What made me wonder is the three most famous Christmastime movies for adults:
–“It’s A Wonderful Life” (made by Frank Capra, a Catholic and supporter of FDR’s New Deal)
–“A Christmas Carol.”
–“Miracle on 34th Street.”
All these movies seem to have in common that business persons discover and respond more to the grace of God and as a result don’t make earning profits with their business as important as it formerly had been to them.
It that how a devout Catholic in business does act, or should act?
Or should he or she simply do everything within the law to maximize profits, just as any ordinary business person does?
By the way, that term “the Common Good” is used in the official documents that propound the Social Teachings of the Catholic Church. These can all be found on vatican.va
You sure are asking a lot of questions recently…
I think you may have a slight misunderstanding of the concept of “the common good.”
The [Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church](
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/p...c_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html#Meaning and primary implications) defines it as follows:
According to its primary and broadly accepted sense, the common good indicates “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily”.
I think what you are reaching for here is the virtue of justice, rather than the principle of the Common Good.
Specifically, the price of goods and services sold by a firm is regulated by “commutative justice,” while the wages given to an employee are regulated by “distributive justice.”
Aquinas says the following about “commutative justice:”
in commutations something is paid to an individual on account of something of his that has been received, as may be seen chiefly in selling and buying, where the notion of commutation is found primarily. Hence it is necessary to equalize thing with thing, so that the one person should pay back to the other just so much as he has become richer out of that which belonged to the other. The result of this will be equality according to the “arithmetical mean” which is gauged according to equal excess in quantity.
In other words, there should be a “just” relationship between the items that are exchanged. This idea precludes the idea of price gouging on the part of the seller; it also precludes the idea of theft on the part of the buyer. And that could impact profits.
Aquinas points out the following in regard to “distributive justice:” (S. Theol. II-II-61-2)
in distributive justice something is given to a private individual, in so far as what belongs to the whole is due to the part, and in a quantity that is proportionate to the importance of the position of that part in respect of the whole. Consequently in distributive justice a person receives all the more of the common goods, according as he holds a more prominent position in the community. This prominence in an aristocratic community is gauged according to virtue, in an oligarchy according to wealth, in a democracy according to liberty, and in various ways according to various forms of community. Hence in distributive justice the mean is observed, not according to equality between thing and thing, but according to proportion between things and persons: in such a way that even as one person surpasses another, so that which is given to one person surpasses that which is allotted to another.
The point is that wages should be fairly distributed and in proportion to the significance of the contribution the individual employee makes. And that could impact profits.
The Magisterium from the past 150 years goes into far greater details. But the above is the basis for most of it. While justice should be the primary factor, I don’t know of anything that specifically denies pursuing profit, provided that justice is observed always.
