Dominican friar urges Alaskans to redeem business world

CatholicAnchor.org

“Understanding how the Gospel message is relevant in the commercial sphere is critical to overcoming a divided life whereby a Christian purports to operate under one set of values at home and another at work or in the market.”

That was part of the message from an Oct. 13 talk given by Dominican Brother Thomas More Garrett at Holy Family Cathedral in Anchorage.

Brother Garrett, who has extensive background in the corporate world, was in town for a Dominican Forum session — part of the ongoing speaker series at Holy Family Cathedral.

After graduating from law school in 2000, and then specializing at a large law firm in the areas of mergers, acquisitions and capital markets, Brother Garrett knows first hand about the nature of high-powered business.

He later worked as a congressional aid before becoming a Dominican friar, at which point he took a special interest in what the church had to say about business ethics. This gave him the opportunity to reflect more deeply upon the application of Catholic doctrine to business ethics — an area he believes has not received the attention that it deserves. In an interview with the Catholic Anchor he said many people, especially working age adults, spend nearly half of their day devoted to their work. Others are connected to the commercial environment as consumers. But both the workplace and the marketplace can become places where one is tempted to make moral compromises, Brother Garrett cautioned.

His talk began with an overview of social teachings by modern popes. He argued that these pronouncements have taken on a new significance and personal meaning in light of the recent economic recession.

The papal documents, he said, “contain advice for the individual at work,” the everyday employees who are “far removed from the decision making that takes place in the halls of the government.”

Brother Garrett also noted that these papal writings have became more immediately applicable in recent years marked by corporate corruption and federal bailouts.

Brother Garrett highlighted a 2009 article in London’s The Sunday Times in which the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein said that his corporation was doing God’s work because it helps companies grow and create wealth.

“This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth,” Blankfein stated in the article. “It’s a virtuous cycle.”

The claim that a major corporation could be “doing God’s work” is not as far-fetched as it may initially sound, Brother Garrett maintained.

“Blankfein was not the first to cite the social benefits of commercial activity,” Brother Garrett noted. “Included among those who have praised business expansion for its capacity to contribute to the common good have been many of the popes of the last several decades.”

But since the Industrial Revolution a faulty idea has taken hold suggesting that work is a separate moral realm from the rest of our lives, Brother Garrett observed.

He challenged this notion by reminding listeners that “stewardship is not just about giving away money.”

“It’s about using your God-given talents effectively” to help you and others get to heaven, he said. “All your actions, including work is ordered toward that.”

Assigning a proper role to profit making and knowing how to spend money in a virtuous manner is critical to making one’s job properly ordered towards God, he added.

“The results of all human effort have their source in a gift from God,” Brother Garrett continued. This includes both material gifts of the earth, as well as our talents.

He noted that each person is a steward of the gifts which God has given them — an important theme in Pope Leo XIII’s statement in “Rerum Novarum.”

“Whoever has received from the divine bounty a large share of temporal blessings, whether they be external and material, or gifts of the mind, has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature,” Pope Leo XIII taught, “and at the same time, that he may employ them, as the steward of God’s providence, for the benefit of others.”

But modern attitudes toward business and daily life often reduce human interaction in the workplace to viewing others as makers and buyers, Brother Garrett said. As a result of this mentality, people are often treated as merely instruments of production in the workplace.

This dehumanizing mentality stems from a preoccupation with the material prosperity which threatens to ignore the spiritual dimension of the human person, Brother Garrett maintained.

“We must instead view the human person in light of their gifts which they offer to the community,” he said.

Brother Garrett suggested that a different outlook is needed in the realm of commercial business, not so much a revolution, but a paradigm shift that encourages workers to be good stewards of their gifts and talents. It must also encourage employers and consumers to look upon workers as more than a simple means to production, but as cooperators in the building of the Kingdom of God.