March 31, 2004, on this blog: Rights & responsibilities
“For even when we were with you we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”
This passage entails a clear responsibility to work. With that responsibility comes the corresponding right to work. This is why unemployment — the idling of those willing, indeed desperate, to work — has long been regarded by Christian social teaching as among the most grievous economic injustices. (In Laborem exercens, mentioned above, John Paul 2 refers to the “scourge of unemployment” and says that it is “in all cases an evil.”)
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