as to organize and join unions or other associations.
6. All people, to the extent they are able, have a corresponding duty to work, a responsibility to provide for the needs of their families and an obligation to contribute to the broader society. 

7. In economic life, free markets have both clear advantages and limits; government has essential responsibilities and limitations; voluntary groups have irreplaceable roles, but cannot substitute for the proper working of the market and the just policies of the state.
8. Society has a moral obligation, including governmental action where necessary, to assure opportunity, meet basic human needs, and pursue justice in economic life.
9. Workers, owners, managers, stockholders and consumers are moral agents in economic life. By our choices, initiative, creativity and investment, we enhance or diminish economic opportunity, community life and social justice.
10. The global economy has moral dimensions and human consequences. Decisions on investment, trade, aid and development should protect human life and promote human rights, especially for those most in need wherever they might live on this globe.

This is from “A Catholic Framework for Economic Life,” by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. For the document, see here. The document concludes:

According to Pope John Paul II in Centesimus Annus, the Catholic tradition [Catholic social teaching] calls for a “society of work, enterprise and participation” which “is not directed against the market, but demands that the market be appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the state to assure that the basic needs of the whole society are satisfied.”  All of economic life should recognize the fact that we all are God’s children and members of one human family, called to exercise a clear priority for “the least among us.”

What does the Church teach about the common good?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (nos. 1906-1909) explains: “By common good is to be understood the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily" (Gaudium et Spes 26 § 1; cf. GS 74 § 1).

The common good concerns the life of all. It calls for prudence from each, and even more from those who exercise the office of authority. It consists of three essential elements:

“First, the common good presupposes respect for the person as such. In the name of the common good, public authorities are bound to respect the fundamental and inalienable rights of the human person. Society should permit each of its members to fulfill his vocation. In particular, the common good resides in the conditions for the exercise of the natural freedoms indispensable for the development of the human vocation, such as the right to act according to a sound norm of conscience and to safeguard . . . privacy, and rightful freedom also in matters of religion (GS 26 § 2).

“Second, the common good requires the social well-being and development of the group itself. Development is the epitome of all social duties. Certainly, it is the proper function of authority to arbitrate, in the name of the common good, between various particular interests; but it should make accessible to each what is needed to lead a truly human life: food, clothing, health, work, education and culture, suitable information, the right to establish a family, and so on (cf. GS 26 § 2).

“Finally, the common good requires peace, that is, the stability and security of a just order. It presupposes that authority should ensure by morally acceptable means the security of society and its members. It is the basis of the right to legitimate personal and collective defense.” (Source)

💢 For a splendid examination of the intellectual history underpinning the ideologies that present themselves as liberal and progressive but are, as a consequence of their principles, truly limiting and oppressive, go to:

Evangelization and Ideology: How to Understand and Respond to the Political Culture by Matthew R. Petrusek, 2023,Word on Fire, Park Ridge, IL. 

💢 See also:     

Economy of Communion - people before riches,

Pay inequality highlights broken world of work

CRT: The Church's teaching on how to reform society 

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