Need Investment Advice? Vatican Issues Guidelines for Investing Faithfully

How can Catholics invest in ways consistent with their Faith?

Last Friday, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences published a document subtitled “Faith-Based Measures for Catholic Investors: A Starting Point and Call to Action” with advice on just that!

“No human domain or experience, including investing, is outside of God’s care, or beyond reach of God’s grace.”

The document says investing money cannot be morally neutral.

Instead, it explains “either God’s kingdom is being advanced by the assets we deploy, or it is being neglected and undermined.”

“Faith cannot be a private reality, a set of private and personal convictions and a private doctrine and worship. [Faith] is incomplete without a vision of the world and our place within it, namely, our works.”

Faith-consistent investing “goes much further in terms of moral responsibility” because it must consider the “vision of the human person, his/her integral development and vocation in relationship with God, with other persons and with creation.”

Issues to consider run the gamut of Catholic teaching: abortion, nuclear weapons, capital punishment, water access, animal experimentation, glorifying violence, indigenous rights, “human dignity, care for creation and inclusive growth through united action bound by love.”

Although it is without any “prescriptive power or force,” the document says “cooperation between Catholic asset owners at a national and international level, including Vatican and Holy See entities” must be a top priority in order to promote “the commitment to greater alignment between the management of assets and the broader mission of the church.”

Although not addressed to individual investors, the document said it hoped all Catholics would recognize the implications of their investments and their Faith.

Pray for Faith-consistent investing!

Read the document here.