Work, Worship, Laborem Exercens, and the United States Today

Introduction

IN 1981 LABORE MEERCENS reaffirmed that God's sons and daughters are the primary value of work. We are different from other animal life because we have dominion over the earth and this dominion is achieved by our work. The encyclical described some negative aspects of our dominion that included increasing levels of pollution, technology, and automation that at times treated people as instruments of production, and a poor distribution of work that left many in poverty. While the Church did not suggest that it had the answers to these difficulties, it did argue that the rights and dignity of workers were primary; for example, just wages and benefits were minimum means of insuring proper treatment of workers. Philosophical thought itself, in the forms of materialism and economism, making human beings the effect of material processes or separating them from capital, had led to abuses of humanity. For this reason, Pope John Paul II underscored the rights of workers to organize themselves for their commonweal and emphasized that ownership—private property—served the worker. The task of the Church, according to the encyclical, was to speak out on the value of work as part of its evangelical message, teaching about humanity's role in the activity of the creator, reminding humanity of Christ's work in the world, and raising up human work in light of the cross and the resurrection of Christ.

In 2002 work-related injustices continue to exist when first-world workers suffer from workaholism, elements of alienation, and burnout on the job and third-world workers struggle to sustain themselves on less than adequate wages and few or no employment benefits. In the following few pages, I sketch out a picture of work life in the United States today, discuss how the spirituality of work requires some healthy acceptance of toil and commitment, and relate work to a view that sees sacrifice as an element of the constitutive good in the postmodern world. By "constitutive good," I mean naming what the good life is as a community. Our worship of God includes a recognition of suffering and sorrow in our activities—including work—along with a thankfulness for God's gifts of creation. The encyclical's spirituality of work sees toil as one element of work that is "inevitable" and this means self-denial should be a factor in our work efforts. As people living in a postmodern time, who are often focused on individual happiness and the avoidance of pain, how might we better understand the inevitable presence of toil in our lives as sons and daughters of a loving God? Philosopher Charles Taylor and theologians Miroslav Volf and Kenan Osborne, O.F.M., offer language that speaks to the relationship between work and the transcendent in a postmodern era, and I will consider Laborem Exercens in light of this language. My definition of postmodern focuses on a feeling that truth has no essence, that societies will hold no common worldview, and therefore an agreement on the constitutive good will never exist. How effective is Laborem Exercens at addressing the work lives of postmodern workers? How are work and worship being integrated?

Framing of U.S. Work Today

This paper is written from a North American's perspective, focusing on the subjective nature of work in the U.S. context but also acknowledging the global interconnection of all workers today. Every worker is both a producer and a consumer. Acting as consumers, U. S. workers and their government are indirect employers of third world workers. Their responsible use of income to purchase products and services that then provide adequate income for other workers requires a social conscience and a limiting of personal and communal desires. Some form of spiritual discernment relative to consumption will go far to helping others when individual purchases...