In the resurgence of worldwide populism, Pope Francis has said that employment is the biggest issue. And because of the global pandemic, work has become a fraught and challenging part of life. In this episode, Father Martin Schlag explores the concept of work in Fratelli Tutti, explaining the Catholic social ethic of the dignity of work and inclusion of all people into the human economy; the Pope’s perspective on private property and the suggestion that “the world exists for us all”; and the relevance of Catholic social thought and Fratelli Tutti for businesspeople, with a vision of work grounded in friendship, responsibility, dignity, justice, and love. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.
"There is no poverty worse than that which takes away work and the dignity of work. In a genuinely developed society, work is an essential dimension of social life, for it is not only a means of earning one’s daily bread, but also of personal growth, the building of healthy relationships, self-expression and the exchange of gifts. Work gives us a sense of shared responsibility for the development of the world, and ultimately, for our life as a people." (Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti 162)
In the resurgence of worldwide populism, Pope Francis has said that employment is the biggest issue. And because of the global pandemic, work has become a fraught and challenging part of life. In this episode, Father Martin Schlag explores the concept of work in Fratelli Tutti, explaining the Catholic social ethic of the dignity of work and inclusion of all people into the human economy; the Pope’s perspective on private property and the suggestion that “the world exists for us all”; and the relevance of Catholic social thought and Fratelli Tutti for businesspeople, with a vision of work grounded in friendship, responsibility, dignity, justice, and love. Interview by Ryan McAnnally-Linz.
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Show Notes
About Father Martin Schlag
Father Martin Schlag is Alan W. Moss Endowed Chair for Catholic Social Thought at the University of St. Thomas and is author of The Business Francis Means: Understanding the Pope's Message on the Economy. He studies the nexus of Christian faith with markets, trade and exchange, money, private property, and their net effect on social justice.
Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. For more information, visit faith.yale.edu.
Martin Schlag: Francis defines poverty as the exclusion from the dignity of earning one's own bread. He always spoke of bread and work, bread and work. So his concern is unemployment, the psychological and sociological catastrophe of long-term widespread unemployment. We have to give people the esteem of recognition for the contribution that they are making to the common good through their work. He says what we need is inclusion of people into the market economy so that they can have the dignity of being part of society, of community.
Evan Rosa: This is For the Life of the World, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: I'm Ryan McAnnally-Linz with the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Our daily experience of work has changed over the past year. The pandemic has forced new questions about the meaning and value of a job, the challenge of planning and pursuing a career, being forced into remote teamwork, balancing one's personal life when home and work are synonymous, or else facing the danger of the lethal virus, and someone whose work has been deemed essential but whose pay remains meager, not to mention the threat or painful reality of unemployment.
And there are economic corollaries to work. Many of us worked for pay and the world now faces new crises of housing affordability, and hunger. All of this is to see work as a means for securing the basic requirements of existence—work as toil, to use a biblical term from Genesis 3. But before toil is tilling and keeping in Genesis 2. There is a sense in which work is a gift of God and the Spirit. There can be a dignity that comes with expressing one's talents and resources in a creative-productive mix that contributes to the common good. And perhaps we can find some echoes of that even in the broken world of work, as we experienced it today.
In this episode, we're continuing our exploration of Fratelli Tutti. Pope Francis' most recent encyclical to all people of goodwill, relevant not just to Catholics or the broader Christian Church, but to all of humanity. If you missed our first two episodes, featuring Nichole Flores on "Dreaming Together of a Different World" and Sister Helen Alford on "The Economy that Kills," check those out as well. Joining us today is Father Martin Schlag, who holds the Alan W. Moss Endowed Chair for Catholic Social Thought at the University of St. Thomas. And he is author of The Business Francis Means: Understanding the Pope's Message on the Economy. He studies the nexus of Christian faith with markets, trade and exchange, money, private property, and their net effect on social justice.
In this conversation, we discussed Pope Francis' suggestion that in the resurgence of populism, employment is the biggest issue. Father Martin explains the Catholic social ethic of the dignity of work and inclusion of all people in the human economy. We talk about the Pope's perspective on private property and the suggestion that "the world exists for us all." And finally, we discussed the relevance of Catholic social thought and Fratelli Tutti for business people, with a vision of work grounded in friendship, responsibility, dignity, justice, and love. Thanks for listening.
So Father Martin Schlag, thanks for taking some time to join us and to talk about Fratelli Tutti. I was wondering if you could start by telling us how would you explain the overall significance of Fratelli Tutti and its main point to an audience that isn't especially familiar with papal encyclicals or with Frances' social thought?
Martin Schlag: Thanks for having me. Fratelli Tutti, when I first read it, it struck me like the testament of Pope Francis, not in the sense that he's going to die very soon or anything, but in the sense that it's like the sum of what he has so far said about social issues. It's really a summary of all his teaching. And that's why it's really long. It's actually 43,000 words, which is just more or less like a novel. And it has so many topics. It talks about the death penalty, about war. It talks about economics, about politics, about work, about property, about international relationships.
And Pope Francis has changed the style of papal encyclicals. Encyclical comes from the Greek word enkyklios, which means sending them out to the whole circle of the world. It's a letter the Pope sends to any person of goodwill. And he said, "I don't have a monopoly on the interpretation of social facts and even less on collecting the data." He is like someone who says, "look, I've got a heart attack," and the doctor comes and says, "no, I'm sorry, you've broken two ribs; it's not a heart attack, but the pain is real." So he raises the prophetic voice of the church and says: "Look, these are things you should really be paying attention to. I don't always have the solution, but I do want you to recognize this problem, the hurt, the pain of people. And we can't just say we're Christians and not pay attention to these things."
So this is very much in conformity with his Jesuit tradition. He's a Jesuit. And especially after the second Vatican Council, the Jesuits renewed their understanding of their own vocation and say, "Our main aim is to share the faith, to share the good news of the coming of Christ, but that always implies also being concerned about how people are living and whether they are in misery, in poverty, in sickness; we have to help as the church always has done over the centuries."
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: You've worked in the past on the economic aspects of Pope Francis' social thought. And I was struck in reading Fratelli Tutti when he was going through the problems associated with poverty and issuing that sort of prophetic call that you're talking about. He makes the claim that "the biggest issue is employment." What do you think Francis means by that? Why does he say that?
Martin Schlag: This is something which is a deep concern of his, going back to his time in Argentina. He always spoke of bread and work, bread and work. So his concern is unemployment, the psychological and sociological catastrophe of long-term widespread unemployment. He has experienced that and he's experiencing it again in Europe, in Southern Italy, in Spain. At sometimes during his pontificate, there were up to 50% of unemployed people, especially among the young. And this is a catastrophe. If it's long-term, people get depressed. It causes tensions in the families and violence.
He defines poverty as the exclusion from the dignity of earning one's own bread. I find that very characteristic because he doesn't say poverty is if your income is lower than whatever amounts of dollar a day; he says it's an exclusion and it's about dignity. And I think that is also important to realize. Sometimes Pope Francis is seen as someone on the left, and he says, "No, I'm neither on the left nor am I on the right; those are categories which don't work for the Catholic social tradition." What he says is we have to give people the esteem of recognition for the contribution that they are making to the common good through their work.
And government handouts are sometimes necessary in crises or in humanitarian catastrophes or natural catastrophes, but they're not general solutions. He says what we need is inclusion of people into the market economy or into an economy so that they can have the dignity of being part of society, of community.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: Dignity is a really important word in Catholic theological anthropology. What sort of picture of the human being lies behind this idea that there's a dignity to labor and that participation in promotion of the common good through one's labor is an important facet of human life?
Martin Schlag: The question of labor is actually the origin of Catholic Social Teaching. The first encyclical in 1891 by Leo XIII was on the relationship between capital and labor. And it was actually then John Paul II who in several of his encyclicals speaks or spoke of alienation. He took this Marxist expression and said, "Actually look, alienation also happens in the communist or the Marxist system; it happens everywhere where the human person is just seen as merchandise or as a comb-wheel. And he spoke of the objective and the subjective dimension of work. The subjective dimension is what develops us as a human person, and we do that in work as well.
Human dignity means being created as image of God, as a representative of the absolute, of the unconditional. It means never being used as a mere means to achieve aims. And that is very important and relevant for business because it means that employees or colleagues are not just tools, which you can discard or you throw away when you don't need them anymore. You have a responsibility for them. Dignity is formulated in Fratelli Tutti as friendship or as fraternity.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: So it would seem then that Francis wouldn't be happy with just any sort of employment, but is also making a claim that the dignity of the human being should shape what employment looks like for people who do have jobs. Is that right?
Martin Schlag: Yeah, absolutely. So in the Catholic tradition, we speak of a right to work. Of course not in the sense of right that I can claim in court. The government cannot give me a job because that would mean nationalizing the economy and it ends up being a totalitarian system, like the Soviet Union where everybody had a job; it just wasn't the one they wanted. It was like forced labor, then everybody has worked.
So, right to work, but also rights in work. With these rights in work to just wage, safe working environments, rest, sufficient rest, and social security, which can mean different things. It should mean also healthcare, retirement plans, insurance against unemployment and the accidents. So the dignity in work means this whole package of things.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: One of the most striking sets of passages in Fratelli Tutti for the kind of outside reader like myself was when Francis brings together a whole host of quotes from early church theologians about property. And I was wondering if you could explain a little bit previous Catholic social teaching on private property as a way of setting the background for what Francis says in Fratelli Tutti.
Martin Schlag: Pope Francis quotes St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil, St. Gregory who lived in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Century after Christ. And they are very strong in their statements. They say, "what you own," talking to the rich, "is actually property of the poor." Now we do have to take into consideration the context in which they are speaking at that time. A few families owned everything, all the land. And these statements were usually made in times of famine when the rich land owners had full granaries and the poor were starving. And the grain that was in the granaries of the rich have been given to them by the poor, as their contribution, as their rent. And so the church fathers say, "Open, share, give back!" It's not a form of communism or justification for a confiscation of property.
So basically in the Catholic tradition, there are two strands of tradition. One is the Augustinian-Franciscan tradition, or strand of the tradition, that says private property is a consequence of original sin. In paradise, there was no private property. And now after the Fall, private property is created and regulated exclusively by human law. Human law can take away property, can grant property, can reduce property, can tax property.
But then there's a second tradition and that is the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition that says: "No, private property is an institution of natural law by nature. And it is derived from the common good. So because it is more efficient to have private property and it gives peace to society, it is better for all that we have clear boundaries and a clear attribution of private property." And this is the strand that prevailed in the Catholic tradition, especially because of the School of Salamanca in the 16th Century that had to deal with the discovery of America by the Europeans, by the Spaniards and the conquest. And they protested against the occupation and the conquest, the way it was done. And they defend the right, the natural rights, of the native South Americans and say, "That was not right, what we did because there's this natural right; it's not something that the Pope, the emperor, whoever can take away just by decree, by human decree." This is the main tradition that we know in the Catholic tradition.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: So then how is Francis interacting with that tradition? Is what he says in Fratelli Tutti just pure continuity? Are there any sort of new angles or new emphases that he brings in?
Martin Schlag: There is something new. He calls private property a secondary right. Now, this is confusing because secondary can also be understood in the sense of unimportant, when you say, "Oh, that's secondary." But that's not the way we should understand it because secondary in the Catholic tradition means derived. The Aristotelian-Thomist strand of the Catholic tradition said that private property is an institution of natural law. They do not call it a natural right but an institution of natural law and they derive it from the common good. So because it is better for the common good, therefore, we should have private property.
If you think of John Locke, it was actually the other way around. You say the first right is myself subjective right to private property. And then we come together and we create the commonwealth. And the task of the commonwealth is to protect my private property, and if it doesn't do that anymore, then I just go away. I quit. And so this modern approach has the difficulty that you have to put together the common good after you have the private rights, whereas in the Catholic tradition, private property was not considered an absolute right, but a right that has a social mortgage. It creates social responsibility; as soon as you have property, you have to care about others as well.
And so it's like thinking of a horizontal dimension of property, a horizontal dimension and a vertical dimension. And the vertical dimension is the universal destination of all goods. "The world exists for us all," says Pope Francis in Fratelli Tutti. This is very traditional, the universal destination of all goods. But then there's also the seventh commandment: thou shalt not steal. And that presupposes that there is such a thing as private property. And so on the horizontal level, private property does exist and needs to be protected by laws.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: And so it's an interesting idea of flipping the order of priority compared to, say, Locke. It's kind of an anti-atomist way of thinking about the human community. It's not just made up of individuals, but somehow comes first. Could you do a little bit to make that idea plausible, kind of explain the sort of thinking that goes into that prioritization of the common and then the derivation of private property from that rather than the other way around?
Martin Schlag: We must remember that Aquinas is Aristotelian and Aristotle conceived of the human being as being part of the whole. He actually says, "If an organ of the body is taken out of the body and it's cut away, it isn't really an organ anymore; it's just a heap of tissue, of human tissue." " And in the same way," says Aristotle, "the human being stops being a human being when he or she leaves the polis, the city, the political community." And so we belong to the whole.
And Aquinas says, "Yes and no." He says, "We don't belong to the city in the same way as we belong to God. Only to God do we belong with everything, whereas in the city we owe certain things, but there is something that the city mustn't take away from me—my dignity, my property rights, kind of basic property rights and so on." And there's always like a certain tension. We are not only an individual, like an individual part of a whole, we are also a person, a human person that has dignity and actually the purpose and the sense of political community is to protect me.
I always say the Catholic social tradition has four big principles: human dignity, the common good, solidarity, and subsidiarity. And all four principles are in a certain antagonism or a certain tension, one to the other, and it's like a tent. A tent has at least four straps, which you peg into the ground, and then they all pull into different directions, and because they pull in different directions, you can erect the tent and you create a social space in which you can live.
If you fell into the temptation of saying "the tension is too big; I'm going to cut the straps; I just want one strap, then the tent would collapse." So if you say "I want to have absolute property rights because that is my individual freedom and I'd take away social responsibility," then the tent would collapse. And this is what we see—again and again it happens that you have people who sacrifice freedom on the alt of equality as communism did, or as some people in the West do, they sacrifice equality on the alt of freedom. But you need both. You need these four principles that keep on requiring us to balance our wishes and our needs against what the common good ones.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: You said at the outset that as an encyclical, Fratelli Tutti is addressed to all people of goodwill. Francis puts the onus then on us to ask whether we're people of goodwill and would include ourselves in the audience of that. So I'm wondering if you could outline, say, what two or three big takeaways do you think there are from Fratelli Tutti for, say, somebody who does own property? What sort of takeaways are there for that person?
Martin Schlag: Yeah, that's an excellent question. Pope Francis since he started being a Pope, he has been saying no to the idolatry of money. We mustn't make an idol of money. But at the same time, he says, "Invest! You need money." He's not dumb. He lives in the world. He knows you need money. So I think for a business person that means think about the purpose of your business and it should be more than just profit. Profit is an indicator of whether your business is going well. It is important. You have to make profit, but it's like the gas with which you drive your car. It's not the purpose of the car. It takes you where you want to go but you have to be able to motivate and to explain what the purpose of your business it, and there's a growing movement that does that.
And the other big idea that I think people can take from the encyclical is from the subtitle. It's on fraternity or friendship. And I think that means if you're an owner, you're a business owner, how can you create meaningful work for the others and for yourself? How can I give variety of tasks? How can I give significance? How can I give recognition? How can I help my colleagues to be empowered, to work autonomously? See them as humans, as friends, as brothers and sisters.
And the third idea that he stresses in Fratelli Tutti but has done so in other writings of his, he always opposes elitism and false universalism when you want to uniform everything. So I think that is an appeal for us to think of how is my institution? Does my institution foster virtue? Do I have a good firm, a good business firm? And I think on a practical level is to think does my business firm have inclusive mechanisms. Do I listen to my colleagues? Are there regular debates? Is there good internal communication? Have I given thought of how I could involve everyone in the decision-making process? Of course there have to be clear competences and the CEO is the CEO and so on. But otherwise, we get this phenomenon of "stay and quit." People are not incentivized and money just goes that far as incentive. If you have people who are with heart and with passion, that can go a long way.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: Now, I wonder if we might also then flip the equation and say, Francis isn't just addressing those who hold a lot of property, who owned businesses or run them, but is addressing those also who are on the outside of those forms of power and influence. Does he have particular things, particular implications from this encyclical for people in that sort of situation?
Martin Schlag: Absolutely. Yes. He speaks of the peripheries. He's convinced that the big changes in society will not come from the elites, but from the peripheries. Probably the correct answer is that it's both. He loves the expression " the people," "to be one of the people." And with that he actually shows that he's not Marxist because he's inclusive. He says: "Everyone belongs to the people who is willing to contribute to the common good. You can be rich or poor. You can be an employer or an employee. All of us have their part to play. Nobody can say that doesn't address me. That's not my business."
When he was still Archbishop of Buenos Aires, in an interview, he said, "At the final judgment, when Jesus says 'I was hungry and you didn't give me to eat' and so on," he says, "we won't be able to excuse ourselves by saying, 'Oh, I thought the government was in charge of that.' No, it's yours; it's your task." So he appeals to everyone to recognize their duty and their responsibility in producing a fraternal society that has social friendship.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: What does a fraternal society look like in Francis' imagination?
Martin Schlag: That's a good question. He keeps on saying the church can't give technical solutions. What is fraternity? First of all, it might have struck you that he actually quotes the French Revolution. He says, "Liberté, égalité, fraternité." I think it's the first encyclical that does that. And if we look, Liberté—that's liberalism; égalité—socialism; fraternité—who has developed a political party on the basis of fraternity? And actually the French Revolution after some months replaced the word fraternité with nation, nation, because it was just too difficult.
I think the wisdom, the right answer, is to look back to political philosophy—I'm thinking of the Stoics—who said there're two great social principles: justice is the first one. Justice is the first social principle. But justice without benevolence, they say, becomes too harsh, too hard. We need both. We need justice and benevolence. So I think what Francis is saying is, look, justice is not enough; it is necessary; it's the first social principle, but we also need love and charity, like the warm heart that pumps the blood, but you need the head to think; you need both head and heart. We have to be cold headed and warm hearted to do the right thing, to find the right thing.
And actually human dignity, if we consider it, is more a consequence of love than it is of justice because respecting everyone—even the person I don't like, even my enemy, even the criminal, who I don't owe anything, and I still—nevertheless, I still have to respect them. Isn't that more a question of charity, of giving something which is mine to them than of giving them something which is owed to them? That is, I think, what he means by a fraternal society—one that always takes into consideration that I need compassion, I need kindness, in addition to applying the laws of justice.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: Father Martin, thank you so much for your time here today and for helping us to consider Fratelli Tutti and its place in this long arc of Catholic social thought. It's been a pleasure.
Martin Schlag: Thank you for me too. Thank you.
Ryan McAnnally-Linz: This marks the last installment of our series on Fratelli Tutti. Many thanks to Nicole Flores, Sister Helen Alford, and Father Martin Schlag for their time, their insights, and their goodwill, to Evan Rosa for producing these shows, and to Louis Kim for helping orient our thinking about the relevance of Fratelli Tutti for our listeners.
And thank you for joining us. I hope you found it fruitful to think along with Francis. Personally, I don't agree with everything he says in Fratelli Tutti and there are places where he doesn't say things that I think really ought to be said. Nevertheless, I'm grateful for Francis' address to all people of goodwill. He has a way of inviting me back into questions that it's all too easy to overlook and spurring me to be a person of goodwill and pursue answers to those questions outside the bubbles of my own intellectual, political and religious communities. In that spirit, it might be fitting to end on a beautiful and evocative segment of the encyclical, where the Pope is taking on the hard work of envisioning a politics of love.
"Good politics," he says, "combines love with hope and with confidence in the reserves of goodness present in human hearts." He goes on to suggest some difficult but necessary questions, writing:
“At times, in thinking of the future, we do well to ask ourselves, ‘Why I am doing this?’, ‘What is my real aim?’ For as time goes on, reflecting on the past, the questions will not be: ‘How many people endorsed me?’, ‘How many voted for me?’, ‘How many had a positive image of me?’ The real, and potentially painful, questions will be, ‘How much love did I put into my work?’ ‘What did I do for the progress of our people?’ ‘What mark did I leave on the life of society?’ ‘What real bonds did I create?’ ‘What positive forces did I unleash?’ ‘How much social peace did I sow?’ ‘What good did I achieve in the position that was entrusted to me?’”
Thanks for listening.
Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured Father Martin Schlag and theologian, Ryan McAnnally-Linz. Special thanks to Louis Kim for his feedback and guidance on the series. I'm Evan Rosa and I edited and produced the show. For more information, visit us online at faith.yale.edu. We produce a new episode every Saturday, and you can subscribe through any podcast app. We're grateful that you're listening to this podcast. We're passionate about making this work consistently accessible to people who are genuinely concerned about the viability of faith in a world racked with division, contested views about what it means to be human, and what it means to live life.
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