Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T08:11:22.171Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Roman Catholic Tradition and Ritual and Business Ethics: A Feminist Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Barbara Hilkert Andolsen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

Clerical workers are an important segment of the work force. Catholic social teachings and eucharistic practice shed useful moral light on the increase in contingent work arrangements among clerical workers. The venerable concept of “the universal destination of the goods of creation” and a newer understanding of technology as “a shared workbench” illuminate the importance of good jobs for clerical workers. However, in order to apply Catholic social teachings to issues concerning clerical work as women’s work, sexist elements in traditional Catholic social teachings must be critically assessed. Participation in the Eucharist helps share a moral stance of inclusivity and sensitivity to forms of social marginalization. While actual practice fails fully to embody gender or racial inclusivity, participation in the inclusive table fellowship of the Eucharist should make business leaders question treating contingent workers as a peripheral work force.

Type
Perspectives from Roman Catholicism:
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , March 1997 , pp. 71 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1If business ethicists were to pay serious attention to issues affecting clerical workers, they would need a mode of social analysis that examined closely the intersection of gender and class in clerical occupations. Clerical positions are often characterized as middle-class jobs, because they require a modicum of education, and they are office, not factory, jobs. Yet, clerical positions offer limited pay and prestige when compared to professional or managerial occupations. I agree with sociologist Valerie Carter who states “although the term ‘working class’ often conjures up images of blue-collar men, women in lower white-collar, administrative support jobs actually constitute a large portion of the working class.” (“The Family, the Workplace, and Work Technology: an Integrated Model of Class Identification among Women Office Workers,” Work and Occupations, 21 (August 1994): 308–309).Google Scholar
2Rosenthal, Neal H., “The Nature of Occupational Employment Growth: 1983–1993,” Monthly Labor Review, June, 1995: 47.Google Scholar
3Employed Persons by occupation, sex and age, table A-17, Employment and Earnings, February, 1995: 27.Google Scholar
4United States Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Automation of America’s Offices: 1985–2000. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1985, p. 303.Google Scholar
5I have discussed the employment impact of computer and telecommunications technology on clerical work in greater detail in Good Work at the Video Display Terminal: a Feminist Ethical Analysis of Changes in Clerical Work. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989, chapter 1, especially pages 26–34.Google Scholar
6Rogers, Jackie Krasas, “Just a Temp: Experience and Structure of Alienation in Temporary Clerical Employment,” Work and Occupations, 22 (May 1995): 138.Google Scholar
7Ibid.Google Scholar
8Part-time workers are often included in the category of contingent workers. However, if the focus of the discussion is the lack of job security suffered by contingent workers, this can be misleading since a significant number of part-time workers have long job tenure with the same employer. See Polivka, Anne E. and Nardone, Thomas, “On the Definitions of ‘Contingent Work,’” Monthly Labor Review, December, 1989, 10.Google Scholar
9Hagen, Elisabeth and Jenson, Jane, “Paradoxes and Promises: Work and Politics in the Postwar Years,” Feminization of the Labor Force: Paradoxes and Promises. Ed. by Jenson, Jane. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 4.Google Scholar
10Callaghan, Polly and Hartmann, Heidi, Contingent Work. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 1991; Tilly, Chris, Short Hours, Short Shrift. Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 1990.Google Scholar
11Golden, L. and Appelbaum, E., “What Was Driving the 1982–88 Boom in Temporary Employment: Preferences of Workers or Decisions and Power of Employers? American Journal of Economics and Sociology 51 (1992): 473–94.Google Scholar
12The economic vulnerability of elderly female workers is a cause for concern unless one, wrongly, assumes that these women will be in stable relationships throughout their entire retirement years with a male partner who had a career in the core labor force.Google Scholar
13“Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy,” Origins, NC Documentary Service, 16 (June 5, 1986), paragraph 34.Google Scholar
14Laborem Exercens, 55. The Papal Encyclicals, edited by Carlen, Claudia, volume 5 (1958–1981). McGarth Publishing Co.: 1981. Unless otherwise noted all papal encyclicals are from this source.Google Scholar
15Populorum Progressio, 22. Carlen, volume 5.Google Scholar
16Gaudium et Spes, 71. Sacrosantum Oecumenicum Concilium Vaticanum II, Constitutiones, Decreta, Delarationes. Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis: 1966. Translation mine.Google Scholar
17Mater et Magistra (Christianity and Social Progress), 109.Google Scholar
18Ibid, 105.Google Scholar
19Centesimus Annus (The Hundredth Year), 32–33. Text reprinted in National Catholic Reporter, May 24, 1991.Google Scholar
20Rerum Novarum, 13, emphasis added.Google Scholar
21Arcanum, (On Christian Marriage), 11.Google Scholar
22Meyer, Donald.Sex and Power: the Rise of Women in America, Russia, Sweden and Italy. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987, p. 5.Google Scholar
23Bassnett, Susan, Feminist Experiences: the Women’s Movement in Four Cultures. London: Allen and Unwin, 1986: pp. 98–100.Google Scholar
24Gaudium et Spes (the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World), 29, emphasis added. In The Documents of Vatican II, edited by Abbott, Walter M.. New York: Guild Press, 1966.Google Scholar
25“Letter to Women,” dated June 29, released July 10, 1995. This letter was written for the United Nation’s Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China. Source: http://listserv.american.edu/catholic/church/papal/jp.ii.Google Scholar
26Gaudium et Spes, 52.Google Scholar
27Laborem Exercens, 92.Google Scholar
28Laborem Exercens, 55.Google Scholar
29During the Eucharist, there is a moment when participants exchange what is called the “kiss of peace” with others who are nearby. The kiss of peace signifies a sharing of God’s peace among the members of the eucharistic assembly. While persons who know each other fairly well may hug or kiss one another, it is customary in the United States to shake hands with fellow believers whom one knows less well. So it is, perhaps, hyperbole to say that we are all kissed “in the same way.”Google Scholar
30Hovda, Robert, The Catholic Worker Friday Night Meeting, Unpublished speech, May, 1983. Used with permission.Google Scholar
31Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler, In Memory of Her: a Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1984, p. 121.Google Scholar
32McFague, Sallie, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987, p. 51.Google Scholar
33The lector reads from the Old Testament and the Epistles; the eucharistic minister distributes the consecrated elements to worshipers.Google Scholar
34The question of the ordination of women has become even more complex as a result of the release of a document asserting “infallible” authority for the prohibition on the ordination of women. [“Response to Dubium about Orientalis Sacerdotio,” Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, October 28, 1995 in National Catholic Reporter, vol. 32, December 1, 1995, 5) This letter raises highly technical, theological questions regarding the exercise of authority within the church. For a brief, clear discussion of questions about the status of the Response, see Ladislas Orsy, “Congregation’s ‘Response’: Its Authority and Meaning,” America, 4 December 1995: 4–5. The Vatican declares that there is no inconsistency between assertions of the equal human dignity of women and the proclamation that the exclusion of women from ordination reflects the eternal will of God. Here I can only reiterate my view that the question of the ordination of women to the Roman Catholic priesthood raises profound ethical and theological questions.Google Scholar
35Dolan, Jay P., The American Catholic Experience: a History from Colonial Times to the Present. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1985, p. 162.Google Scholar
36Dolan, , The American Catholic Experience, pp. 358–60, 365–68; Labbe, Dolores Egger, Jim Crow Comes to Church: the Establishment of Segregated Catholic Parishes in South Louisiana, New York: Arno Press, 1978; Davis, Cypian, The History of Black Catholics in the United States. New York: Crossroad Press, 1990. In the nineteenth century, the Catholic church made fewer black converts, in part, because there were few Catholic churches in the South (with the exception of Louisiana) where most blacks lived.Google Scholar
37Gelineau, Joseph, The Liturgy Today and Tomorrow. Trans. by Livingstone, Dinah. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1978, p. 48.Google Scholar
38Ettorre, Barbara, “The Contingency Work force Moves Mainstream,” Management Review, February, 1994, 10–16; Fierman, Jaclyn, “The Contingency Work Force,” Fortune, January 24, 1994, 30–36.Google Scholar
39Populorum Progressio, 47.Google Scholar