Luke Cage knows why every worker deserves to get paid a just wage

Catholic Social Teaching is the Church’s instruction manual on how to live a Christ-centered life. It guides us in being the light of the world, the salt of the earth, the leaven which helps our society grow toward bringing about the Kingdom of God. In this seven-part series, we’ll examine the Seven Themes of Catholic Social Teaching through comic books – their stories, their heroes, and their ideals. We’ll look at how our favorite superheroes embody these principles of living a more Christian life.

The Superheroes’ Guide to Catholic Social Teaching – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Theme 5: The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers; or Saving the World, for Fun and Profit

How does a superhero make a living? As with us non-super folks, it depends a lot on the individual. Superman keeps a day-job as a mild-mannered newspaper reporter. Batman and Iron Man are independently wealthy. Spider-Man photographs his crimefighting exploits to sell to the local newspaper.

Often the hero takes on a day job that is also in service to the common good. Diana Prince (aka Wonder Woman) worked as an army nurse in World War II. Matt Murdock, who moonlights as Daredevil, ran a small, underfunded law firm, helping those who had no one else to turn to. In the current comic book series he works as a parole officer, trying to help ex-cons get their lives back on track. Barry Allen, when he’s not fighting crime as the Flash, fights crime as a forensic scientist for the Central City Police Department. A sense of social responsibility motivates their professional lives as well as their super side-gigs.

As far as I can tell, Luke Cage was the first to try and make his living by super-heroing. A down-on-his-luck ex-con, falsely accused and on the run, he had trouble finding gainful employment. But while he was in prison, an experimental medical procedure combined with an attempt on his life left him with super strength and invulnerable skin. He had the skill set, and hiding one’s true identity is an accepted part of the superhero life. It seemed to him the perfect way to earn a living.

Work is part of our obligation – both to God and to society. God gives us gifts and talents, with the expectation that we will use them to benefit the greater good. It is our duty and our privilege to actively participate in creating a better world. And yet – you can’t eat privilege. Duty doesn’t pay the bills. Along with the responsibility to work comes the expectation that we will be suitably compensated. A person has to make a living.

The necessities of life are pretty basic, and Jesus enumerates them in Matthew 25. Food for the hungry; drink for the thirsty; shelter for the homeless; clothing for the naked. As Christians we have an obligation to provide these for the needy, but as a society we have the obligation to ensure that our workers are able to provide these things for themselves. Withholding a worker’s just wages is counted among the very worst of sins – those which cry to Heaven for vengeance (James 5:4).

Early in his career Luke Cage learned that collecting on wages earned can be as difficult as the work itself. In a moment frequently shared through social media, Cage confronts Doctor Doom – one of the Marvel Universe’s more formidable villains – over an unpaid debt.

Victor Von Doom is the reigning monarch of the small Eastern European country of Latveria; he is a brilliant scientist and inventor, with a stash of doomsday weapons and an army of Doombots at his command; and he is a powerful sorcerer, a trifecta of worldly power. When some of his Doombots go rogue, Doom hires Cage to round them up. It is the toughest job at that point in his career, and the first one to nearly cost him his life. But when he returns to the Latverian embassy, the doorman informs him that no payment will be forthcoming. “Doctor Doom pays no money when he can avoid it.”

Unfortunately, this is nothing new – nor exclusive to fictional comic-book supervillains. Moses, at least, found it necessary to remind the wealthy to pay their workers, and to mention it twice. (See Leviticus 19: 13 and Deuteronomy 24: 14.) And even then, the prophet Malachi (Mal. 3: 4) and the apostle James (James 5: 4) had to keep harping on the point. Refusing to pay your workers makes God unhappy.

It tends to make workers unhappy too. And even if those workers are not super-strong and bulletproof, they can often find strength in numbers. The right to unionize, and to collective bargaining, has always been firmly upheld in Catholic Social Teaching.

Luke Cage does manage to collect, with the help of the Fantastic Four and a Latverian resistance group. It’s a good reminder of the importance of community support. Each of us has a moral responsibility to serve the common good of society, and part of that means supporting the rights of workers.