Following the 1987 Constitution’s doctrine of separation of church and state, the Philippine government complies its own laws and statutes, while the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), the oldest Christian denomination in the country, organized its own compendium of moral norms on social issues called Catholic Social Teaching (CST), a set of conciliar and papal documents that deal with the Christian faith and social concerns in society (Ballano, 2019).

Ideally, the legal and moral norms ought to be complementary as “every moral norm could be a content of a legal norm (Green, 2008). Fuller (1964) asserts that there is a necessary connection between law and morality: law must have some “internal morality” for it to be law. But there are instances wherein what is enacted by the Philippine legislature as legal could be immoral for the RCC, such in the case of giving wages to workers. While the RCC preaches CST’s FLW for workers as a hallmark of its modern approach to economic justice (Hinze, 1991), the Philippine government continuously implements the MW as the legal salary for wage earners in the country.

The Philippines has two conflicting normative standards that can guide Catholic employers in the giving of just wage to workers: the state’s legal norm on MW and the religious norm of the Roman Catholic Church’s (RCC) on the FLW as expounded by CST, “a body of literature produced by hierarchical leaders in the Catholic church, popes or bishops, who have tried to address the political, economic, and social implications of Christian belief” (Himes, 2017). CST is a set of conciliar and papal documents accumulated through the years that aims to build a society marked by peace, concord, and justice (Dulles, 2002). It starts with the publication of Rerum Novarum (On Labor and Capital), the first document by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to discuss the Christian faith in relation to labor and capital in society, and continues to increase gradually up to the present. CST serves as “a set of principles for reflection, criteria for judgment and directives for action” for all the members of the Church (Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,1965) up to the present, the RCC considers the just wage for workers in modern industrial society as a central moral concern (Hinze, 1991).” According to CST, “wages are the measure of the justice of the entire socioeconomic system, which should be “evaluated by the way in which man’s work is properly remunerated in the system” (Laborem Exercens, 1981).

Questions:

1. When CSR enjoins employers to fulfil their social responsibility to their workers by paying a just wage, which of these two conflicting normative standards must be followed? The legal standard of MW of the government or the moral standard of FLW of the RCC?

2 What would be its possible repercussions to the economic welfare of business firms and employers if they choose one over the other?

3. How should one deals with those activities considered to be morally unacceptable, even though they might be legally permissible and economically viable or even indispensable?

4. Provide a comparison between the componets of minimum wage (MW) and CST’s Family Living Wage in terms of: a. b. C. d. Consideration in fixing the wage. Inclusion of Social Benefits Basis for fixing income Employment of spouses Provision for profit sharing e.