The Catholic Church endorses a free market economy, finding it one of the best environments for Catholic Social Teaching to flourish. Yet, many faith leaders argue the opposite, following a false, but dominant, narrative.
This creates a strategic opportunity. As the national university of the Catholic Church in the US, The Catholic University of America is in a unique position to influence how American Catholics in business think about free market economy and how they integrate their faith and work.
Drawing from Catholic teaching and economic principles, we will create 16 videos summarizing two books, Andreas Widmer’s The Pope & the CEO: Pope Saint John Paul II's Lessons to a Young Swiss Guard and Luke Burgis and Joshua Miller’s Unrepeatable: Cultivating the Unique Calling of Every Person. Our easy-to-digest, emotionally touching, and motivating videos will show how free market economy, morality, and faith go together. We will demonstrate that personal freedom is the basis of personal virtue and personal virtue is both the foundation of free markets and a product of them. This insight is well documented, but little known, because most people never encounter the research that might convince them.
To help measure impact and maximize reach, we will create a project-specific website and a video companion study guide. To further reinforce messaging, we will link the website to other related programs offered by the Busch School.
Harnessing the power of visual imagery, emotional appeal, and using reasoned argument, we will create new connections in people’s minds between the deepest longings of the heart--the meaning connected with the desire to create and personal vocation--and a renewed, deeper, and more accurate understanding of Church teaching related to the free market economy. These connections among personal vocation, faith, and human freedom will change attitudes and therefore, behavior and decision-making, over time.
