The Church’s teaching tells us that each of us not only has the right to participate in economic activity, but also a duty to do so. “If economic activity is to have a moral character, it must be directed to all men, and to all peoples. Everyone has the right to participate in economic life and the duty to contribute, each according to his own capacity, to the progress of his own country and to that of the entire human family.

If, to some degree, everyone is responsible for everyone else, then each person also has the duty to commit himself to the economic development of all. This is a duty in solidarity and in justice, but it is also the best way to bring economic progress to all of humanity.”

This is a very important message for the Trinidad and Tobago society. There have been complaints aired on talk shows, in letters to the editor and other media that many persons are unwilling to work and/or participate in productive activity.

These complaints refer to those who prefer less productive activities such as a life of crime, which they believe will afford them the same things that productive economic activity could, perhaps with less effort.

Or perhaps some of them feel they are unable to function in an economically productive manner. The complaints also refer to those persons who are employed and put little or no effort into ensuring that the service they are meant to provide is provided.

Many of these persons who for whatever reason do not engage in productive economic activity, which is not only their right but their duty, often do not understand the importance of economic activity to their own well being and the well being of the entire community and country. If perhaps they understood the morality of economic activity we would have a much more productive Trinidad and Tobago.

“When practised morally, economic activity is therefore service mutually rendered by the production of goods and services that are useful for the growth of each person, and it becomes an opportunity for every individual to embody solidarity and live the vocation of ‘communion with others for which God created him.’

The effort to create and carry out social and economic projects that are capable of encouraging a more equitable society and a more human world represents a difficult challenge, but also a stimulating duty for all who work in the economic sector and are involved with the economic sciences.”

The Church also however warns that while there is a responsibility to work and ensure efficient production and increases in wealth, there must also be the emphasis on the quality of the human being’s life.

There must not be an emphasis only on the accumulation of wealth. “The economy has as its object the development of wealth and its progressive increase, not only in quantity but also in quality; this is morally correct if it is directed to man’s overall development in solidarity and to that of the society in which people live and work.

Development, in fact, cannot be reduced to a mere process of accumulating goods and services. On the contrary, accumulation by itself, even were it for the common good, is not a sufficient condition for bringing about authentic human happiness.

In this sense, the Church’s social Magisterium warns against the treachery hidden within a development that is only quantitative, for the ‘excessive availability of every kind of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups, easily makes people slaves of “possession” and of immediate gratification… This is the so-called civilisation of “consumption” or “consumerism”.

Next week we discuss capitalism within the context of Morality and the Economy.

Interested in purchasing the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church? Please contact the Catholic Commission for Social Justice, Archbishop’s House – 622-6680.