The Pope & the CEO

by Andreas Widmer

  —Blessed John Paul II

  On June 6, 1987, I was assigned to honor guard duty at the entrance of the Papal Palace. Typically this is not the most exciting of a Swiss Guard’s tasks. The purpose of the task is noble enough: You’re considered a representative of the Holy Father at the entrance to his home and your mere presence is a sign of respect to special guests and dignitaries. The task doesn’t require you to do anything or say anything. You just stand there.

  On this particular day, however, honor guard duty promised a bit more excitement.

  A convoy of thirty-two cars slowly pulled in as I stood next to the stairs in the San Damaso courtyard. Out of one of the cars stepped President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy. They were greeted by Bishop Dino Monduzzi, Prefect of the Papal Household, and introduced to a line of Vatican dignitaries, which included the commander of the Swiss Guards. Then, after Reagan gave a crisp, military wave to the line of Guards assembled in his honor, the first couple proceeded toward the steps where I stood.

  Since I was tasked with doing my best impression of a living statue, I couldn’t even turn my head to get a good look at the fortieth president of the United States, then the most powerful man in the world and an icon of freedom and democracy during the height of the Cold War. Out of the corner of my eye, however, I watched him and his wife pass. They were happy, smiling, confident, and, surprisingly, much older than they appeared on television.

  A few hours later, the pair reemerged from the Papal Palace, having met first with Cardinal Casaroli, the Vatican Secretary of State, and later with the pope himself. Nobody knows exactly what went on in their meeting that day, what issues the pope and the president discussed behind closed doors. But just two days later, standing in front of the infamous Brandenburg Gates, Ronald Reagan delivered what was perhaps the most remembered speech of his presidency.

  “Mr. Gorbachev,” he declared, “tear down this wall.”

  The Power of Moral Vision

  Those are the words everyone knows from Reagan’s speech. Lesser known are the words he spoke at the end.

  The totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront. Years ago, before the East Germans began rebuilding their churches, they erected a secular structure: the television tower at Alexander Platz. Virtually ever since, the authorities have been working to correct what they view as the tower’s one major flaw, treating the glass sphere at the top with paints and chemicals of every kind. Yet even today when the sun strikes that sphere—that sphere that towers over all Berlin—the light makes the sign of the cross. There in Berlin, like the city itself, symbols of love, symbols of worship, cannot be suppressed.

  Those words were probably written long before Reagan’s meeting with John Paul II. And yet, I know they still have everything to do with the exchange those two great men had that day. The president and the pope were allies in the battle against Soviet-style communism. Neither saw that battle as merely political. To both it was an existential struggle over the truth of the human person.10

  For John Paul II particularly, the great evil of communism was the materialism that lay at its heart. Communism denied God. It denied the transcendent. It saw only the things of the world, and it valued only what it could see. Accordingly, it was an ideology that equated “having more” with being more, and its proponents committed any number of atrocities, denied any number of freedoms, and violated any number of rights in their purported efforts to secure the greatest amount of material happiness for the greatest number of people.

  John Paul II understood the evils of communism from the inside out. But his opposition to the Soviet Union wasn’t rooted in his personal experiences of Communist atrocities—in the three decades he spent living under Communist rule in Poland. It was rooted in what he believed to be true, right, and good. His opposition was ethical more than it was personal. His understanding of ethics, of what was right and what was wrong, gave him the clarity of vision and strength of conviction to stand firm against communism.

  Despite constant threats, despite the 1981 assassination atte-mpt that many believed was ordered by the KGB, and despite all the pressure on him to stand down and stop speaking out against communism, John Paul II persisted publicly and privately in his opposition to the totalitarian system. Where personal emotion or more visceral animosity could have clouded his vision and hindered his judgment, a clear ethical framework did just the opposite.

  Just two years after the pope and the president’s 1987 meeting, the Berlin Wall did indeed fall. Everyone involved in the struggle, from the president of the United States to the first democratically elected presidents in the Eastern Bloc, credited the pope’s clear moral vision as one of the primary reasons why.

  Competing Ethical Frameworks:

  Utilitarianism vs. Person Centeredness

  More than two decades have passed since the Soviet Union collapsed. While Russia today is hardly a beacon of democracy, the existential struggle in which John Paul II and Reagan were engaged seems to be over. But is it?

  In many ways, the materialist mindset the pope combated continues to this day in the forms of Western relativism and consumerism. Both, like communism, deny the transcendent. Both equate “having” with “being” and deny absolute truth. The fruits of modern materialism are evident in every aspect of Western life, from the breakdown of the family to the abysmal state of education. They are also evident in the way we do business.

  One need look no further than the economic collapse which followed the sub-prime mortgage crisis in late 2008 for evidence. The financial ruin of millions didn’t happen because of one person or one company’s wrong doing. It happened because countless individuals, from powerful CEOs and politicians to low-level mortgage brokers and real estate speculators, placed financial gain over acting rightly and justly. They didn’t act alone. In their efforts, they were helped by millions of consumers who shared their values.

  Those values weren’t formed overnight. They were formed slowly, by years of seemingly inconsequential decisions and habits, the sort of decisions to which it’s easy to turn a blind eye. A little number fudging here, a little expense account padding there—that’s where it begins. By the time the big ethical dilemma actually presents itself, it’s too late. Your response has been all but predetermined by the thousands of little choices you’ve made through the years.

  That’s why it’s so important to approach both life and work as John Paul II did, with a clear moral framework, a system of ethics that can serve as a compass, consistently pointing you in the right direction regardless of what circumstances or challenges you face.

  That system of ethics needs to be based on more than what the culture believes is right at any given point in time. It also needs to be based on more than what the law says is right at any given point in time. Neither are ever enough. Both can change. Both can be wrong. Both can crumble when tested.

  Again, look at the sub-prime crisis. Much of what went on was legal. The products mortgage companies offered were designed to fall ever so slightly on the right side of the law. But were those products moral? Was creating them, offering them, and buying them the ethical thing to do? Only if your guiding ethic is short-term financial profit at any cost.

  If you want to lead your team honestly, justly, and, in the long run, successfully, something more is needed than knowledge of the law. You need a true standard by which to evaluate all the day-to-day decisions you make. You need a clear and consistent framework that is in accord with the truth about man, the world, and God. That is a framework that John Paul II proposed. It is a framework derived from John’s first letter: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7–8).

  The Problem of Utilitarianism: Self-Centered Eth
ics

  Before we define what John Paul’s proposed framework is, however, it’s helpful to first define its opposite: utilitarianism. Whether they know it or not, many people today abide by a utilitarian ethical framework. They consider pleasure in this life the highest end that man can attain, and they believe that securing the maximum amount of pleasure for the greatest possible number of people is the goal of political, economic, and social activity. If the happiness or even lives of a few people must be sacrificed in order to obtain that pleasure for the greater number of men, that’s okay according to the utilitarian framework. If one person needs to be used by another for the sake of pleasure, that’s okay too.

  Utilitarianism is the ethical framework behind pornography. It tells me it’s okay to treat another person as an object and ask them to do things that will harm them physically, emotionally, and spiritually, so that I can obtain sexual enjoyment.

  Utilitarianism is also the ethical framework behind pollution. It sanctions my company’s decision to not put mechanisms in place that will prevent toxic chemicals from entering the ground water or poisonous particulates from going into the air because doing so would impact our profit margin.

  Utilitarianism is what allows CEOs to justify firing hardworking employees while top management uses the company jet for personal travel, and it’s what allows corporate executives to collect giant bonuses while short-changing shareholders. It’s what makes marketing executives feel comfortable convincing people to spend more than they have, and it’s why many corporate cultures become so tolerant of violations of moral rules (such as lying about a product’s abilities or an investment’s risks) among its employees. Everything and everyone is seen through the lens of short-term financial profit and pleasure. Everything and everyone is, in effect, a means or measure of pleasure.

  John Paul’s Proposed Ethical Framework: Person-Centered Ethics

  That’s not how it’s supposed to be. The human person is made in the image and likeness of God. We are the crown of creation and destined to become a partaker of the Divine Nature, to be God’s adopted children living in his presence for all eternity. We all have a shot at an end that is far more glorious than the mere experience of pleasure.

  Because of that, a person can never be an object. He can never be used as a means to an end. A person can choose to sacrifice himself for the greater good. A soldier can die for his country, a mother can go without food so that her child might eat, but no one can make that sacrifice for them. No one can force it upon them. Instead, John Paul declared “the person is the kind of good toward which the only proper and adequate attitude is love.”11

  Those truths are at the heart of John Paul II’s framework.12 John Paul II lived according to an ethical framework that places the human person at the center of all activity. The extent to which the good of the human person was furthered was the measure by which he judged ideas and actions. Likewise love, not the desire to maximize pleasure, was the attitude he believed should motivate all actions.

  John Paul II made no secret of this ethical framework. It was evident in the two philosophical books he published before becoming pope, The Acting Person and Love and Responsibility. It was also evident in his first encyclical, “The Redeemer of Man,” and just about everything he wrote afterwards. In that first encyclical, John Paul introduced a theme that would resound throughout his papacy. There, he wrote:

  Does this progress, which has man for its author and promoter, make human life on earth ‘more human’ in every aspect of that life?…What is most essential—whether in the context of this progress man, as man, is becoming truly better, that is to say more mature spiritually, more aware of the dignity of his humanity, more responsible, more open to others, especially the neediest and weakest, and readier to give and to aid all.13

  That’s the framework in a nutshell, and that is why John Paul II so steadfastly opposed communism. In communism, the good of the person is secondary to the good of the collective. In Communist societies, individuals haven’t been loved by those who rule them; they’ve been used. Their ultimate good is never considered. Who they are, who God made them to be, their own desires and hopes—none of those things are taken into consideration by the Communist system. Communism makes men less human, not more.

  That also is why John Paul II spoke out against forms of capitalism that weren’t underpinned by a Judeo-Christian ethic of charity, honesty, and personal responsibility. He saw in the forerunners of corrupt mortgage lenders and Enron executives the same utilitarian ethic that turned the wheels of communism.

  Above all, that person-centered ethic is why John Paul was such a staunch defender of attacks against the dignity of the human person—abortion, contraception, euthanasia, and the diminishment of the family. He saw all those things and countless other political and social movements demeaning men, making them less than what they were. He also saw people using other people, seeking pleasure at any cost. He knew how fundamentally destructive those behaviors were.

  This was evident in his remarks to the Vatican Diplomatic Corps on January 13, 2003. On that day, he repeated a thought he had said many times before:

  Respect life itself and individual lives: everything starts here, for the most fundamental of human rights is certainly the right to life. Abortion, euthanasia, human cloning, for example, risk reducing the human person to a mere object: life and death to order, as it were!14

  Whenever a new controversy or question arose, John Paul II had the good of the human person as his measuring stick, his tool by which to evaluate and judge a thing’s worth. That measuring stick was his constant, an unchanging ethic rooted in divinely revealed truth. He didn’t need the government to tell him it was right to oppose abortion. He didn’t need the culture to tell him he should help the Church open AIDS hospices throughout Africa. He had a guiding principle; an ethical framework , that unfailingly guided him, helping him know the difference between right and wrong.

  Others saw that, including President Reagan. That’s why he considered John Paul II his most valuable ally in the fight against communism and why he made a point of meeting with him before dramatically calling for the toppling of the Berlin Wall. The Communists saw it as well. That’s why they did everything they could to minimize the pope and silence him. All of us who served the man, who watched him day in and day out, weathering storms of controversy and public scorn, saw it too.

  Leading According to a Person-Centered Ethic

  John Paul’s person-centered ethic is just as applicable to leading a company as it is to leading the Church. When properly understood, it gives you the very tool you need to steer your team or company straight and true through the moral maze of the market.

  That understanding starts with recognizing that all economic activity is undertaken because of human beings. Not in the abstract, but specifically and individually. A company exists for two reasons: to satisfy the needs of its customers and to enable its employees and investors to earn a living while using their God-given gifts and talents in service to others. These individuals are at the center of every business and every business activity. Decisions made with a person-centered ethic lead you to an end where both the good of the customers and the good of the employees are achieved.

  The key word there is “both.” It’s never enough for a company to serve its customers at the cost of its employees’ health and well-being or vice-versa. The good of both must be secured.

  Rightly Ordered Objectives

  To illustrate this “both/and” concept, it might be helpful to briefly consider the Church’s teachings on marriage. In the Catholic tradition, marriage is considered the ultimate human relationship, a relationship modeled on the life and love of the Trinity and therefore a model, in many ways, for all other human relationships, business relationships included.

  Marriage’s first objective is procreation—the propagation of the human race through bearing children and raising them in a stable, loving environment. Its second aim is mutual
support—to give two people the benefit of another’s help and advice so that they might grow in wisdom and love. The third aim is the fulfillment of the desire of the spouses, the psychological and physical joy that loving and being loved can produce.

  None of those aims can be realized at the expense of the other. If a man enters marriage solely to satisfy his physical desires and has no intent of being a support to his wife or being open to children, he’s acting unethically. He’s violating the person-centered ethic (i.e., he uses another person for his own good or, more to the point, not for their joint good).

  The same goes for all other relationships. All healthy human relationships, in some way, should be life-giving, should provide mutual support, and should be psychologically or physically beneficial to the participants.

  When it comes to business specifically, those general objectives take on a concrete form.

  A business is life-giving when a group of individuals participate in God’s creative power, working together to pursue a common good by giving life to an idea, product, or service. This norm is what makes work spiritually fulfilling. It’s violated when the idea, product, or service destroys life literally (e.g., suicide machines, dangerous drugs, etc.) or destroys life spiritually, either for individuals or cultures (e.g., pornography).