Chasing a career through corporate America, I lived in California when the “Renew” program hit parishes. Our group chose to study Economic Justice for All, the Bishops' Letter on the U.S. Economy. I underlined and re-read passages over the years. One thing was clear then and still is—the economy isn't just.

I saw it in practices and policies of corporations with which I dealt: I declined an ad agency assignment to create a program targeting low-income males with usury loan and insurance products. I rejected a client who wanted women to purchase his line of cosmetics because “God would like that.”

I increasingly noticed marketing strategies that skirted legality. The final straw occurred when, as a product manager with a large retail chain, I was told to put a dubious bodybuilder's “fat burner” pill into the women's diet section of 1200 stores. I quit.

It wasn't always that way. Del Monte Foods, where I worked for ten years in the '60s, was a highly respected employer with honest products. The mega-mergers that marked the '70s brought increased demands for ever higher profit margins, and the obsession with profitability continues.

Entire industries became amoral at best, blaming it on the marketplace where what one corporation “gets away with” becomes a practice all believe they must adopt to stay competitive. It's an Enron/World Com-type excuse for ignoring human dignity and human rights.

But it can work the other way around. One major corporation's socially responsible behavior can cause its entire industry to follow suit. And that's actually happening through combined efforts of religious investors, including BVMs.

Catholic Social Teaching

By 1990 I left the corporate world and moved home to Butte. I studied Catholic Social Teaching enthusiastically and volunteered in capacities that put me in the right place to educate others, for example, on the ten principles listed in the Economic Justice for All handout from the U.S. Catholic Conference.

Number one shocks many: “The economy exists for the person, not the person for the economy.”

The ninth boldly asserts that choices stockholders make can “enhance or diminish economic opportunity, community life, and social justice.”

And the tenth says “decisions on investment… should protect human life and promote human rights, especially for those most in need wherever they might live on this globe.”

Engaging Corporations

Spurred by my interest in social justice, I earned a degree in public policy in 1999. I became a BVM Associate a year later. I was attracted by the knowledge, freedom and compassion of Sisters who were unafraid to talk justice to the powerful as they “walked” with the disadvantaged. When the BVMs created a Shareholder Education and Advocacy (SEA) interest group, I was delighted to join.

BVMs have successfully caused multinational conglomerates to heed moral precepts. The community is a member of the 30-year-old Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR).

With 275 other faith-based institutional investors, BVMs gently nudge companies, through dialogue, to be socially and environmentally responsible. If dialogue fails, resolutions may be filed at annual meetings.

Women with business acumen are especially visible in the corporate responsibility movement. ICCR's Executive Director is Pat Wolf, RSM.

A resolution filed for the BVM congregation by BVM Mary Ellen McDonagh resulted in nearly 100% shareholder approval of HIV-AIDS insurance coverage for Coca-Cola's African plant workers.

This year our Gwen Farry, BVM (Leontia) will file a similar one regarding Coke's Asia/India workers.

The BVM Shareholder Education and Advocacy group has Sisters and Associates working to slow the rising cost of prescriptions, question privatization of indigenous peoples' water, and challenge makers of pornographic, violent video games to keep them out of the hands of children.

A project of ICCR's contract supplier working group sees BVMs advocating better wages for China 's exploited seamstresses and product assemblers. An increase in benefits for these lowest paid workers of the world will raise standards for all.

Church teaching on the universal destination of goods says wealth belongs to the Lord, but the responsibility for its use is ours.

No amount of lobbying government for regulations can substitute for the “renewal” corporations experience when shareholders are able to bring about moral change from an “insider” position.

Consider investing in screened
socially responsible companies.

Visit www.iccr.org
to see a database of providers.

About the author: Associate Mary Kay Craig co-chairs the Catholic Campaign for Human Development committee of the Helena Diocese and coordinates Butte 's Holy Spirit Parish social justice ministry.

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© 2006 Sisters of Charity, BVM