Making a Life: Catholic Social Teaching and the Meaning of Work

We're finally saying it out loud: work shouldn't be this way. Burnout, poverty wages, no time for family, layoffs, gig work, and unemployment are just some of the things wrong with work as we know it today. But what should work be like? Why do some want to put the label "work" on family caregiving and other tasks of regular life? And why does it feel so hard to accept the choice between a meaningful career and one that pays the bills?

In this timely and provocative book, ethicist Kate Ward shows that the answers to these questions lie in an understanding of human nature, our deepest desires and potential, and the possibilities and challenges when we join together in community. Drawing on the tradition of Catholic social teaching, Ward examines work through five key lenses: purpose, care, food, art, and pay. Making our mark on the world through intentional activity is a primary way humans find meaning and purpose, but this shouldn't have to be through a paid job. Caregiving is a prime example of work-purposeful activity-that society undervalues despite the fact that every worker begins life receiving care. Food serves as a lens to examine the ways the same work can sometimes feel creative and fulfilling, at and other times repetitive and burdensome. Art is a purposeful activity that many regard as a leisure pursuit even though artists devote significant time, usually for very little money, to making their creative mark. Interpreting work through these lenses reveals that much needs to be changed about the relationship of work and pay to acknowledge the many ways people's creative, purposeful activity helps society run.

Long before today's culture wars and scandals, the Catholic Church crafted a set of teachings on work and its place in human life that deeply responds to the failings, frustrations and potential of work as we know it today. The Church's long historical lens, and its location everywhere in the world where there are poor people working, gives Catholic social thought a unique, experience-based perspective on how work can be part of a meaningful human life and what we need to do, together, to get there. Ward breaks open Catholic social thought on work and its role in a meaningful life in this first-ever book devoted to the topic.