This year’s Business, Faith and Common Good Symposium was oriented around three related concepts: Good Goods, Good Work, and Good Wealth.  We had two panels of local business people talk about Good Goods, and then Good Work. Our Keynote speaker this year was Charles Clark from St. John’s University in New York.

In The Vocation of a Business Leader (2011) the concepts of “Good Goods”  “Good Work” and “Good Wealth” are highlighted, which respect human dignity and serve the common good, and look at business as a community of persons.

Good Goods: produce goods and services that meet genuine human needs and serve the common good, while taking responsibility for the social and environmental costs of production and the supply chain and distribution and watching for opportunities to serve the poor;

Our good goods panel was made up of Tom Deall, owner of the Bellevue Chick-fil-A, Tyler Mainquist, a financial adviser well versed in Socially Responsible Investing, and Daniel Lawse, an environmental consultant.

Good Work: organise productive and meaningful work by recognising the dignity of employees and their right and duty to flourish in their work (work is for the person rather than the other way around), and by structuring workplaces with subsidiarity that designs, equips and trusts employees to do their best work.

Our good work panel was made up of Kari Yost, HR Director for Thrasher, Dusty Davidson, founder of Flywheel and local entrepreneur, and Mark Ruch, of Object Partners.

Good Wealth:  use resources wisely in order to create both profit and well-being, to produce sustainable wealth and to distribute it justly (a just wage for employees, just prices for customers and suppliers, just taxes for the community, and just returns for owners).”

Dr. Clark discussed the ways in which a Christian anthropology (view of what it is to be human) significantly differed from the neoclassical view.  He provided a variety of views of wealth, arguing that a view of wealth which is concerned with the improved well being of society sees wealth in terms of abundance, as opposed to a scarcity view of wealth which sees wealth as possible only when you have more than others do.

Again this year’s symposium provided a great opportunity for faculty and students to engage with local business people and a renown Catholic economist.  New friendships were made, and a lot of good discussions took place.

The Business, Faith and Common Good Institute could not put on the symposium or the speaker seried without the generous support of the Creighton University office of Mission and Ministry, Heider College of Business, Anderson Convenience Markets, F&M Bank, and Dundee Bank.

 

This year’s panelists and speaker:

Tyler Mainquist, Financial Advisor at Central Financial Services

Tyler Mainquist is a Financial Planner (CFP®, CAP®, CLTC) with a specialty in Sustainable, Responsible and Impacting (SRI) investing.  He is a registered representative (RR) and investment advisory representative (IAR) with Ameritas Investment Corp. (AIC). He is a lifelong Nebraskan, and a graduate of UNL and the American College.

Daniel Lawse, Consultant at Verdis Group.

Daniel (BA, Creighton) is Principal, Chief Century Thinker at Verdis Group.  He helps organizations think long term and develop practical strategies that help them thrive today and for generations to come by helping them develop Sustainability Master Plans and implementing sustainable strategies as well as by leading regenerative leadership workshops.

Tom Deall, Owner of Chick-Fil-A Bellevue

Tom Owns the Chick-Fil-A in Bellevue.  Tom holds three MA’s: one in marriage and family counseling from U. Holy Cross, one in Military Security Policy from Air War College, and one in Theology from St. Leo U, and a BS in Psychology from U. Arizona.

1:30: “Good Work” Panel

Our Panelists will discuss the “good work” they try to produce in their unique businesses:

Dusty Davidson, Technology Entrepreneur

Dusty is best known for his work with Silicon Prairie News & Big Omaha, but have been involved with a number of things over the years, and I’m currently the co-founder and CEO of a WordPress hosting company called Flywheel. He is very  passionate about startups, especially in Omaha.

Kari Yost, Director of HR, Thrasher

Kari,  originally from Sioux City, IA. Got her BA in Human Resources and Management from Morningside College. She worked at ConAgra for 8 years, holding various positions. In 2015, she joined Thrasher because the company’s purpose, mission and values. Kari is currently the Director of Human Resources.

 

Mark Ruch, General Manager,Object Partners

Born and raised in Omaha, Mark attended Creighton Prep and then received a BA in MIS from UNO.  Currently General Manager of the OPI Omaha branch, Mark has been a software engineer for 16 years, with experience working in start-ups, Fortune 500 and midsize companies.

3pm: “Good Wealth” Keynote
Charles Clark, Economist, St. John’s (NY)

 

 

Charles Clark is Senior Fellow, Vincentian Center for Church and Society and Professor of Economics. He earned a B.A. from Fordham University and both an M.A. and Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research, writing his dissertation under the supervision of Robert Heilbronner.  He has more than 130 publications (8 books), including Economic Theory and Natural Philosophy (1992), Pathways to a Basic Income (with John Healy) (1997); The Basic Income Guarantee: Ensuring Progress and Prosperity in the 21st Century (2002); History and Historians of Political Economy (1994); Institutional Economics and the Theory of Social Value (1995); Unemployment in Ireland (1998) and Rethinking Abundance (2005).

 

Clark finds much of contemporary economics to be ideologically driven, not empirically driven, leading to serious social problems.  He believes that applying Catholic Social Teaching to real world economics can offer  solutions that benefits everyone.

Please join us for this year’s Business, Faith and Common Good Symposium at the Heider College of Business in the Harper Center Ballroom at 602 N. 20th Street, Omaha!  Panel on Good Goods at 12:15, Good Work at 130, Keynote on Good Wealth at 3, and reception follows at 4:15.  All are welcome!

   

Thursday evening the business, faith and common good speaker series welcomed legal scholar and philosopher  Gary Chartier of La Sierra University to Creighton’s campus.  Dr. Chartier, identifies as a “left-wing market anarchist”, who is pro-free-market although critical of much of capitalism as it stands today.

According to Dr. Chartier, in the current market system, the state works with particular companies and interests to help dispossess people of opportunities and to maintain structures which disallow competition.  The problem is the state-sanctioned mechanisms by which those who have keep those who don’t from achieving a share of the wealth.  This can happen through monopolies, lobbied-regulations which favor established companies (often lobbied for by those companies protected), etc.  The problem, according to Dr. Chartier, is in part the state-ist control of markets and so the solution is to supplant the state governments (which are themselves area-monopolies over particular land areas) with other forms of institutions, such as mutual aid societies.

Chartier agrees with Michael Novak that we are “more sinners than saints” but state control is not the solution because state control of aspects of society merely consolidates power into the hands of a few.  What is better he thinks is a distribution to a multiplicity of institutions, but not states.  Government is no panacea to the problem of self-centeredness of individuals.  It only exacerbates it.

Justice will come from greater liberty, Chartier says, not only because people will take more responsibility for their actions (since no one will bail them out (GM, Banks in 2007)) and without state-sanctioned crony capitalism, real free markets will exist without the corporate special interest subsidies and other freedom-limiting artificial barriers to truly free markets and liberty.  As it is, real competition and real ability to enter the market are both restrained by artificial constructs of the cooperation between established corporate entities and governments who work to protect those companies.

Chartier made it clear that he is not interested in eliminating regulation in order to  allow the large corporations to allow them to do whatever they want.  He thinks the regulations in place are what sustain the corporations in many cases.   He instead advocates that the rich ‘eat themselves’ by eliminating the subsidies and special regulations which protect them and oppress competition, which would lead to actual competition which would likely undermine the companies which are presently protected.  He argues that if the state sanctioned protection of these companies was eliminated, they would collapse, and people would experience more justice through the real freedom of the market.

Dr. Chartier brought a thought provoking and challenging view of the market, and Creighton was blessed to have him come to campus!  — Andy Gustafson

Note on Dr. Chartier:  Gary Chartier (La Sierra University) is Distinguished Professor of Law and Business Ethics and Associate Dean of the Tom and Vi Zapara School of Business at La Sierra University in Riverside, California. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of thirteen other books, including Public Practice, Private Law (Cambridge, 2016), Anarchy and Legal Order (Cambridge, 2013), Economic Justice and Natural Law (Cambridge, 2009), and (with Chad Van Schoelandt) The Routledge Handbook of Anarchy and Anarchist Thought (Routledge, 2019). His byline has appeared over forty times in journals including the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Legal Theory, and Law and Philosophy. He is a member of the American Philosophical Association and the Alliance of the Libertarian Left and a senior fellow of the Center for a Stateless Society.

THE BFCGI SPEAKER SERIES IS GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY:

   

Mary Hirschfeld, economist and theologian from Villanova, spoke to a crowded room about Christian concerns in economics, particularly economic exclusion on Thursday night at Heider College of Business.  Dr. Hirschfeld has an interesting story.  A Harvard-trained economist, she had a tenured position in Los Angeles for 15 years before going through a dramatic conversion to become a Catholic.  Shortly after, she left her tenured position as an economist and began studies in theology at Notre Dame, where she achieved her second Ph.D, this time in theology.  Eventually she landed at Villanova, where she combines her concern for faith issues with her knowledge of economics.

Dr. Hirschfeld’s talk focused on the concept of inequality, and particularly, what a Christian theologian should bring to the discussion which is unique.  While a lot of concern is focused on inequality, Dr. Hirschfeld challenged us to consider to think as Christians about economics and focus instead on how we use money to protect ourselves and exclude others and to define our status in society.  She pointed out that Aristotle said money should be considered like medicine– a certain amount is needed to fulfill a particular end.  But many times, she said, the debate about inequality is like having a debate about who has more aspirins– “I really only need two aspirins to deal with my headache, but we get into debates about I only have 10 aspirin and you have 12, or 20!”

What is it that we really need?  The quest to maximize, and to earn more and more and spend more and more is part of what undermines our happiness.  If we consider wealth as “having what we need” we make ourselves poorer by expanding our financial obligations by aquiring more and more, which then requires more of our efforts towards maintaining our own created needs, and away from concern for others and the common good.  We should instead think about what a reasonable amount is for us to live on, and to try to stay within those parameters.  When you do this, Dr. Hirschfeld said, you find a real freedom and a lack of stress because you aren’t trying to maximize your income and purchasing power and acquisitions.  But as Christians, we are especially called to own private property so that we can use it for the common good and share with those in need.  Profit is good, and making money in the free market is great, but setting limits on one’s own ‘economic requirements’ is a matter of spiritual health for us.

Drawing on Pope Francis’ concerns regarding economic exclusion and exploitation, Dr. Hirschfeld reframed the discussion on inequality, saying that the real problem in society is not so much the 1%, but the top 1/3 of us who want to protect our economic status above the other 2/3 by buying into the right school districts, getting our kids in the right colleges, getting the white collar not blue collar jobs, going to the church where aspiring people like ourselves attend, using services to help set ourselves apart in society and having expectations of retirement, vacationing and other types of behavior all which help separate us from the ‘others’ and exclude them.  As Christians, we need to overcome class and socioeconomic differences, but we create lifestyles for ourselves which create a great chasm between us and the ‘working class’ and rest of the others.  In some ways we actively want those on the ‘other side of the tracks’ to stay there– because that is how we distinguish ourselves and maintain our social standing securely.

After the public talk, Dr. Hirschfeld met with the business, faith and common good seminar class and we discussed some of these matters further, as well as St. Thomas on private property and concern for the common good.  Again, Mary challenged us to think about the human-social dimensions of economics and to seriously consider maintaining finite expectations of the amount of money we think we need to live.  It is far to easy to use up whatever we have and feel that we need a little more– no matter how much we earn.  She shared that until her conversion, she was always of the opinion that ‘if only I could get a 10% raise, then everything would be great’ (even after multiple 10% raises).   But somehow at conversion, she was able to learn to really focus on what she really wanted, and to stop spending on a lot of frivolous things which really did not bring her happiness.  This in turn allowed her to tithe more and to share generously with others, without hesitation.  An open ended maximization view of what we might earn and spend leads to a lack of definition and ironically, to a lack of satisfaction.

It was fantastic to have Dr. Hirschfeld be with us at Creighton, and we look forward to her book which will be forthcoming from Harvard University Press in 2018!  Her talk will be aired on KIOS lunch talks sometime in the winter.

Many thanks to our generous sponsors of the BFCGI talks:

office of mission and ministry

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

The business faith and common good Institute kicked off their speaker series for this fall with a talk by Dr. Bonnie Wilson, Economist at St Louis University. The title of Dr. Wilson’s provocative talk was “Economics: A Theology of Scarcity, Or Something More?” Drawing on the notion of Economics as human exchange, focusing on the human encounter in such scenarios, she challenged us as Christians or people of Goodwill to resist the tendency to act with fear and a mindset of scarcity wherein we look at a business exchange as a situation where I must win and the other loses, but the rather to look with eyes of faith which attempt to see business exchanges as opportunities for win-win outcomes.

In a world where economic indicators show great progress for humanity, we find that people are less satisfied, more fearful, and in fact think things are getting worse, not better, Dr. Wilson pointed out.  So it is easy for us to seek to protect ourselves, and to see the other as a threat to our well being and financial security, which then plays out in our business interactions.  But people of faith and goodwill are called by the words of Christ to “fear not” and to not lose sight of the human encounter which we participate in when we are engaged in business.  Our presence is a gift to others, their presence is a gift to us, and with faith we should practice business with a theology of abundance, not scarcity, and generosity, not fear.

This was a great start to our speaker series, and the Business, Faith and Common Good Institute is grateful that Dr. Bonnie Wilson was willing to come share her insights with us. 

 

The 2017 CJBE conference (Colleagues in Jesuit Business Education) was hosted at Creighton University July 6-8th.  Over 60 business faculty came from more than 20 Jesuit and other Catholic Universities, from Boston College and Fordham to San Diego and Seattle, and many in between.    The theme this year was “Using Our Work for the Common Good: The Transformative Power of Jesuit-Inspired Business Practices” and presentations were given by faculty from marketing, management, ICT(IT), accounting, economics, business ethics, theology, philosophy, and others.

      

Fr. Nicky Santos of Marquette and also Fr. Peter Balleis, SJ of Jesuit Worldwide Learning both gave keynote presentations.  There were also keynote panels on the Creighton DBA program which incorporates Ignatian relection and pedagogy and CST principles throughout the 3 year program, as well as on the Economy of Communion (Jeanne Buckey (U St. Thomas), John Gallagher (Maryville C.), and Andy Gustafson (Creighton), and also a leadership course following the footsteps of Ignatius of Loyola in Spain by Chris Lowney and Steven Porth (SJU).

There were 30 presentations total, and each evening there were unique social events– Thursday night at the Omaha Press Club atop the old First National Bank building, Friday night at Hotshops downtown, and Saturday night at Professor Andy Gustafson’s house in Gifford Park.

The CJBE is a unique organization in that it brings together faculty within business who have a special concern to promote Jesuit and Christian thought and values and pedagogy in their classes.  There are few if any organizations like it in other disciplines, even in arts and sciences.

At the CJBE board meeting on Thursday, Creighton’s President Fr. Daniel Hendrickson joined the board of CJBE, along with Fr. Joe Koterski of Fordham University.

The Heider College of Business, Creighton University, and the Business, Faith and Common Good Institute contributed financially to help support the CJBE conference.

 

 

June 20-24 I got to go to Mariapolis near Hyde Park, NY, one of the Focolare centers in the US to participate in an Economy of Communion workshop for young entrepreneurs, and then also to be at part of the EOC annual meeting.

  

The Focolare are a lay movement which started in the Catholic church but now extends to the Lutheran, Anglican, and even Baptist traditions, focusing on loving the poor and living for Christ.  The Economy of Communion is one of their offshoot movements started in 1981 to help the poor by creating jobs through private enterprise, rather than handouts.  Their idea is that job creation enables people to experience the dignity of self-sustaining work.

       

This was the first ever “EOC entrepreneur bootcamp” in the US, and I was grateful for an opportunity to talk about what the EOC is and to give people some vision of its purpose and hopes.  You can see part of my video of the talk at the “Economy of Communion in North America” facebook page here.

   

Mariapolis was once a kids camp, but the Focolare bought it and have over time rehabbed it into a truly peaceful place.  Each evening we had a social time together, and for every meal we ate together in the dining area (usually outside on the veranda).

 

The bootcamp/workshop went from Tuesday night until Friday noon.  Then the EOC regular annual meeting started, and many long time EOC members and associates showed up (and some of the students and entrepreneurs who were there for the bootcamp stayed as well).  There are many long standing relationships among these members, who have pursued a vision of serving Christ through practicing their business in a way which seeks to focus on humans and dignity as they make profits.

You can see a nice video on EOC here.

Like I said, I am grateful for the opportunity I had to be at the workshop and conference, and plan to be a regular there.

As a business-member of the Economy of Communion, I was invited to join a worldwide conference on EOC in Rome,  culminating in a meeting with Pope Francis where he spoke to our group.  Pope Francis had asked that we come to meet with him and hear from him at the Vatican.

In his talk to the Economy of Communion group, Pope Francis put his finger on a key point: “Capitalism knows philanthropy, not communion. It is simple to give a part of the profits, without embracing and touching the people who receive those ‘crumbs’.”  This is ultimately what is so different about the economy of communion—it is a vision to live out our lives and practice our faith through our business activities in a way which is truly novel and transformative.  Economy of Communion is not a philosophy of sharing money, it is a vision of using business to help build community and to help people through our private enterprise.  Through business we help bring about communion.

In this vision, Pope Francis pointed out, “You see the entrepreneur as an agent of communion. By introducing into the economy the good seed of communion, you have begun a profound change in the way of seeing and living business.”  This has significant affects on how and why one participates in business practices—and bringing even our business practices into our way of forming communion impacts our communion as well:

Certainly the economy becomes more beautiful, but communion is also more beautiful, because the spiritual communion of hearts is even fuller when it becomes the communion of goods, of talents, of profits. .

While Pope Francis has in various contexts brought up criticisms of aspects of the current capitalist system, he is not against capitalism.  He, as most Popes, agree with St. Thomas Aquinas that private property and private ownership is important.  That is why, when one of my fellow parishioners at church asked if Pope Francis is a Marxist, I could say without hesitation, “certainly not, nor a socialist”.  But he does think we as business owners can use our business to bring about communion in society.

In speaking to us, Pope Francis said he had three things he wanted to talk about.  First, money.  “Money is important, especially when there is none, and food, school, and the children’s future depend on it. But it becomes an idol when it becomes the aim.”  When the accumulation of money for ourselves per se becomes the aim, it becomes idolatrous, and “When capitalism makes the seeking of profit its only purpose, it runs the risk of becoming an idolatrous framework, a form of worship.”  Pope Francis pointed out that the pursuit of security in money is a deluded quest for immortality.

His advice for not making money an idol is hard but simple:

The best and most practical way to avoid making an idol of money is to share it with others, above all with the poor, or to enable young people to study and work, overcoming the idolatrous temptation with communion. When you share and donate your profits, you are performing an act of lofty spirituality, saying to money through deeds: you are not God, you are not a lord, you are not a master!

We overcome the temptation to let money become our idol by giving it, giving ourselves, and spending ourselves and our money for purposes beyond ourselves—for God’s purposes.  This practice is essential.

Second, Pope Francis spoke about poverty, pointing out that since Biblical times, the poor have always been with us, and they are often considered by society to be ‘discarded lives’.  Though we have some new ways to help some of the poor, “The principal ethical dilemma of this capitalism is the creation of discarded people, then trying to hide them or make sure they are no longer seen.”  And eventually we can become blind to this discarding, and to the discarded.  Francis said, “A serious form of poverty in a civilization is when it is no longer able to see its poor, who are first discarded and then hidden.”  Insofar as we shield ourselves from the poor, we become poor as well.

He then spoke about the ironic hypocrisy of a system which cares for the poor which it itself helps to create:

Aircraft pollute the atmosphere, but, with a small part of the cost of the ticket, they will plant trees to compensate for part of the damage created. Gambling companies finance campaigns to care for the pathological gamblers that they create. And the day that the weapons industry finances hospitals to care for the children mutilated by their bombs, the system will have reached its pinnacle. This is hypocrisy!

Rather than try to give aid to the poor, “The economy of communion, if it wants to be faithful to its charism, must not only care for the victims, but build a system where there are ever fewer victims, where, possibly, there may no longer be any.”   Charity is not enough, we must work towards “changing the rules of the game of the socio-economic system.”  The Good Samaritan helps the victim, but we must work to change the system to help reduce the amount of victims to begin with.  This is done by us in the way that we conduct our own business- the values which guide our decision-making, our conduct towards employees and other businesses, our customers, and how we envision the purpose of our business itself.  It especially will affect the way we treat others.  Often it is said that Economy of Communion is about gratuity and reciprocity—meaning that we act with grace towards others through business, and that we act in faith that there will be reciprocity of kindness and goodwill.  That is a radical departure from the dog-eat-dog world of business where people treat others poorly, then excuse it by saying, “sorry, nothing personal, its just business”.  Those with a vision of business informed by the Economy of Communion will act quite differently, living out gratuity and reciprocity as we pursue communion through business:

For communion one must imitate the merciful Father of the parable of the Prodigal Son and wait at home for the children, workers and coworkers who have done wrong, and there embrace them and celebrate with and for them — and not be impeded by the meritocracy invoked by the older son and by many who deny mercy in the name of merit. An entrepreneur of communion is called to do everything possible so that even those who do wrong and leave home can hope for work and for dignified earnings, and not wind up eating with the swine. No son, no man, not even the most rebellious, deserves acorns.

 

Third, Pope Francis spoke about the future.  The EOC has existed for 25 years (since 1981), but what should our future hold?  He encouraged us that though we are a very small group of businesses with this vision of communion guiding us, we can be salt and light and leaven in the world.  The key is, “What do we do so as not to lose the active ingredient, the ‘enzyme’ of communion?”  His answer is that we must share it: “The economy of communion will have a future if you give it to everyone and it does not remain only inside your ‘house’. Give it to everyone, firstly to the poor and the young, who are those who need it most and know how to make the gift received bear fruit!”  And this giving is not just giving of the profits of our business, but of ourselves—the gift of ourselves to others.  He says, “Today’s economy, the poor, the young, need first of all your spirit, your respectful and humble fraternity, your will to live and, only then, your money.”  Money is important of course, but it comes last.  This is why EOC is so much more than charity or aid.

Finally, Pope Francis concluded his remarks with a challenge to all of us:

You already do these things. But you can share more profits in order to combat idolatry, change the structures in order to prevent the creation of victims and discarded people, give more of your leaven so as to leaven the bread of many. May the ‘no’ to an economy that kills become a ‘yes’ to an economy that lets live, because it shares, includes the poor, uses profits to create communion.

I hope you continue on your path, with courage, humility and joy. “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor 9,7). God loves your joyfully given profits and talents. You already do this; you can do so even more.

I hope you continue to be the seed, salt and leaven of another economy: the economy of the Kingdom, where the rich know how to share their wealth, and the poor are called ‘blessed’. Thank you.

It was a powerful message to us.  At times he was literally preaching to us—admonishing us and encouraging us to rise to the challenge.  It was a pastoral message we will not forget, I am quite sure, and it is clear that Pope Francis understands what the Economy of Communion movement is about, and wants it to spread like leaven throughout the economies of the world.

 

  

The 2016 Business, Faith and Common Good Symposium was an event to highlight the ways faith and a concern for the common good can motivate business practices.  We brought in 9 businesses and organizations, and had Michael Naughton as our keynote speaker.

   

Companies represented included Complete Nutrition, Thrasher, Thrivent, Chick-fil-A, Habitat for Humanity, Prairie Plains Resource Institute, Data Systems, Verdis, and Landmark Group.  Five of those nine were new– Thrivent had actually heard about the symposium and asked if they might participate– and it was great to bring in new perspectives which were inspirational to the students.  It was also great to bring back companies who have such a strong story that we wanted them back again.  The format was that each of these companies had their own session.  There were three breakout sessions at three different times, for a total of 9 presentations.  Typically they were 30-35 minutes with 10-15 minutes for Q&A.

 

Professor Michael Naughton, director of the Center for Catholic Studies at St. Thomas University was this year’s keynote speaker.   Naughton is really a preeminent scholar at the intersection of Catholic Social Thought and business, with 5 books and 40 articles, mostly related to that topic.   He also helped coordinate and write the Vocation of the Business Leader issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (2012) which is a key document for thinking about business practices from a faith perspective.

Naughton’s keynote drew on the ” Vocation of the Business Leader” document, which he helped write as a summary of some of the key teachings of Caritas En Veritate.  He contrasted three notions of work, each paired with a distinct notion of leisure.  First, one might think of their work as just a job, and be fairly disengaged from work, seeing it merely as something which must be done for money.   If you view work as a job, then you view leisure as an escape from your job’s drudgery– so an unhealthy detached view of work leads to an equally unhealthy view of leisure.  Leisure on this view is a-musement.   Atheist means literally without-God, and sine muse means “to consider thoughtfully”, “amusement” means “without thought”– when we amuse ourselves we are trying to escape thinking and consideration of our situation.  And ironically to escape more often requires more money, so you have to work more, which leads you to need to escape more, in a vicious cycle!   On the other hand, if you are all too engaged in work, it may lead to a careerism where work is everything and it consumes you.  Leisure, on this careerist view, is simply time to recharge so you can do more work– sharpening your saw– and so leisure’s sole purpose is for the utility of working more.  The better view of work, according to Naughton, is a view of work as a vocation– a calling. With such a view of your work, you see that God has called you to a particular task in a community of persons.  All people have dignity, and each has a vocation of their own to help serve the common good.  Leisure linked to this vocation view of work is sabbath, where one rests to reflect on one’s place in the world, on things beyond work which actually give meaning to the work, and on one’s relationships to others.  This thoughtful consideration is literally the opposite of a-musement!

    

The symposium has definitely developed over time.  In 2013 we invited a speaker, internationally known Christian philosopher Robert Audi of Notre Dame, to give a talk on “business and the common good” here at Heider.  It was a nice event, and well attended.  For 2014 Tom Kelly and I worked to develop the first symposium, coming up with the idea to invite and we had as keynote Daniel Finn, a very well known Theologian who is also an economist.  For 2015 we had a reknown Catholic business ethicist Ken Goodpaster, and this year we had Michael Naughton.  Really, these are three of the greats in the field, so we have an outstanding track record and legacy.   So we are very proud of that.    The students who went to the sessions gave me some great feedback on the sessions– even the lesser-attended sessions were generally well-liked by students.  Students were moved by many of the presentations, but I got significant outstanding feedback on Naughton.  One student said that his talk helped her to see where she is at, and where she wants to be.  That is exactly the kind of transformational learning we are hoping for through the symposium speakers and events.