Comments on: Integration: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

By: goral

goral — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 01:55:20 +0000

I’m presently listening to one of the feeds. Excellent speakers.
I did not know that the word diabolical comes from Greek meaning dividing.
Much as we divide work and play, church and state and body and spirit.
Could the greatest country get so many things so wrong?

By: catholicmanhood

catholicmanhood — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:54:38 +0000

The idea of integrating faith and life is both profound and mundane. After all, we are Catholics, and therefore everything we do, say, think, etc. should be influenced by our belief structure. At the same time, the modern tendency to dichotomize faith and work (or our “religious” persona and our “secular” persona) is very tempting. Disconnecting faith and life allows you to act as you want in your occupation and pray as you wish and ne’er the two shall meet. We do not ask forgiveness for things we’ve done poorly at work, and we do not ask God’s help in performing better.

One person who got this integration correct some time ago was St. Josemaria Escriva. His idea that faith and work both suffer when separated is powerful in today’s day and age. Baptism makes us into a new person, a child of God, and to discount that when we leave Mass on Sunday or walk into a boardroom is dangerous. We risk losing the knowledge of who we really are. I’ll leave you with a quote from St. Escriva touching on this point:

“In our inner life, in our external behavior, in our dealings with others, in our work, each of us must try to maintain a constant presence of God, conversing with him, carrying on a dialogue in a way that does not show outwardly. Or, rather, which as a rule does not express itself in audible words, but which certainly should show itself in the determination and loving care we put into carrying out all our duties, both great and small. Without such perseverance, our behavior would hardly be consistent with our status as children of God, for we would have wasted the resources which Our Lord in his goodness has placed within our reach, in order that we may come to ‘perfect manhood, unto the measure of the fullness of Christ.’”

catholicmanhood.wordpress.com

By: Arkanabar Ilarsadin

Arkanabar Ilarsadin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:21:22 +0000

Kathryn, it sounds to me like perhaps the editors of your Eparchy’s paper may bear some loyalty to the (failed and dissident) Liberation Theology.

Justice is the desire to render to each man what he is justly due. I agree that requiring an employer to pay a worker more than he actually makes for the company is unjust. So is forbidding those who are unable to make the minimum wage (plus all associated labor costs) from working, which is the ACTUAL result of a minimum wage law.

By: goral

goral — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:39:44 +0000

Kathryn, it certainly would appear that at times the Church goes against that which makes sense to us. There are segments of our church that support abortion and socialism and women priests. Not all those who perport to speak for the Church are actually in a position to do so.
The Church does very well as a business organization because it employs sound business practices. The Catechism of the Church never pretends to give economic advice.
Our faith and spirituality should extend into our business life with sound ethics and concern for those who are down on their luck. That needs to be our personal concern regardless of which organization we are a member.

While the free market system has proven itself to be the best around, it can and has given us callous disregard for those who need help or those who are just not market savvy enough to compete.

Mother Church has the macro picture and warns us that what matters most are not our wallets but our souls. We instinctively know to make sound and self-serving economic decisions but the Church knows that our ways are not His ways and reminds us to always consider our neighbor.

If we can’t be shrewd business people and upstanding spiritual people than we are to be pitied because our souls would be torn and our character without integrity.

By: Randy Hain

Randy Hain — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:13:13 +0000

Goral-thanks for your feeback. Please visit the link at the bottom of the article to see a recap of the conference and hear the speakers. The response was incredibly positive from the attendees and there is a real “buzz” regarding taking the integration idea even further. I hope to report back to CE in the months ahead with our progress.

Thanks and God bless-

Randy Hain

By: Kathryn

Kathryn — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:49:47 +0000

Maybe we should be asking why people haven’t done this in the past, or in the past few years. I have my own observation (which I have alluded to elsewhere on the site): I am very much a free market person, who believes that such things as social security, minimum wage, (compulsory) “living wages” and unions (in their current form), etc. do not work in the long wrong (and somethings I believe are ultimately disastrous). And yet, all I hear from the Church is that need for these things. A recent column in the Eparchy’s paper praised the new union labor movement, “card check” and eliminating the secret ballot for bringing a union onto the work site, etc. Business owners were of course excoriated.

I won’t pretend that most business people are quite as far right/free market on economic issues as I am, but there is certainly that tendency. And the tendency is pretty much opposite of what Church teaching seems to be. If one is in the business world and the Church seems to go against sound business practices, then of course, you end up putting up this divider between your faith and your work life. You end up wondering if the Church has anything truly meaningful to say about work and if what She says is in fact the truth.

By: goral

goral — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:14:36 +0000

Randy, this is a great idea whose time has come.
At a time when our Church and our faith is on the defensive,
we Catholics need to make an offensive move in our lives, the life of our parish
and a thrust into the community at large.

I would be more interested in the attendance, agenda and results of this conference so that we can try this totally novel idea with the
Saturday Vigil Catholics.

Up here in New England Sunday Catholics are the traditionalists;
Red Soxs jackets and all.