"Catholic jobs" vs. secular jobs

[Sponsa-Christi]

Okay, I'm posting this in debate table because I'm genuinely interested in a variety of opinions, but I do hope this can be a productive and fruitful discussion.

My question is: Do you think there is ANY difference at all in ANY respect for ANYONE between what we would traditionally describe as "working for the Church" (e.g., teaching religion classes, running a soup kitchen, working in pastoral ministry, having an administrative role in a Catholic institution) and working in a totally secular job?

Please try to articulate the precise reasons for your answer. 

[BarbTherese]

There MIGHT be more opportunity for formation "working for The Church" not only formally possibly, but by associating with fellow Catholics - I think that whatever we do even in secular employment it can be a "work for The Church" providing of course that we take our Catholicism (i.e. The Gospel) into the workplace/out into the community insofar as one can into one's secular employment.  I think sometimes we are inclined as Catholics to be very inward looking.  I am always reminded at Easter that Jesus had said He would go ahead of His apostles and after His Death into Galilee (He said this before His Passion) -  and that the angel after The Resurrection told Mary Magdalene to go and tell the apostles that Jesus would go ahead of them into Galilee and they would see Him there.  Galilee (Jesus was a Galilean I think) was a notoriously pagan though Jewish area.

What all the above reminds me of is that Jesus has gone ahead of us into the secular and even the pagan.

Also, it no longer surprises me the good example I can draw on from those not Catholics or even believers in Jesus and His Gospel, atheists even. We can pick up a bus ticket off the footpath as a "work for The Church" - whatever we do (we are baptised Catholics) regardless, we are either building up or detracting from The Church. As baptised Catholics, nothing can be exempted from either building up or detracting from The Church i.e. I am always without exemption a baptised Catholic including of course all that I think, do and say.  Whenever I am out and about in secular community I try to remember that I am at "work for The Church" and The Gospel.  I am a member of St Vincent de Paul at parish level and that certainly offers opportunities for formation and much exposure to outstandingly good hands-on active and prayerful Catholics with high Gospel values........endless good example.  I also army-style 'volunteer' whenever asked within the parish.

That just MIGHT be a bit simplistic - and I am in the fortunate position of being on an age pension and out of the workforce.  Retiring from the workforce has been a blessing for me broadening my freedom - now I am able to pick and choose every day (more or less) what I am about or not about.  My children are quite independent adults, I live alone.  Well I recall some of the hard decisions called for when I was in the workforce and in an effort to put The Gospel first.........most of the time I think I did, sometimes I know I failed.

 

Edited March 9, 2016 by BarbaraTherese

[Gabriela]

7 hours ago, Sponsa-Christi said:

Okay, I'm posting this in debate table because I'm genuinely interested in a variety of opinions, but I do hope this can be a productive and fruitful discussion.

My question is: Do you think there is ANY difference at all in ANY respect for ANYONE between what we would traditionally describe as "working for the Church" (e.g., teaching religion classes, running a soup kitchen, working in pastoral ministry, having an administrative role in a Catholic institution) and working in a totally secular job?

Please try to articulate the precise reasons for your answer. 

I'm not entirely clear on what you're asking. Do you mean, "Do general-population Catholics respect Church workers more than they respect secular workers?"

If so, my feeling is 'no', at least if you're talking only about the lay workers in the Church. There's quite a bit of research on them from the 90s, and the general consensus is they're a highly dissatisfied lot. They're totally exploited, and it's a scandal for the Church, because Her treatment of them is thoroughly hypocritical and not at all in keeping with Catholic Social Teaching.

As for other Catholics' "respect" for them: I think that American Catholics aren't that different from Americans in general in that they "respect" people who earn high salaries and have prestigious positions. Catholic school teachers have neither. Catholic hospital workers—aside from doctors—have neither. Pastoral ministers really have neither. Running a soup kitchen might actually have a little more respect because it's so obviously "corporal works", but I think the respect there is of an "awww"-dismissive variety. In general, I think that most Catholics—not consciously, of course, but by "leakage" of the mainstream cultural values around them into their subconscious—look at Church workers and think, "Oh, this is the best job you could get, huh? We all know the Church pays croutons. You must not be very competent. No respect for you."

Now, if we're talking clergy or religious, I do think they get more respect, but not by virtue of their job role. It's their status as clergy/religious that gets them respect.

I just read an article on the job satisfaction of all three groups: clergy, religious (sisters), and laity in parish/diocesan work. Clergy were the most satisfied (because really the best treated all around); religious were in the middle on some things, the lowest on others (like, ironically, feeling that lay people were treated justly in parish employment); and laity were the lowest on most things (especially the important things, like intention to remain in their jobs, overall satisfaction with the job, etc.).

I could have a rant here about how the Church post-Vatican II saw a sharp decline in priests and religious doing Church work, so laity picked up the slack (and were happy to, really, at the time), but the Church never "restructured" those jobs to fit with the skills, education, experience, and life circumstances of the laity, who generally had a lot more to bring to those roles—"professionally" speaking, in terms of actual credentials—than the clergy or religious did (again, at the time, cuz a lot of sisters have now "professionalized"). Instead, it just kept treating them like religious. So now it's all an outrage, and something I have a very hard time keeping my temper about. It's so unjust.

Gonna stop now before I explode.

[Sponsa-Christi]

Gabriela---Sorry! Didn't mean to make you almost explode! I'm asking this from a theological perspective. I.e., while of course we all know that one can become a saint working in either the "temple" or the "marketplace," I'm asking if there is any special value AT ALL in doing work which has an explicitly Catholic dimensions. E.g., if a young single person wanted to dedicate their life to serving the Church, would they be able to do more good for the Church by working in something like catechesis full-time, or would it make just as much sense for them to become a real estate agent? And how would you explain your answer? (I do have my own opinion on this, by the way, but I just wanted to see what other people think.)

[Gabriela]

Oh, that's a completely different question. I think you get into the same problem here that you do with the religious/married state question: Is one intrinsically "better" than the other, or is "the best one" the one that God calls you to?

I don't think one can argue that working in the Church per se opens up more opportunity for good than secular jobs. Church and secular jobs are much too diverse for such a general statement. That being said, if one wants to bear the cross of oppression and injustice as a means of mortification, then the Church offers great opportunities for that.

Of course, these days, so does the secular marketplace.

 

Ok, really, my point is: How much good you can do depends on what you do with the job, not the job itself. Which, when you boil it down, is really what's at the bottom of the religious/married question, too: Which vocation will you be holier in?

[Sponsa-Christi]

5 minutes ago, Gabriela said:

Oh, that's a completely different question. I think you get into the same problem here that you do with the religious/married state question: Is one intrinsically "better" than the other, or is "the best one" the one that God calls you to?

I don't think one can argue that working in the Church per se opens up more opportunity for good than secular jobs. Church and secular jobs are much too diverse for such a general statement. That being said, if one wants to bear the cross of oppression and injustice as a means of mortification, then the Church offers great opportunities for that.

Of course, these days, so does the secular marketplace.

 

Ok, really, my point is: How much good you can do depends on what you do with the job, not the job itself. Which, when you boil it down, is really what's at the bottom of the religious/married question, too: Which vocation will you be holier in?

I'm not thinking in terms of "which is univocally 'better'?" in an absolute sense. Obviously, the subjective "best" option is what an individual is personally called to do. And I'm certainly NOT disputing that secular work can indeed be a path to holiness or the occasion of doing a great deal of good.

I'm asking, is there any special value at all, in any sense whatsoever, in choosing to do "Catholic" work?

As a concrete example: Could St. Francis of Assisi have served the Church just as much by remaining in his father's house and being a successful Christian cloth merchant? Was there any intrinsic value of any sort in his choice to dedicate himself entirely to prayer and preaching? Or was his life's work only valuable insomuch as it was an act of obedience to an objectively arbitrary command from God? 

[Gabriela]

Well, I don't see God's commands on our lives as arbitrary in any way, much less objectively so. If His call to us is His way of working us into His larger plan for the world, then it's not arbitrary at all. It's part of a "system".

I think the question is problematic, because it seems to assume relative worth ("Could St. Francis of Assisi have served the Church just as much by remaining in his father's house and being a successful Christian cloth merchant?"), but then you stipulate that you're not talking about relative worth, but objective/intrinsic worth. Every job (that is not sinful) has objective/intrinsic worth. Every job (that is not sinful) has some special value. That's the "objective/intrinsic" answer, as I see it.

The relative question is... back to what I said above.

So to answer your direct question about St. Francis (IMO): Theoretically, yes, he could have served the Church just as much, if we only consider the work itself. But in reality, if we consider also the person, it's clear that wasn't how he was made to the serve the Church, so no, he probably wouldn't have. With St. Francis of Assisi, the question really isn't "fair", cuz we know what he was called to and what he was made for and what he was capable of. The harder cases are people about whom we don't know that yet. Still, his life's work had value both intrinsically as being dedicated to prayer and preaching, and as being obedient to a non-arbitrary request from God. (My understanding of vocation is that it's an offer, not a command.)

Then again, the same can be said of Joe-who-works-down-at-the-factory: His life's work has intrinsic value as [whatever he does at the factory], and as being obedient to God [assuming factory work is what God called Joe to].

That being said, if I were to choose between Church work and secular work, I would ask first what I think God is calling me to do. If God seemed pretty neutral about the matter, I would ask where I could do the most good and where I would be most at peace. I wouldn't compare the "intrinsic worth" of two perfectly good, unsinful, potentially holy options at all.

Edited March 9, 2016 by Gabriela

[Sponsa-Christi]

Okay, so if we are talking about the objective worth of serving the Church---let's say, is there any one objective respect in which serving the Church might be "better"?

It seems like specifically Church-related work must have some sort of special value in and of itself---otherwise, why would God even bother calling people to it at all in the first place? "It's subjectively better for you because God has called you to it" seems to be just begging the question. If God's will is not arbitrary, WHY would serving Church directly be better for someone? 

25 minutes ago, Gabriela said:

That being said, if I were to choose between Church work and secular work, I would ask first what I think God is calling me to do. If God seemed pretty neutral about the matter, I would ask where I could do the most good and where I would be most at peace. I wouldn't compare the "intrinsic worth" of two perfectly good, unsinful, potentially holy options at all.

This might be a slightly different issue---but in the Church, I think there are things which are good, and things which are better. The fact that some things are better doesn't make the good things less good in and of themselves.

The Church's traditional teaching on marriage and consecrated celibacy is that marriage is a great good, but that celibacy is "better" in at least some important respects (namely, it's more "advanced" in that it prefigures the kind of life we will all have in heaven) Celibacy being better does not mean that marriage is any less good. Of course, marriage might be subjectively better for a particular person, but that doesn't mean that in general celibacy doesn't have a special value.

As another, sort of silly example: enjoying an ice cream cone can be a good, holy, un-sinful thing. Given money to help feed the poor is also a good, holy, unsinful thing. If I had a choice between eating ice cream and giving alms to the poor, and I chose to give alms, could you say that what I did was objectively no better than if I had chosen the ice cream? Or was it only virtuous insofar as that was God's subjective call to me at that moment?

So maybe working for the Church directly might be objectively better in SOME respect? Like, maybe we could say that it's more directly ordered to advancing the Gospel?

[Gabriela]

9 minutes ago, Sponsa-Christi said:

Okay, so if we are talking about the objective worth of serving the Church---let's say, is there any one objective respect in which serving the Church might be "better"?

It seems like specifically Church-related work must have some sort of special value in and of itself---otherwise, why would God even bother calling people to it at all in the first place? "It's subjectively better for you because God has called you to it" seems to be just begging the question. If God's will is not arbitrary, WHY would serving Church directly be better for someone? 

I used to confess sins of detraction like this: "I committed detraction against a fellow Christian" or simply "I committed detraction against another" (implying a non-Christian). Then one day my confessor asked me why it matters whether the person was a fellow Christian. I said it seems worse, cuz it creates division in the Church. He said it's not worse, cuz we're called to love everybody, not just people in the Church. I asked a theologian to confirm this and he said it's true: It's not worse unless I had the express intention of creating division in the Church.

In the same way, we're called to serve everyone, not just people in the Church. So I see no superior intrinsic value in serving the Church than in serving anyone else in the world. As a Christian, we're called to serve. Period.

Now, if someone chooses to serve the Church out of deep love for the Church, that's better than choosing to serve the Church cuz that's the job s/he could get. But that's not intrinsic to the Church work itself.

God's will is not arbitrary, and serving the Church might be better for someone because He's graced them with skills and talents that the local Church in that person's area desperately needs at present. Or He may plan for someone to meet their spouse in that Church work. Or He may know that any other environment would drive the person to sin. Who knows what His reasons are? We don't, and that's why we often can't say any more than "It's subjectively better for you because God has called you to it". It doesn't beg the question; it just acknowledges we can't say more than that in many cases.

You seem very keen to hierarchize vocations, to find out who's superior to who. Why?

[Gabriela]

The second part of your comment didn't show up until I'd already posted. Your reference back to marriage and celibacy recalls what I initially said: The fundamental question here is basically the same. But Christ Himself said that celibacy is better. Christ didn't say that working in the institutional Church is better than working outside of it. He just said we're to work for the sake of the Kingdom. One can do that (almost) anywhere.

Clearly giving alms is better than eating ice cream. But again, we're back to why: Christ commanded us to give alms, and it's in the spirit of charity and kindness and all manner of other holy things. Eating ice cream is neither commanded nor in the spirit of those things (unless... nah, I'll leave it  ).

But again: I see no explicit command or any explicit parallel distinction to be made when it comes to working inside/outside the Church. So the analogy doesn't hold up so far as I can see. If someone can show me a reason to make a distinction, I'll be happy to accept it. But I still will be concerned that the underlying motivation behind your regular posts on these issues is one of seeking to identify who's superior/inferior. Cuz if it were just a question of, "I want to know which is superior so I can make the best decision for myself," then the answer, "The one that God made you for and calls you to and which will make you most holy" would suffice.

[Sponsa-Christi]

30 minutes ago, Gabriela said:

You seem very keen to hierarchize vocations, to find out who's superior to who. Why?

Well, it's not out of a desire for one-upmanship or anything.

A few reasons:

1. As a theologian/canonist, I'm concerned with seeking the truth. (NOT saying that anyone else isn't seeking the truth, I'm just speaking for myself here.) The Church's traditional teaching is that in some areas, there are good things and better things. So in order to "think with the Church," I feel like I need to take this into account---or at least admit that a hierarchy in some things is a possibility. 

2. Generally, it seems like the "superior" vocations also involve a lot more sacrifices. Someone may be called by God to celibacy and given the gifts for this, but that doesn't mean you aren't making a sacrifice that runs directly contrary to our human nature. (And yes, there are sacrifices in marriage, but marriage is something all healthy human beings already have a natural inclination towards.) It doesn't make sense to me why a just and loving God would call some people to give up so much more without them being awarded in some kind of proportional way---or rather, without their vocation having some kind of value which makes the additional sacrifices "worth it."

3. It seems to me that if EVERYTHING is specially consecrated to God, then nothing is. If God will be equally pleased with every non-sinful action, then it's impossible to offer "more" to Him. You can't give yourself to God in a radical or supererogatory way if all non-sinful actions have exactly the same worth. 

Also, turning the question around, why would you have a problem with a hierarchy of vocations? Theologically, that martyrdom is considered the highest vocation of all. I'm unlikely to be martyred, but it doesn't bother me that my vocation is "lower" than theirs.  

Edited March 9, 2016 by Sponsa-Christi

[beatitude]

My definition of a Catholic job is any job that has a Catholic working in it. When we receive the Eucharist, we become Christ-bearers, and we take Him out into the world - it shouldn't matter if that's in the parish office or in the waste disposal service. We are the Church, so the Church by definition is anywhere we are.

An example from my own life: I work in a psychiatric unit for severely unwell teenagers. It's not a Catholic hospital. Occasionally I am required to work all day Saturday and all day Sunday, which means I can't get to Mass. I can't go to Mass on a working weekday either, or fulfill the obligation I have as a member of my secular institute to spend at least one hour in Adoration or prayer before the tabernacle, as my shifts always start at seven in the morning and end at nine at night. But every moment I spend in that place, the meaning of the Bible verse "What you did for the least of these..." becomes clearer to me. Bl. Charles de Foucauld wrote that these words take on extraordinary force when you consider that they were spoken by the one who said, "This is my body. This is my blood." Mother Teresa commented that by keeping a pure heart, we will always be able to see the connection between the broken body of Christ in the Eucharist and the poorest of the poor. She said very plainly, "We cannot separate our lives from the Eucharist." This is why distinguishing between "a Church job" and "a secular job" seems to me like trying to unscramble eggs.

Many of the kids I work with have been abused, many have come out of the foster care system and have unstable family backgrounds, many have cognitive disabilities in addition to their mental health problems. A lot fall into all three categories. They're referred from other hospitals because they are too tough to handle. As my ward manager puts it, "We get the kids nobody else wants." The other day, as I was providing 1:1 support to a child who is too high-risk to be left alone even for a second, she asked me abruptly, "Are you religious? You look like someone who's sensible and religious." I replied yes, and it opened up many other questions. "Do you think me and the other kids here are going to hell? Does the Bible tell people who are bad to hurt themselves? Why does God make me be ill and not heal me like people say he can? Is it because I don't pray? Is it because I was rude to my mum?" I couldn't go into theology with her, as my beliefs aren't appropriate for discussion with patients, but I could reassure her that I don't think she's bad, that she isn't ill through her own fault, and so on. "But you have to say we're nice kids because it's your job. You don't really believe it." I told her, "If I didn't really believe it, I wouldn't be working here. I had offers of other jobs. I chose this one."

It was like watching a light go on in her face. That was missionary work as far as I'm concerned. I don't think it would be objectively better if I were employed by a parish to coordinate missionary activity, because our work is only ever as valuable as the love we put into it, and love is needed in every sphere of life.

1 hour ago, Sponsa-Christi said:

2. Generally, it seems like the "superior" vocations also involve a lot more sacrifices. Someone may be called by God to celibacy and given the gifts for this, but that doesn't mean you aren't making a sacrifice that runs directly contrary to our human nature. (And yes, there are sacrifices in marriage, but marriage is something all healthy human beings already have a natural inclination towards.) It doesn't make sense to me why a just and loving God would call some people to give up so much more without them being awarded in some kind of proportional way---or rather, without their vocation having some kind of value which makes the additional sacrifices "worth it."

3. It seems to me that if EVERYTHING is specially consecrated to God, then nothing is. If God will be equally pleased with every non-sinful action, then it's impossible to offer "more" to Him. You can't give yourself to God in a radical or supererogatory way if all non-sinful actions have exactly the same worth. 

Also, turning the question around, why would you have a problem with a hierarchy of vocations? Theologically, that martyrdom is considered the highest vocation of all. I'm unlikely to be martyred, but it doesn't bother me that my vocation is "lower" than theirs.  

I want to respond to these two points in particular. The latecomers to the vineyard in Jesus' parable were paid as much as the first ones there. I think the expectation of any special reward is something we all must sacrifice as Christians. God's love and justice go far beyond our human ideas, and He gives Himself totally to us - faced with that gift, isn't it miserly to worry over what other people did for the Kingdom and whether our offering counts for more? I also think it's radical to recognise that each soul is unique, that you're the only one who can love in your particular way, and you need to take your eyes off what everyone else is up to and look to God alone in order to reach fulfillment of that love. Wanting to set up a hierarchy of 'good, better, best' can be a way of reassuring ourselves that we're really doing the best we can - we crave the feeling of a solid stepladder under our feet. But we are called to walk on water.

As for martyrdom, St Therese de Lisieux spoke of becoming a martyr to divine love. Perhaps her kind of martyrdom is lower than the martyrdom of St Thomas a Becket. I don't know, and I suspect that the two of them do not think about it overmuch. A hierarchy might not be a problem in principle - the roots of the tree are as essential as the branches, and a stalagmite is as beautiful as a stalagtite - but it does become a problem when we use it as confirmation that we're going to get a proportional reward for doing X, Y, Z, as though living a holy life is a business transaction.

[Sponsa-Christi]

But by this logic, it seems like the large numbers of religious who left after Vatican II were doing something perfectly reasonable. Why bother having Catholic institutions at all, if a government institution can do the job just as well? Or what good do apostolic religious congregations do? Does it matter at all that apostolic religious congregations are dying out? Or does it really make no difference at all to the life of the Church, since women can be every bit as dedicated to God as married women in secular careers?

 

[beatitude]

14 minutes ago, Sponsa-Christi said:

But by this logic, it seems like the large numbers of religious who left after Vatican II were doing something perfectly reasonable. Why bother having Catholic institutions at all, if a government institution can do the job just as well? Or what good do apostolic religious congregations do? Does it matter at all that apostolic religious congregations are dying out? Or does it really make no difference at all to the life of the Church, since women can be every bit as dedicated to God as married women in secular careers?

 

It matters. Right now I think many women who are called to religious life don't say yes, either because they lack knowledge of it, or they're fearful. Many young Catholic women have never even met a nun, so they're less likely to consider being one. But the answer to this is to talk about the consecrated life more and to emphasise the freedom and joy that come with living out your calling, not in telling people that if they become a nun or a priest their vocation will objectively be worth more and they can expect a proportionate reward. As St Catherine of Siena put it, "If you are what you are called to be, you will set the world ablaze." They should do it because God is asking it, not for any other reason. That's the only good reason to do anything.

[Sponsa-Christi]

1 hour ago, beatitude said:

It matters. Right now I think many women who are called to religious life don't say yes, either because they lack knowledge of it, or they're fearful. Many young Catholic women have never even met a nun, so they're less likely to consider being one. But the answer to this is to talk about the consecrated life more and to emphasise the freedom and joy that come with living out your calling, not in telling people that if they become a nun or a priest their vocation will objectively be worth more and they can expect a proportionate reward. As St Catherine of Siena put it, "If you are what you are called to be, you will set the world ablaze." They should do it because God is asking it, not for any other reason. That's the only good reason to do anything.

Really, I'm not trying to say: "do this because it's better, and you'll get a bigger reward." I agree that this is absolutely the wrong way to go about discernment. 

But when you choose a "higher" vocation, there are sort of intrinsic rewards that makes it worth doing. Like, with my own choice of consecrated virginity, it seemed logical to me that I was sacrificing the joys of married life because in doing so, I would be able to offer my heart to Christ in a more undivided way. So objectively, virginity is worth choosing because by its very nature it's conducive to a more intimate relationship with Christ.

I'm wondering, am I wrong on this "intrinsic reward" idea? Or is virginity just what God calls some people to because it would fit their personality better on a purely natural level, or because it's a plot-point for some other event in His master providential plan?

So, what is the intrinsic, distinctive value of choosing to devote yourself to work which is explicitly Catholic? Or is there really nothing that makes direct Church service especially worth doing?

And if so...again, why bother having Catholic institutions or apostolic religious communities?  If a woman can do just as much good for the Church teaching in a public school (where she would be paid better and would have more professional development resources available to her), why bother choosing to be a Catholic school teacher (especially when closing Catholic schools would save a lot of money and administrative headaches for cash-strapped local dioceses)? If both jobs are equally "Catholic" in ever single respect, it would be foolish and imprudent to opt to work for an impractical institution. 

I guess I would argue that while of course "the world" can be a field for growing in Christian life and advancing in holiness, there is some special value (maybe not a "this is better in every sense"-type value; but at least a "this is a unique contribution worth making"-type value) in doing something which references Christ and His Church directly.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Sponsa-Christi
clarified a point above