Problems with the Pope

Reading Response for: Work as Co-Creation: A Critique of a Remarkably Bad Idea by Stanley Hauerwas

Hauerwas brings up a legitimate criticism to the Pope's encyclical when he says that "concrete implications remain unclear or uncertain...it simply errs, or supports or condemns positions no one holds." In short, the Pope has lost touch with the real, everyday person's, world. I agree with Hauerwas. He in fact said many of the things I was thinking while reading the encyclical. John Paul II seems to "lack the courage to take a position on anything," and "works much like the preachers who write their sermons and then look for texts to support them."

Hauerwas warns that perhaps the Pope is trying to assign dignity to common work in order to keep the lower classes satisfied and soothe the consciences of the wealthy - "Perhaps then, the best definition of work is 'that from which the rich are exempt.' The rich thus must attribute meaning to work in an effort to morally legitimate their own parasitical status."

However, ultimately, we shouldn't have to find meaning or fulfillment based on some abstract "dignity of common work," but rather knowing simply that our work "helps sustain the lives of other people."