Economic Justice
More than fifteen years ago, the Church Affairs unit of Catholic Relief Services began encouraging Catholics in the United States to buy fairly traded crafts through a singular partnership with SERRV. Presently, through a network of more than a dozen partners across our five regions, the CRS Fair Trade program annually sells more than $2 million dollars of crafts, coffee and chocolate by engaging tens of thousands of Catholics in fair trade opportunities to pray, learn, buy, sell and give.
While we might do well to stay on this course in order to reach millions more Catholics who don’t yet know how Fair Trade can help them live the values of their faith, the times and Church teaching demand that we must go beyond solidarity shopping. In Caritas in Veritate, for example, Pope Benedict notes:
“It is good for people to realize that purchasing is always a moral—and not simply economic—act. Hence the consumer has a specific social responsibility, which goes hand-in-hand with the social responsibility of enterprise. Consumers should be continually educated regarding their daily role, which can be exercised with respect for moral principles without diminishing the intrinsic economic rationality of the act of purchasing…” (66. Emphasis added)
The CRS Fair Trade program takes this, and Caritas in Veritate in its entirety, to mean that our work should go beyond only fair economic transactions and offer Catholics opportunities to embrace broad and influential roles in the world economy in order to help create moral systems. For this reason we are actively engaged in the Catholics Confront Global Poverty initiative, particularly helping fair traders understand how they can pray, learn, advocate, and give in the areas of climate change and natural resource use.