Vatican to craft Catholic 'Sullivan Principles'

It's all way too little and way far too late!!!

JPII and B16 put these greedy people in power via single issue politics. Their enabling began under the Reagan/Friedman protocols of worship for money and the god of business efficiency(it takes gov'rt 3% to do it and business 30-40% to do the same thing; they call that business efficiency??).

The pope hates Communism, Socialism and Marxism, as do the Repubs. The Repubs hate it because it cuts into their business profits and because gov't can do things for some 30% less than business can and that threatens the hell out of them. They know they can never be as efficient as gov't. Both the popes and their Repub friends hate democracy because they cannot do whatever they want to do and must answer to "we the people'. SO, they just canceled "we the people"!!! The final stroke in that cancellation was when the Scalia Catholic Right Wing fundamentalist SCOTUS ruled FOR BIG Corporations and against "we the people" in 01/10 when they ruked for the ppoeo and his corproatye repubs on the case of Citiazens Unieted v. The Federal Elections Board.

Their intention, by the SCOTUS, the pope and the GOP is to put the GOP and their corporations in total control over America. Then, we will have more Repub Neocon wars against Islam and against Europe and finally against Russia, but not against China, and more Trickle down economic disasters.

Single issue voting stupidity will increase poverty and that will increase abortions. The European system of gov't, especially as seen in the Scandanavian countries looks better and better for everyone, including/especially the fetus, families and pregnant women!!! But due to the greed for money and power by the Vatican and the GOP that will never happen here and they will attempt to kill it off in Europe, sooner or later. Watch for it to happen. B16 has already begun that onslaught.

I will be waiting to see how they deal with the issues of 1)Denying benefits to spouses if the civil law also requires benefits to same sex couples and/or domestic partners and 2)Whether it is permissible to allow contraceptives and sterilization to be covered in the employee health plan. If the answers are yes to #1 and no to #2, then these principles will see only limited use, if any. And they will make a mockery of the Vatican's cry for "religious freedom".

This is interesting and good news. And congratulations to Mike and the John A. Ryan Center. If this moves forward, the organizers should really include Pope Benedict's Peace Day message on the ecology too. It is an essential complement to Caritas in Veritate to deal with the dramatically changed context of business today in the light of climate change and ecological limits.

The Church is also a global 'business'. How would it measure up using the Sullivan Principles...regarding poverty, economic justice, gender equity, human rights,etc.

It might be interesting to apply the Sullivan Principles to the Roman Catholic Church; Justice and Peace require a Church where all voices are not only heard but actually listened to - to hear with the heart. When will be be open to discussing items such as the use and abuse of power, women's ordination, sexual abuse and all other aspects of human sexuality. At times, we as a Church proclaim wonderful principles of justice and equality but fail to practice them in our own house.

Wonderful in principle, but I fear the message will have diminished credibility until the Church acts justly towards her own members and employees.

Will the Vatican apply these principles to its treatment of women?

nice

Finally, something positive from the Vatican. This process should be actively encouraged, with the hierarchy and in the business community.

The idea of socially responsible investing has been with us for a long time, at least in the US, and I dare say elsewhere as well. Some religious orders and some churches are already in the game, as well as many others. No doubt those drafting these new "Sullivan principles" might learn much from the work already done.

In other words, to all individual members and shareholders in these behemoth corporations, turn your Catholic and Christian professions of faith on Sunday into actions and votes in the Board Rooms on Mondays? That has happened in some rare business cases, but unfortunately, when you start talking "bottom line," somehow the magic of the 40 percent profit still rules. If they could step back from that magic "40%", and be satisfied with even 30%, that 10% could be used for the "caritas." Just think what that would mean to society's needs if all corporations would spread that around wherever they operate, even if it meant only to dedicate for a charitable fund to provide for education of their workers' children.

"Subsidiarity"!!!!!!!!!
Something Rome would love to move into an arena that did not involve church administration.The word is anathema to the curial bureaucracy and they would love to be able to point and say "See! We tried it and it didn't work."

Re-inventiong the wheel? Professor Hans Kung has already gone into this direction years ago and his old friend the Pope knows about it. It is his Global Ethic Foundation, also presented officially at last year's Parliament of the World's Religions in Melbourne Australia.

Good idea but think how much better the idea would be if the hierarechy of the church followed these principles. Think of the way the church treats women, employees and the lay faithful. The institution is a disgrace itself in so many ways. Such a shame!

I believe the Roman Catholic Church would have more credibility if its hierarchy would adhere to a few ethical principles themselves. As it is, with its clear disdain for victims of sexual abuse, for women, and more generally for all of us peons in the pews, I fear that it will do more damage than good for any moral or ethical cause it supports or proposes.

Fortunately, if were to attempt to draw a comparison between either of the two local parishes I call "home" and our "infallible" (?!) leader in Rome and his cronies, one might recognize few similarities.

Ah, finally: the Pope gets down to Gospel brass tacks. Republicans, please study it carefully, nor would it do any harm either to take it to heart.

It seems to me part of the success of the Sullivan Principles is that they was drafted and targeted at a particular context at a particular time - South African apartheid. It seems to me that unless a similar such context is the goal, this project can only produce the vaguest of notions that are likely to have little impact. There are thousands of "corporations" in America today, each distinct from the next. One must distinguish, for example, between GE and Apple; between Goldman Sachs and GM, between a large multi-national corporation & a small, family-owned corporation. Can you adopt a "one-size-fits-all" set of principles that applies to High Finance as equally as to making widgets in Poughkeepsie? Furthermore, a corporation is actually a diverse group of people acting more or less interdependently with each other - directors, shareholders, officers, employees. The corporation cannot and does not exist or act apart from these constituent groups. So to which group or groups will these principles be aimed? Just some critical questions that should be addressed before I think such a project can be effective.

I admire the direction this direction, particularly around job design. I would add the need to help leaders embody Christian principles in how they treat and engage staff at work. I published a book in Canada recently that provides a method to turn theory into practice. I would be glad to offer it to the working group of the Council as one more point of reference. It is called Who's The Driver Anyway: Making the Shift to a Collaborative Team Culture. It is the result of more than five years of in-market research, testing and development. I am an active Catholic myself, bringing this work to Christian organizations as well as secular ones.

blessings,

John Kuypers

"“Sullivan Principles,” elaborated in the late 1970s by African-American minister Leon Sullivan to apply economic pressure on South Africa to revise, and eventually abandon, its system of apartheid."
1) I am a white man from South Africa, born and bred there, but now an American and am very irritated by the term African American used for blacks in America, as if, simply because they are American blacks whose African ancestors were from Africa, they can usurp the term African and exclude those who really are African be they white or black.
Whilst blacks born in America may, naturally, be more American than me I am certainly more African than they will ever be and if anyone has the right to call himself an African American it is me!
2) Whilst I was no supporter of apartheid lets not revise history here. If the author seriously thinks the Sullivan Principles did anything to change the attitude of the (former) domineering Afrikaner Nationalist Party (Nats) which came into power in 1948 and which instituted and enforced apartheid, he is sadly mistaken.
And the implication that said Principles lead to the revision and ultimately the end of apartheid is not only untrue it is preposterous. What ultimatly caused the downfall of apartheid wasn't Tambo's and Mandela's terrorist ANC, nor sanctions, nor sports boycotts, nor expulsion from the Olympics but the fall of communism since with the collapse of the USSR the Nats could no longer use the "Red Threat" as its trump card against the West, in particular, against the USA and England.

Maybe we'll actually see a Document respecting the "Do" as opposed to the "Don't" -- in the larger context. Business does not see itself as having a fundamental duty of justice toward its own employees, its community, and its country. Unions will be reminded that serving the membership is noble, but profiting off it is not. For business the message is also that lower taxes are not the end-all and be-all of politics, that undermining all political opposition to lower taxes is not moral.

This Document could serve as a reminder to the Bishops that as one Catholic organization pointed out years ago "Life does not end at birth", as well as to the business community that business does not do well if its only motive is an increase in tomorrow's bottom line.

The original anti-apartheid Sullivan Principles of 1977 were followed by the 1999 Global Sullivan Principles that express global values that companies should support and incorporate into their own policies and procedures:

http://www.thesullivanfoundation.org/about/global_sullivan_principles