“Business is a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving the world. It can be a fruitful source of prosperity for the area in which it operates, especially if it sees the creation of jobs as an essential part of its service to the common good” (Laudato Si', 129)

Business and ethics are often thought of as unrelated. Dickens’ Scrooge presents a memorable version of the businessman with no heart. One does not have to think of Scrooge to conjure images of greedy business people, drawn by lust for profits into disregard for their fellow men. These images are in the press, on stage, and on screen. Recent global experiences of economic collapse and high unemployment coinciding with exorbitant executive compensation – even in cases of CEO failure – make Scrooge look quaint by comparison. Never before has the relationship of business to ethics looked less obvious or less practiced.

But we know Dickens’ Scrooge was, and is, a caricature of business people. Many business people are driven by service, and not profit. By taking enormous personal risks, they open restaurants, businesses and stores, create jobs, provide income and healthcare, often in pursuit of dreams that they can cook, build, entertain, and inform in some new and exciting way. Their dreams are the engines of wealth production and growth. That we view the practice of business through caricature is less a sign of the reality of business than of our own sense of the distance between ethics and business.

This course seeks to describe an alternative vision that assumes the integration of business and ethical life: good business presumes good ethics. Business, Pope Francis writes, quoting Pope Benedict XVI, “demands first of all ‘a transcendent vision of the person,’ because ‘without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space.’ It also calls for decisions, mechanisms and processes directed to a better distribution of wealth, the creation of sources of employment and an integral promotion of the poor which goes beyond a simple welfare mentality.” (Pope Francis, Message to World Economic Forum, 2014)

Throughout the course’s eight modules, you will be introduced to Catholic Social Doctrine (CSD), a literature tracing back more than one hundred years. CSD was developed as a rejection of socialism and defense of private property and the rights of business, workers, and people to expect justice in their relationships with each other.

Though CSD has its origins in the Catholic Church, its audience has never been exclusively Catholic. CSD aims to instruct all people of good will into ways of conceiving as harmonious the relationships of work to life, owners and managers to employees and consumers, and consumption to flourishing. Indeed, studies conducted by the faculty at Catholic University of America and by CAPP out of the Vatican indicate that Catholics are as unaware of CSD as is any other portion of the general population. Through this course, our goal is that you may see the vibrancy and potential for human flourishing that comes from recognizing the integration of work, business, ownership, and cooperation.