In this anti-business climate – where the Occupy Wall Street protestors capture headlines for months – how can businesses play a positive role in society? That is the question author Richard John Neuhaus addresses in Doing Well and Doing Good (Image Books, July 10, 2012).
The Challenge to the Christian Capitalist
Can Business Create Good in Society?
The author, who died in 2009, writes: “This book is about doing well and doing good, about taking care of business and taking care of one another. It is far from obvious that those concerns go together. In fact, it is commonly assumed that they are in tension, if not in irreconcilable conflict. It is often said, or at least implied, that we must make a choice between doing well and doing good, between concern for business and concern for people.
“There are indeed tensions, and there are indeed choices to be made, but this book explores the reasons why, all things considered, there is not a necessary opposition between doing well and doing good, between taking care of business and taking care of one another. Far from these interests being opposed, they may actually need one another.”
RICHARD JOHN NEUHAUS (1936 – 2009) was a prominent American clergyman (first a Lutheran pastor and then a Roman Catholic priest) and writer. Born in Canada, he moved to the United States, where he was the founder and editor of the monthly journal First Things and the author of several books, including The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (1984), The Catholic Moment: The Paradox of the Church in the Postmodern World (1987), and Catholic Matters: Confusion, Controversy, and the Splendor of Truth (2006). He was a staunch defender of Church teaching on abortion and other life issues and an unofficial advisor to President George W. Bush on bioethical issues.
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