Doing Well and Doing Good

Richard John Neuhaus has been called a man with an instinct for the new things of the spirit. And the spirit, he believes, is calling for a very new thing: to make money - even lots of it. For too long, Neuhaus argues, Christianity has had nothing to say to Wall Street or to Main Street. Some churches have blasted the greed of the former or the bourgeois grasping of the latter. Others have insisted on a socialist alternative. But the time has come, Neuhaus says, to stop such silliness. Drawing on the writings of Pope John Paul Il, Neuhaus has written a spirituality of economic enterprise meant for the businessman and the intellectual alike.
There is nothing bad about hustling to make a buck, Neuhaus says. In fact, it benefits everyone if you do - yourself, your family, the people you can then hire. Moreover, it's only by taking care of such business that a healthy society can be built. With plain language, Neuhaus has written a groundbreaking work that unashamedly seeks to bestow a blessing on business. Evangelical Protestants have already done so, he notes approvingly. Now, he believes, is the Catholic moment to do likewise.