ABSTRACT
On Pope John Paul II's view, the nature of a business enterprise is rooted in its relationship of service to the human person and to human fulfillment. While productivity may be necessary to profit, and profit a legitimate goal in service of the survival of the enterprise, the real goal of business is human fulfillment. Despite his own experiences, John Paul does not see the economic world as a harsh and cruel place in which ethical convictions invite disaster. Instead, he sees it as a dimension of human life in which persons collaborate with one another, and with God, to become more fully human. If businesses are to be communities of work populated by persons with an irreducible dignity, then some level of participation is inescapeable. The activity of a business, then, is a shared activity which must aim not merely at producing a return for investors, but also at genuinely benefiting each of the collaborators in appropriate ways.
