- The Pro-Life Shopping Guide 2001 is available. Check below for details. Or to go immediately to order by emailing to IndyPublish.com, the publisher, or call them toll free at 1(866)453-4000..
The Saint Antoninus Institute for Catholic Education in Business is dedicated to saving souls in the workplace and marketplace through word, action and prayer.
We promote the social teachings of the Catholic Church in the areas of work, business, management and economics. We serve families, consumers, businesses and business students alike.
We do not believe that "business ethics" is an oxymoron, that one need to use sex or be a crook to succeed in business. On the contrary, we believe that being involved with a business or being a supervisor in an organization can translate into new spiritual opportunities which are the basis of a new apostolate of the world of work. We are also involved with sorting issues relative to God and Mammon.
The Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. It is endorsed by the Immaculate Conception Third Order Dominican chapter, Dominican House of Studies, Washington, DC (Dominican Province of St. Joseph).
Jean-François Orsini, TOP, Ph.D., KHS, its founder and
president, is the subprior of the aforementioned chapter. In addition
to a French graduate business degree from a top school E.S.C.P.
, he has earned both an MBA and Ph.D. from the Wharton
School. He is also president of the Washington chapter of the
Society of Catholic Social
Scientists.
We follow the social encyclicals of the Catholic Church.
In addition, we utilize the method of St. Thomas Aquinas and his teachings on man's habits and psychology in order to bridge the gap between the social encyclicals and the modern discourse of management.
We believe that both the encyclicals and a Thomistic understanding of human nature in the context of modern managerial issues are necessary to better understand the responsibilities we all face at work - technical responsibilities as well as moral responsibilities - and in order to meet these responsibilities. With such approaches managers and corporations will particularly excel over those equipped with a purely secular formation. Naturally, basic issues relative to work are common to employees and supervisors. But a deeper understanding of these issues is necessary for supervisors and managers whose added and essential responsibility is to supervise the work of others.
We believe that work is both a right and an obligation. Business organizations, which among other things are the institutionalization of the work to be done by the many, find their dynamics and moral justification in that they have a duty of service to members of the wider society, as well as to that society at large, to provide the good and services which allow individuals and communities to function and be free to perform in their other spheres of responsibilities and competence.
Further we believe there is a great need to transform the economic order so that it becomes more compatible with the teachings of the Church. Along with St. Antoninus, who was archbishop of Florence - a rich city of merchants where many business techniques and mechanisms were first invented - we believe that business people can earn their way to heaven by applying, with God's grace, the teaching of the Church to their trade. Business and management may be a priviledged path to sanctity nowadays.
At the macro, national, level: time and again directed economies have proven total failures. Free-market economies are the only types consistent with the free nature of human beings. Government regulations, in our over-administered modern societies, are often barriers to prosperity which should be removed for the sake of the common good. This is the first obligation. But at the same time economic agents (that is consumers as well as producers) must learn to become responsible moral agents in the day-to-day decisions they make which affect the economy. This is the second obligation. These responsibilities must be learned. This Institute is set up also to help in this regard.
We therefore believe that, even in the midst of a prevalent
culture of material hedonism, the multiplication of economic exchanges
as well as the unprecedented affluence available to many nations
can be turned into better spiritual opportunities.
Membership
and a Quarterly Newsletter
"Virtue Based Management",
a virtual textbook and handbook of management which reviews
all the specific themes of management from a Catholic and Thomistic
perspective.
"The Pro-Life Shopping
Guide", a reference book listing the over 100 corporations which
support pro-abortion organizations, with their over 3,000 brands
and subsidiaries. We offer here, in a linked, downloadable, file
the names of the corporations with their electronic addresse(s)
when available so that you can easily and immediately express to
them what you think of their responsibilities in this regard.
The opportunity of establishing an Antoninus
Circle in your parish. Such circles are parish-based group
of professionals and other people interested in understanding the
Church social teachings and how they can practically affect the
way they should make decisions and behave at work. People meet within
these Circles and share in learning the Church social teachings,
pray together on the difficulties they encounter in this
regard and socialize around these interests in order to better
establish a sense of parish solidarity. Such circles may also become
local chapters of the St. Antoninus Institute. Are available for
downloading here:
50 Reasons to Establish an Antoninus Circle in my parish
How to Establish and Antoninus Circle and
Complete Study Program for an Antoninus Circle
The opportunity for significant investors
to come at the ground level in a venture to set up a Pro-Life
Mutual Fund by investing in the "management company" which will
support the fund. The general pro-life public would then have a
means to invest in an abortion-free investment vehicle.
By FTP: 
St.
Antoninus of Florence, A Theologian for Our Time, a biography
of St. Antoninus from which it would be seen why he was chosen as
the patron of this Institute.
Hosting the "Business & Economics" Information
Center on EWTN On line , the
largest online service offering Catholic news, information, file
libraries and discussion groups from a variety of Catholic organizations
which share a common fidelity to the Magisterium of the Church.
Training and Consulting
Services to Management in Leadership including all matters
of organization behavior and development - including ethics, but
also employee motivation, strategic planning, innovative management,
effective structures, conflict resolutions, intra-organizational
communications, etc - but always from the point of view of traditional
values in general and the teachings of the Catholic Church in particular.
A prefered mode of operation is to be a consultant's consultant,
i.e. reviewing technical work done by other consulting organizations
and evaluate the quality of the diagnostic and the impact of the
recommendations in view of how they would be perceived by all interested
parties as concerns their cultural pre-dispositions and regarding
how pertinent the diagnostics are and how effectively the recommendations
are likely to be implemented.
W. Edward Demings was a devout Protestant. Peter Drucker is a devout
Catholic. They never consulted from the point of view of their faith
but their faith guided them in all their consulting work. We are
hereby going public and announce that our faith does guide us too
in any consulting work. We are enthusiastic proponents of scientific
decision making in organizations as long as the process is not incompatible
with principles of the faith.
We also offer training seminars on a wide range of subjects emphasizing
the consistency and relationships of all themes of management under
the light of Catholic social teachings.
The fact that a site is listed here does not imply any sort
of endorsement, either in terms of ideology, spirituality, quality
or usefulness.
Feedback
We welcome your comments. Please email your feedback by clicking
here at the St. Antoninus
Institute (jforsini@StAntoninus.net))
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Copyright © 1995 St.
Antoninus Institute