Professional Documents
Culture Documents
I. INTRODUCTION
• Ninety years ago LeoXIII, the great pope of the “social question,” wrote
his encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”).
• In the history of the church’s social teaching the issue of work has
emerged many times, finding its source in Scriptures, in the book of
Genesis, the Gospel, and the Apostles writings.
• Work is --- Objectively --- what a human being does when dominating on
earth.
• Work has been changing during the ages, from domestic animals and
extracting resources from earth and sea, to cultivating the earth,
transforming, changing, and using the produce.
• We must pay more attention to the one who works than to what the worker
does.
8. Work Solidarity
• It was such an irregularity that gave rise --- in the last century --- to the
“worker question” or the “proletariat question,” provoking a great burst of
solidarity among workers, mainly in industry.
• When the bible says that humanity is to subdue earth, it speaks about the
resources of the earth, resources that can serve us only through our work.
• The opposition of labor and capital is not caused by the way labor and
capital is organized. Capital and labor became two opposed impersonal
forces.
• When we speak about labor and capital, we are speaking about people,
about those who work without being the owners of the means of
production and about the entrepreneurs (or their representatives) who
owns the means.
• Workers not only want fair pay, they also want to share in the
responsibility and creativity of the very work process.
• Though part of these wider human rights, the rights given by work are
specific. Work is a duty, because our creator demanded it and because it
maintains and develops our humanity.
• Highlighting the place of morality, the key issue in this matter is that of
just to pay for work, whether he works is done for a private owner of the
means of production, or in a “socialized” system.
• Guided by faith, hope, and love, we seek to understand the meaning work
has in the eyes of God and how it is part of our salvation.
• Through the centuries people have been working to better their lives. For a
believer there is no doubt that this is God’s intention. Created in God’s
image we were given the mandate to transform the earth.
26. Christ the Man of Work
• Jesus Christ himself showed that to work is to share creation. He not only
proclaimed, but, first and foremost, lives the “gospel of work” by his
deeds.
27. Human Work in the Light of the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ
• All work is linked with toil. The original blessing of work, sharing in the
mystery or creation, being created in the meaning of God, is contrasted
with the curse that sin brought with it.