Feature Article: Corporate Social Thought

Running Head: FEATURE ARTICLE: CORPORATE SOCIAL THOUGHT
Feature Article: Corporate Social Thought
Name of the University:
Author Note:

FEATURE ARTICLE: CORPORATE SOCIAL THOUGHT1
The Catholic Social Thought or CST is a way of life as taught by the Catholic Church
for centuries. This is taught to people so that they develop a sense of self and their
community. It teaches people to become more humane and treat people with respect. The
CST has 9 principles that contain the idea of humanity and justice (Coonan, 2017). This
article focuses on the five of those principles and relates the idea conceived by those
principles to the development of self and the idea of community.
The very first and basic principle is the Respect for Human Person. This includes the
idea of respect for human dignity and human life. The principle states that each and every
human being, despite their class, cast, origin or disability is worthy of being respected.
Human dignity does not depend on their current condition or past experience. It remains
constant. Though, it is quite easy to lose that sense of self-respect quite easily. Thus, by virtue
of being a human, we should respect other human beings. Moreover, not only human dignity
but also every human life is precious by birth (Brigham & Soltis, 2018). Every human being
has the right to live and thus we must respect that sentiment and work to respect that. When
both combines, this gives the idea of perfect human life where people are able to live safely
without any impending sense of danger and with respect and dignity.
The second principle, the preferential options for the poor and vulnerable, propagates
that the poor and the vulnerable section of the society should be given special consideration.
The reason behind this is that this section of the society is and has remained underprivileged
for long and thus need help and special aid to enter into the mainstream of the society. The
people have the responsibility to stand beside the needy section of the society (Hanley, 2016).
In a society, people and institutions should always think about the impact of any work on this
needy section so that they do not become marginalized anymore. The government creates
many plans policies for the betterment of the poor and the marginalized. Non-profit
organizations too, have many agendas that are focused on the betterment of the poor.

FEATURE ARTICLE: CORPORATE SOCIAL THOUGHT2
The third principle, the principle of solidarity states that as creatures and parts
of societies that we live in, it is the responsibility of the individuals to care and love the other
inhabitants. The neighbors that live around the individuals are part of that solidarity. This
idea does not mean the vague sense of compassion that we might feel for others for their
misfortune or loss. The idea propagates the commitment to the cause of betterment of the
community. It is about taking responsibility for all and in turn for the self (Weigert,
Schlichting & Brandenberger, 2018). The difference is that, in most cases, if someone from
the community is suffering from an ailment that needs a good amount of money that they
cannot afford, some of the people will just express their concern and sadness on the incident.
There will be others who will take active part in the problem and will raise fund so that the
person can be treated. The second incident is what CST is about.
The fourth concept is of subsidiary. This is the idea of help or support. This concept is
about balancing the exact amount of support that people need. The church and the individuals
should only help as much as the society needs. Too much support might lead them to become
overdependence on those aids while too little might lead to increase of frustration and
hopelessness in the community (Valadez & Philip, 2015). The community must stand beside
each other in need but not overdo it in order to keep the balance in check. In many cases,
governments and other institutions help people that need their help and support. Government
provides education, clinics and other facilities for backward people in the society. This helps
them in gaining a little momentum in their advancement. Now, if the government started to
provide for all their basic livelihood needs, they will become too dependent on that. They will
stop working and will fall back on the government.
The fifth concept is of common good. The CST propagates that people should think
about the greater good or the betterment of the majority of the larger population. People are
mostly driven by personal gain. It is difficult for most people to go beyond their selfish ends