When You Might Need to Assert Your Catholic Identity at Work

As the "religion" of secular humanism eats away at our culture's esteem for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, we Catholics face a world more and more unfriendly to all we hold precious. Since most of us need to earn a living to pay our bills, the workplace may not be the best place to take a stand against this progressive cancer, if we chose to fight. On the other hand, living your faith without compromise - a theme of some recent posts here - includes doing so in the the workplace. Here's an example, from a past post:

I didn't contribute to The United Way a few years back when I worked at a big company. I had contributed for a number of years through a company program. But at one point, I realized that The United Way contributed to organizations that offered services opposed to my Catholic faith. At the time, their contributions funded contraception and abortion, among other things. As soon as I realized this, I knew I had to do something. So I looked for a way to direct my money to good causes, and not have it used for evil purposes.

Why not just stop contributing? The basic reason was that my company sponsored the #1 corporate program in the country and took great "corporate pride" in that, so much so, that it was expected that every department achieve 100% participation. And our managers put pressure on all of us so they could achieve this goal.

Now I was happy to play the good corporate citizen, even if the whole corporate citizen thing always struck me as not having much substance except as a device for certain people to build their careers. But what the heck. And so I spoke with the United Way representative to see if I could direct my contribution to a worthy organization and, as it turns out, I could.

So I specified the organization - Calvary Hospital, a place that specializes in caring for dying cancer patients. But the next year I had to re-consider my decision.

I had done more reading about this whole area and came across a sensible argument that put into question the way I was dealing with the United Way issue. This argument...says that because money is "fungible"; if you contribute to an organization that promotes or supports evil activity, your money, even if directed to a good cause, frees up other money that the company can then direct towards evil.

It was really, REALLY uncomfortable to tell my boss I was not going to contribute...Our group did not achieve 100% participation. My boss wasn't Catholic and he didn't like it, but I think he understood my decision was reached after much soul-searching and thought.

The same couldn't be said the next year, when our group had another boss. I explained my decision to him...He wasn't as understanding. Naturally, he was Catholic, but that didn't matter. He just wanted to be 100%. You would think that being Catholic, he would be even more understanding, wouldn't you?

Ah, there's a twist. Our fellow Catholics won't necessarily be our allies in our efforts to live out our lives - even in the workplace - as Catholics. Oh well, no reason to fret. It's always been that way. The early Church splintered into those faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ and those who decided they knew better. Why should it be any different now?

Look, I'm no saint and no hero. I did what I had to do, according to the dictates of my conscience. If I could, believe me so can you.