THESE days, it seems that the trend is to dichotomize the secular and what pertains to one’s consciential convictions, or as the world would call it, religion.  And so, religious convictions are not supposed to impinge on secular matters such as government, business and media.  If ever, one has to “disguise” one’s convictions in euphemistic and “politically correct” terminology so as to be acceptable to the general public.

And so, when writing or speaking, one must be politically correct and only discuss economic strategies and growth, profitability, risk taking, good governance and social responsibility. It is incorrect to discuss right and wrong in the context of morality, but one can talk about these in the context of what is legal and acceptable.  There is “no need” to discuss what the Bible says about subduing the earth and having dominion over it in the context of moral responsibility over God’s gifts but it is acceptable to talk about the environment and social responsibility on the part of business.

But I will stick my neck out, and bring to our attention last Sunday’s gospel, where Jesus Christ explicitly said, “...What will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”  And I will repeat what then Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) observed, “For a long time...business ethics rang like hollow metal because the economy was held to work on efficiency and not on morality....” 

It must be stressed that business and economics cannot determine whether any activity is ethical or not.  The technical revolution that has made possible modern market products as Internet stock valuations, derivatives, hot money transfers, online shopping, even gaming and pornography not to mention credit abuse that inveigled people to buy homes and other consumer products they could not possibly afford on their incomes brings us to the conclusion that a consumeristic society that is the result of the science of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth (i.e., the fulfilment of wants) cannot be the be-all and end-all of a human being, a person whose destiny goes beyond worldly affairs.

Prophetic indeed were the words of Cardinal Ratzinger more than 20 years ago: “It is becoming an increasingly obvious fact of economic history that the development of economic systems which concentrate on the common good depends on a determinate ethical system, which in turn can be borne and sustained only by strong religious convictions.  An economic policy that is ordered not only to the common good of the group—indeed, not only to the common good of the determinate state—but to the common good of the family of man demands a maximum of ethical discipline and thus a maximum of religious strength.”

As Pope, Benedict XVI’s profound understanding of the relation between business and economics led him to once again exhort in his most recent encyclical that there needs to be a “profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise” and that there has to be an increased awareness of the need for greater social responsibility on the part of business. 

It is indeed true that in light of political correctness, business has been looking at good corporate governance, but this needs to be enriched by the corporate world looking at their activities in light of the Church’s social doctrine.  He reiterates the profound truth that charity is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine.

Social doctrine emphasizes that if the market is governed solely by the principle of equivalence in value of exchanged goods, it cannot produce the social cohesion that it requires to function well. That is, “without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfill its proper economic function.” 

Looking back at another encyclical by Pope Paul VI, it was stated that the economic system itself would benefit from the wide-ranging practice of justice inasmuch as the first to gain from the development of poor countries would be the rich ones.  He called for “a model of market economy capable of including within its range all peoples and not just the better off...” for more efforts to build a more human world for all in which “all will be able to give and receive, without one group making progress at the expense of the other.”

Thus there is no need to dichotimize between what is “secular” and “religious.”  The Church has a good, in fact, a better understanding of what is politically correct.  Social responsibility goes beyond mere handouts and soundbytes that business incorporates into its economic projections.

True social responsibility is solidarity with human beings who, if properly understood, are the object of all the good that this world can give.

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