Business execs must contribute to ‘making life more human’ for others

Man is made to work according to the gifts, talents, and inclinations the Lord has given to him. For us in Legatus, this means business leadership.
 
The Catechism tells us, “[e]veryone has the right of economic initiative; everyone should make legitimate use of his talents to contribute to the abundance that will benefit all and to harvest the just fruits of his labor” (CCC 2429). Pope St. John Paul II further describes Church teaching on work in his opening lines of his 1981 encyclical Laborem Exercens (“On Human Work”): “Through work man must earn his daily bread and… above all, elevat[e] unceasingly the cultural and moral level of the society within which he lives,” and he defines work as any activity “of which man is capable and to which he is predisposed by his very nature.”

A Catholic businessman must “harvest the just fruits of his labor,” as the Catechism stipulates, if God has made him “capable” and “predisposed” to entrepreneurial risk or business leadership, as Laborem Exercens stipulates. That is, the Catholic businessman can be motivated to take on this role in the economy for an ordered reason. John Paul II says elsewhere in Laborem Exercens, “[W]ork is a key, probably the essential key, to the whole social question” and to “making life more human.”
 
Those capable or predisposed to business leadership must take on this responsibility in the marketplace. We must contribute to “making life more human” if God has given us the ability and talents to do so. Work is meant to be a vehicle to unceasingly elevate the cultural and moral level of our society.

If Catholic founders do not accept this mantle of responsibility, there will be a moral vacuum inside the labor marketplace. Worldly motivations in business center around concerns such as “improving society” toward a secular, utopian ideology, “perfecting” the product or service a corporation sells, or the explicit accumulation of money. We live in an age where materialistic desires dominate marketplace decisions, produce a corrupted answer to “the whole social question,” and have made life less human. Only Catholic principles can create an alternative paradigm to answer “the whole social question” in a manner oriented towards the truth.

The correct motivation for a business leader is that of the Creator, by unconditional love. Saint Thomas Aquinas defines love as “to wish the good of the other” (Summa Theologica II, 26.4). Through love, the labor of certain individuals capable and predisposed to leadership transforms from a material pursuit into a legitimate imitation of Christ.
 
Indeed, John Paul II says in Laborem Exercens, “[i]n carrying out this mandate, man, every human being, reflects the very action of the Creator of the universe.” God, the ultimate founder, provides the template for leadership as the Creator of the universe, the founder of the Catholic Church, and the Creator of every individual human life.

Catholic business leaders must offer unconditional love to all the human relationships formed within the context of our work. We must wish the good of employees, customers, investors, vendors, and even the human beings in competitor businesses. We must desire the salvation and ordering of all in our competitive sphere toward God and a relationship with Him through the Catholic Church.
 
We must assume personal economic risk and yet still choose unconditional love over any material benefit every time a choice arises. We must turn our work as business leaders into a labor of love centered around the human person.

KAILASH DURAISWAMI is a technology entrepreneur in the artificial intelligence space and founder of Fidei. He is a member of Legatus’ Denver Chapter.