I continue reading Gaudium et spes in preparation for the next Catholic Social Thought and the Law seminar. GS states plainly a conception of labor that is a central feature of CST and, candidly, one with which I have always struggled:
By his labor a man ordinarily supports himself and his family, is joined to his fellow men and serves them, and can exercise genuine charity and be a partner in the work of bringing divine creation to perfection. Indeed, we hold that through labor offered to God man is associated with the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, Who conferred an eminent dignity on labor when at Nazareth He worked with His own hands. (67)
Work is thus seen as a means by which we collaborate in God’s on-going act of creation. The Creator hid untold riches and possibilities within His creation, which it is Man’s vocation to discover and develop through work. Man’s capacity for creativity thus is one of the ways in which he was made in God’s image. This innate capacity, however, requires development. Accordingly, work is not only a process by which we collaborate in God’s creative transformation of the world, but also by which we ourselves are transformed into a more fully human person. According to CST, this process of self-fulfillment is both a duty and a privilege.
In my personal view, however, Man may (and should) imitate God’s creative work, but Man does not share in God’s work as Creator. In the Genesis account, Creation was completed on the sixth day. “That is exactly why God could call it good and rest” on the seventh day.[1] Instead of being part of an on-going process of Creation, work was a direct result of the Fall: When exiled from Eden, Man was condemned to “painful toil.”[2] Work thus was not intended to be intrinsically fulfilling, but simply a necessary means of survival.
I suspect that my perspective on work and creation is a relic of my Protestant upbringing. I suppose I shall have to (pardon the weak pun) work on it.
[1]Stanley Hauerwas, Work as Co-Creation: A Critique of a Remarkably Bad Idea, in Co-Creation and Capitalism: John Paul II’s Laborem Exercens42, 45 (John W. Houck and Oliver F. Williams eds. 1983).
[2]Genesis 3:17. It would be more precise to say that unfulfilling and even painful work was the result of the Fall. See Hauerwas, supra note 1, at 48. Before the Fall Man was to till and work the Garden. Genesis 2:15. As a result of the Fall, however, work was transformed into the “painful toil” of Genesis 3:17.
