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INTENTION : |
That the unemployed may receive support and find the work they need to live in dignity.
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When a teacher comes upon a student who does not devote himself to study as he should, maybe he makes remarks like this: How many people today would like to work but have been laid off, and you, who have the good luck of a secure occupation like study, are you going to waste your opportunity?
The general intention for this month reflects one of the problems that are, sadly, most pressing at the moment: that of the millions of unemployed in the world. Clearly, it takes on a greater importance in those countries where the structural level of unemployment is highest, or has shot up alarmingly if it is - hopefully - only temporary.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (nos.287-291) affirms very clearly: Work is a fundamental human right, it is a useful benefit, apt to express and increase human dignity. Work is necessary to form and maintain a family, to have a right to property, to contribute to the common good of humanity. The question of work brings with it important moral implications. For that reason, the Church considers unemployment a real social calamity, especially with reference to the younger generations.
Even everyday experience tells us that it is important to enjoy work where people develop their gifts and faculties, receive a just salary which gives sufficient maintenance, and know that they are useful to society - as against the feeling of being parasitic on it.
Our pope emeritus Benedict XVI emphasizes (Caritas in Veritate, no.25) that being without work for a long time or prolonged dependence on public or private assistance undermines the freedom and creativity of the person and their family and social relations, which produces severe psychological and spiritual damage.
In reality it is a drama for the unemployed person, who has to live on charity, if not by begging, and so drag out an existence deprived of human dignity. For that reason full employment is an essential objective for every economic order which seeks an orientation to justice and the common good.
The problems of employment call on the responsibility of the State, as the Compendium quoted also says; it is the State's responsibility to promote policies which activate employment, which favour the creation of work-opportunities, in that way giving incentive to the world of production. The State's duty consists not so much in directly securing the right to work for all its citizens, structuring the whole of economic life and suffocating the free initiative of individuals, but rather in supporting the activity of business, creating conditions which secure opportunities for work, stimulating this activity where it may be insufficient or sustaining it in moments of crisis.
Fr. Javier Garcia Ruiz de Medina, SJ,
National Secretary of the Apostleship of Prayer, Spain
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