Richard Ybarra
Asst. Sports Editor
LAST YEAR, Circuit City fired nine percent of its workers in an effort to cut costs and stay competitive. At the same time these layoffs were occurring, Circuit City CEO Philip Schoonover was earning an annual paycheck $716,000, enjoying $704,000 in bonuses, and receiving three million dollars worth of stock options.
At a recent campus lecture, Charles Rice, Professor Emeritus of the Notre Dame Law School, asked, “Is this a moral question? What does a business decision have to do with morality?” To provide some of the answers, Rice drew upon the social teaching found in Pope Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est.
Rice spoke of the Pope’s concern that the western world is becoming increasingly relativistic and growing more hostile towards the idea of absolute morality. Morality inherently cannot be a relativistic construction, Rice argued, because it is the “statement of natural law.” God built a nature into us, a nature that reaches its full potential through cultivation of the good. The struggle, according to Rice, is in determining how to go about cultivating the good inside of us. “Some things are good for us and some things are not…It is a good to put gasoline in a J10 [car] rather than to put water in it.”
How do we know what is good for our nature? Rice argued that God has given us clear instructions through the person of Jesus Christ and His church. “Christ established the Church as the authoritative interpreter of the natural law,” he said. Being Christian, Rice asserted, means both following church authority and seeking “a personal encounter with a person, Christ. His job description . . . God.”
Rice confronted the relationship between faith and reason by asking a student if he believed in God and, if so, to prove it. The student believed in God, but could not prove His existence. Rice then asked “Do you believe in the great pumpkin?” Through this light hearted banter, Rice wanted to convey that there is only so much one can know through reason – the rest must be taken on faith. Showing how strongly he held this conviction, Rice poked fun at St. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval Catholic theologian and philosopher who formed a rational argument for the existence of God: “St. Thomas Aquinas was a graduate of Notre Dame Law School. He got a B. I had him.”
In the second half of the lecture, Rice focused on the two basic principles of Catholic social teaching that are outlined in The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church: human dignity and solidarity.
Concerning human dignity, Rice argued that because each person is a spiritual being, every human life is infinitely valuable. Human beings’ spiritual nature, Rice said, can be known through reason. “[We] can do things only a spiritual thing can do.” As an example, he cited man’s ability to intuit abstract ideas. Man is able to see that a circle has roundness, but he cannot ever see roundness itself. Rice offered man’s ability to reflect on himself as another proof of human spirituality, an idea extensively developed by the classical Greek philosophic school.
Man’s spirituality invites him to enjoy eternal life in Christ, and this universal invitation is the basis for human dignity. Perpetual existence, however, is not a distinction that any business or corporation will ever enjoy. Thus, Rice argued that business decisions must be made with the state of the worker as the primary concern. “Every state and corporation that has ever existed has either gone out of business or will go out of business. Man is immortal and has a destiny greater than any corporation. Relation to others is not something we do; it is something we are.”
Rice also was adamant in arguing that the primacy of human solidarity as a business model does not preclude the potential for profit. “Provided that it is done with respect for persons…Profit is essential. No profit no business, but it is not the only criteria,” Rice said. “[This is] the culture of having rather than being. I have, therefore I am. Haber, ergo sum. I have, therefore I am something…In many parts of America, a spirit, a concept of neo-liberalism prevails. Man’s worth is based on his economic worth.”
Rice closed the lecture by emphasizing that charity must be supplemented with prayer. Practical charity is just not good enough. Supernatural charity—Christian love—is the vocation of all. In this, Notre Dame Our Mother is the model for us to imitate.
Contact Richard at Richard.Ybarra.5@nd.edu.
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