History is a record of the encounter between character and circumstance!

My readers, I want to offer you a short selection of the text from an address delivered FEB. 24, 2009 by Msgr. Charles Chaput - Denver, Colorado, to a group of business leaders in Canada which I found so important and crucial also for bioethics today (as my primary field of expertise).

"C.S. Lewis once said that each human life, no matter how disabled, poor or infirm, is more valuable than every great empire in history. What he meant is this. Every human person is a child of God designed from conception to live forever. But every nation and every culture will sooner or later die and be forgotten. This is why the dignity of the human person -- including his or her economic well-being -- is at the heart of Catholic social teaching. But Catholic or not, any sensible businessperson can understand the logic of the Golden Rule. We reap what we sow. If we act like pirates, that's what we become. If we act ethically, we create an ethical world -- even if its borders only reach as far as our family, business colleagues and friends.

More importantly, we can't really be free until we live, in some sense, for others. That's why the saints are the freest people in history. Freedom never comes from things. It never comes from avarice or envy or any other addiction. Real freedom comes from self-mastery. It comes from talents that we turn outward for others. The deal God puts on the table is very simple: We need to give to receive. And that makes sense, because God is love; his essence is charity. He's the author of all our talents -- and the "ecology" of our lives, to be in balance, requires that we help others if we hope to help ourselves. In the long run, there's no way to be a "successful" person -- in business, in politics, in the Church or anywhere else -- by wanting and taking more than we're willing to give. The habit of giving creates abundance. The habit of taking steals from everybody -- beginning with ourselves and our own integrity."

With persmission of Zenit - source: http://www.zenit.org/article-25191?l=english