Wal-Mart Bashing at Church?

[BLB_Oregon]

But The High Cost of Low Price leaves out the rest of the story. The majority of listed employers are not voracious corporations. They are public schools: The school districts of Houston, Dallas, El Paso, Austin, Brownsville, and others, including the University of Texas system, all have significant numbers of workers who rely on assistance programs. All those systems are ranked separately; if public education were considered one entity, it would far outrank Wal-Mart in the number of employees receiving public aid. (National Review, December 2005)

Taxpayers and governments are not the normative standards for morality in employment, nor is it sufficient for a Christian to merely remain within the civil law or common practice.

The question, though, is not whether WalMart is a horrible corporate entity which prospers only by stooping to evil practices, an outstanding corporate citizen, or something in-between, or whether they are being unfairly singled out for what many feel is a widespread societal problem.

The question is this: Should youth groups tackle difficult moral problems that the Church has not taken a definitive stand on, and if so, what should be the parameters under which the discussion takes place?

A discussion like this, moderated carefully, could be an excellent place to introduce practical topics like morality and social responsibility in spending, how to use prudent investigation to avoid rash judgement and perpetuation of unfair attacks upon reputation, and how civilized discussion can take place between Catholics of vastly differing opinions… just to name a very few.

If, OTOH, these “discussions” are more or less opportunities for spoon-feeding of the youth minister’s own morality, as one necessarily (and rightly) does at times with one’s own children, and especially with younger ones, then I think it is best to stick with topics upon which a definitive Church stance exists… or to at least to very carefully label that which is Church teaching and that morality which is not officially defined by the magesterium.

Youth groups are usually for young adults, or those just entering adulthood. I think the discussions should be allowed, but should not be as free-ranging as would be appropriate for adults who are less impressionable and who are more free to stick to their own opinions.

If anything, the main point of these discussions should be that good Catholics don’t always agree. Bishops don’t always agree. Cardinals don’t always agree. There are bad, good, and better ways to live with those inevitable disagreements. It is not lack of disagreement that marks a healthy Christian community, after all, but the ability to disagree on important topics without resorting to strife.

If a parish has youth ministers to pull it off, it would be profitable to go there. If not, discretion would be the better part of valor. I would hope that youth ministers would vet their ideas with parents and the pastor, and that the pastor would decide on whether a green light was in order.

 

[Writer]

BLB_Oregon:

Taxpayers and governments are not the normative standards for morality in employment, nor is it sufficient for a Christian to merely remain within the civil law or common practice.

The question, though, is not whether WalMart is a horrible corporate entity which prospers only by stooping to evil practices, an outstanding corporate citizen, or something in-between, or whether they are being unfairly singled out for what many feel is a widespread societal problem.

The question is this: Should youth groups tackle difficult moral problems that the Church has not taken a definitive stand on, and if so, what should be the parameters under which the discussion takes place?

A discussion like this, moderated carefully, could be an excellent place to introduce practical topics like morality and social responsibility in spending, how to use prudent investigation to avoid rash judgement and perpetuation of unfair attacks upon reputation, and how civilized discussion can take place between Catholics of vastly differing opinions… just to name a very few.

If, OTOH, these “discussions” are more or less opportunities for spoon-feeding of the youth minister’s own morality, as one necessarily (and rightly) does at times with one’s own children, and especially with younger ones, then I think it is best to stick with topics upon which a definitive Church stance exists… or to at least to very carefully label that which is Church teaching and that morality which is not officially defined by the magesterium.

Youth groups are usually for young adults, or those just entering adulthood. I think the discussions should be allowed, but should not be as free-ranging as would be appropriate for adults who are less impressionable and who are more free to stick to their own opinions.

If anything, the main point of these discussions should be that good Catholics don’t always agree. Bishops don’t always agree. Cardinals don’t always agree. There are bad, good, and better ways to live with those inevitable disagreements. It is not lack of disagreement that marks a healthy Christian community, after all, but the ability to disagree on important topics without resorting to strife.

If a parish has youth ministers to pull it off, it would be profitable to go there. If not, discretion would be the better part of valor. I would hope that youth ministers would vet their ideas with parents and the pastor, and that the pastor would decide on whether a green light was in order.

You make some good points… Out of curiousity, who would you point to as “normative standards for morality in employment”. What are some examples that come to mind?

As to your other comments, I would actually agree to the general discussion as long as it didn’t include the identified inflammatory and unsubstantiated video. From what I have read and heard from those who have seen it, is another example of union trash and shouldn’t be seen at a church youth group function. I would have no objection to the youth group having a critical discussion of the retail industry in general–or even Wal-Mart in particual–I just don’t think that the video format was appropriate.

 

[BLB_Oregon]

Writer:

You make some good points… Out of curiousity, who would you point to as “normative standards for morality in employment”. What are some examples that come to mind?

As to your other comments, I would actually agree to the general discussion as long as it didn’t include the identified inflammatory and unsubstantiated video. From what I have read and heard from those who have seen it, is another example of union trash and shouldn’t be seen at a church youth group function. I would have no objection to the youth group having a critical discussion of the retail industry in general–or even Wal-Mart in particual–I just don’t think that the video format was appropriate.

The Vatican has been putting out encyclicals outlining normative standards for morality in employment for over a hundred years. As with sanctity, the idea isn’t to say, “Well, most people think this is alright, so it must be okay” or “Oh, well such-and-so saint had this fault, it is ok” or “This aspect of business upsets me, it must be bad.” You have to buy food and other essentials somewhere. You take the true normative standards from the Gospels, which have been expounded upon by one pope after another, and you do the best with the economic options you have. In a sense, you’re going where dogma doesn’t go, where faith and conscience are the only guides. Let’s face it, those are always works in progress, but it is the light we get to walk by.

I am of two minds about documentaries like that. You make a good point. Documentaries of this kind very often are not even-handed. I don’t think that’s because the people making them set out to lie, but because they make them as rhetorical vehicles. You don’t expect entire even-handedness in that case, any more than you expect it at a political convention. Adults usually understand this (even if they don’t like it), but youth might be too susceptible to the emotion of their message to see it.

That is one side, and for many youth groups, that is as far as it should go–and I mean in particular those groups where, to put it bluntly, emotional response is the level on which the ministers themselves think and act.

The other side, though, is that it will only be 3-4 years before most of these kids are off to college, utterly assailed by this kind of rhetoric. If they go off with a critical mind and a prudent heart, all well and good. In that case, they can watch this kind of thing, do some investigation if the issue speaks to them, and distinguish that which is worth a passionate response and that which is not…possibly even seeing a third way to go at the problem that takes the concerns of all sides into account. If they go off having been shielded from emotional rhetoric, however, their horrified parents may watch their kids spend the better part of their college years ricocheting self-righteously from one fashionable cause to the next, as ill-informed youth is wont to do. Bless their hearts, they’ve got passion to spend, and spend it they will.

Ideally, I think older kids should watch this kind of stuff, as a vehicle for being taught how an adult Catholic treats issues like this… how they investigate it, how they respond to it, how they handle the ways in which others respond quite differently to the same issue. If there isn’t a way to give them that, though, then you are only exposing them to something that they are going to respond to with emotion only, since youth knows no other way to respond when rhetoric touches their hearts. That is doing them a disservice.

 

[Ortho]

Perhaps the kids should be taught some economics before they tackle Wal-Mart?

 

[BLB_Oregon]

Ortho:

Perhaps the kids should be taught some economics before they tackle Wal-Mart?

Like 'em or not, you’d be hard-pressed to find a company with more to teach about the full spectrum of modern economic theory–the working theory, that is–than WalMart. Some would even say that Sam Walton’s innovations were such that he invented retail and manufacturing reality as we know it presently.

Keep in mind… there are many people, the college-bound included, who have had all the formal education in the field of economics they will ever have by the time they hit their final year in their home parish’s youth group. Call it sad or call it inevitable, but it is true. For those not headed to Catholic university, it probably marks the last year of formal instruction in Catholic ethics and morals. Given the right circumstances, Catholic youth group is the ideal time to introduce young adults not already on that track to the eventual reality of on-going and more-or-less self-guided adult education.

 

[Writer]

BLB_Oregon:

The Vatican has been putting out encyclicals outlining normative standards for morality in employment for over a hundred years. As with sanctity, the idea isn’t to say, “Well, most people think this is alright, so it must be okay” or “Oh, well such-and-so saint had this fault, it is ok” or “This aspect of business upsets me, it must be bad.” You have to buy food and other essentials somewhere. You take the true normative standards from the Gospels, which have been expounded upon by one pope after another, and you do the best with the economic options you have. In a sense, you’re going where dogma doesn’t go, where faith and conscience are the only guides. Let’s face it, those are always works in progress, but it is the light we get to walk by.

I am of two minds about documentaries like that. You make a good point. Documentaries of this kind very often are not even-handed. I don’t think that’s because the people making them set out to lie, but because they make them as rhetorical vehicles. You don’t expect entire even-handedness in that case, any more than you expect it at a political convention. Adults usually understand this (even if they don’t like it), but youth might be too susceptible to the emotion of their message to see it.

That is one side, and for many youth groups, that is as far as it should go–and I mean in particular those groups where, to put it bluntly, emotional response is the level on which the ministers themselves think and act.

The other side, though, is that it will only be 3-4 years before most of these kids are off to college, utterly assailed by this kind of rhetoric. If they go off with a critical mind and a prudent heart, all well and good. In that case, they can watch this kind of thing, do some investigation if the issue speaks to them, and distinguish that which is worth a passionate response and that which is not…possibly even seeing a third way to go at the problem that takes the concerns of all sides into account. If they go off having been shielded from emotional rhetoric, however, their horrified parents may watch their kids spend the better part of their college years ricocheting self-righteously from one fashionable cause to the next, as ill-informed youth is wont to do. Bless their hearts, they’ve got passion to spend, and spend it they will.

Ideally, I think older kids should watch this kind of stuff, as a vehicle for being taught how an adult Catholic treats issues like this… how they investigate it, how they respond to it, how they handle the ways in which others respond quite differently to the same issue. If there isn’t a way to give them that, though, then you are only exposing them to something that they are going to respond to with emotion only, since youth knows no other way to respond when rhetoric touches their hearts. That is doing them a disservice.

Some great points. I just realized that I forgot to mention a couple things that may have been important to consider. First, unnoticed to my wife or me, the film was advertised in the bulletin. Other interested persons were also invited to come. That gave me the impression of a church-sanctioned anti-Wal-Mart party. Second, the youth group age was junior high through high school. (High schoolers joined because of the movie.)

As I said, though, I have communicated with church leadership now and am satisified that my concerns are understood and appreciated. What they were trying to do was similar to what BLB Oregon described in the earlier post. So, leadership’s goals were, more or less, okay, but the audio visual aids could have used some improvement, and they did not understand the complexities of the issues they were trying to convey to the children, as one leader acknowledged to me.

 

[BLB_Oregon]

Writer:

As I said, though, I have communicated with church leadership now and am satisified that my concerns are understood and appreciated. What they were trying to do was similar to what BLB Oregon described in the earlier post. So, leadership’s goals were, more or less, okay, but the audio visual aids could have used some improvement, and they did not understand the complexities of the issues they were trying to convey to the children, as one leader acknowledged to me.

So, in the future, the advertisement for youth-group documentaries will state, “The film will be critically discussed afterward.”?

 

[Writer]

BLB_Oregon:

So, in the future, the advertisement for youth-group documentaries will state, “The film will be critically discussed afterward.”?

That would be the right track… In this case, though, it wasn’t only a case of using it as a catalyst for critical thought. According to my daughter, for example, there were folks chirping up and saying they hated the store so much that they tried to avoid driving by it. I just don’t think the presenters knew exactly what they were doing, and it became an anti-Wal-Mart discussion time–as opposed to an opportunity to criticaly examine that store within the larger economic and ethical context. Missed opportunity, I guess.

One reason this perhaps irritated me the way it did (besides me being a conservative guy) may have been because of some of the things that were discussed in my religion class at the Catholic elementary school I attended in Yakima. They were wonderful teachers, but, once in a while, we’d get off on tangents that remind me a lot of what happened to my daughter. Sometimes, the teacher might be playing records backwards on a turntable to try to catch the bad words. Other times, we were being stirred-up about the various urban legends of the day in the late 1970s. I just don’t want well-meaning, but misguided folks, to confuse church youth any more than is absolutely necessary!

 

[BLB_Oregon]

Writer:

I just don’t want well-meaning, but misguided folks, to confuse church youth any more than is absolutely necessary!

Yes… and few of us know when we’re misguided. This is why parental and pastoral oversight is wise, something youth ministers shouldn’t chafe at (as much as any of us might initially feel like doing so, in their position).

It is, after all, the parents who have the primary responsibility for teaching their children and the pastor who has primary responsibility for religious education programs in a parish. Educators have to be very careful not to even appear to children to try to usurp legitimate authority. It sends a bad message.

 

[Ortho]

Writer:

Some great points. I just realized that I forgot to mention a couple things that may have been important to consider. First, unnoticed to my wife or me, the film was advertised in the bulletin. Other interested persons were also invited to come. That gave me the impression of a church-sanctioned anti-Wal-Mart party. Second, the youth group age was junior high through high school. (High schoolers joined because of the movie.)

As I said, though, I have communicated with church leadership now and am satisified that my concerns are understood and appreciated. What they were trying to do was similar to what BLB Oregon described in the earlier post. So, leadership’s goals were, more or less, okay, but the audio visual aids could have used some improvement, and they did not understand the complexities of the issues they were trying to convey to the children, as one leader acknowledged to me.

Milton Friedman did an excellent series on economics about 25 years ago. It’s runs about ten one hour shows. I would recommend it to any youth group. Study of Wal-Mart is an application of economics. It would be instructive to know the economics before trying to apply it.

In terms of the Catholic Church, I think it is woefully out of touch with economic reality. I’d recommend the Friedman series to all the bishops, too.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

Writer:

As an aside, what better marketing ploy could a Wal-Mart competitor secretly create but to fuel this kind of controversy? It reminds me of some Procter and Gamble urban legends that were being discussed in my Catholic religion class at elementary school in the late 1970s, or so. Does anyone remember this? I think the stories were later somehow connected to a competitor, but I am not sure…

I seem to recall it had to do with the Protor and Gamble logo being satanic…Not true one bit, but a lot of people bought into it.