This post is my third reflection on Pacem in Terris, the second social encycical of Pope John XXIII. Here are links to Part I and Part II. For this discussion we read the third section, paragraphs 80-129. In this part John XXIII considers the relations between states. The previous section introduced and justified the concept of the state from the natural law. Indeed, the text almost seems to take the existence of the state as a given. Last time, I… Read more
October 24, 2020
On Structural Racism and the Lives of Saints: A Failed Draft
October 24, 2020 By David Cruz-Uribe
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Recently, I was asked to write an essay from my Secular Franciscan region’s quarterly newsletter, similar to the one I wrote a few months ago. This time I chose the topic of structural racism. I just submitted the final draft and I will post it here when it appears. But this one went through a couple major drafts, and I want to salvage for use here an argument that got dropped at my editor’s recommendation. (Like any good writer, I… Read more
October 24, 2020
On Being an Ecclesial Expatriate, Ten Years On
October 24, 2020 By Julia Smucker
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My late friend and mentor Ivan Kauffman once described himself as “probably the only living person who speaks both fluent Mennonite and fluent Catholic.” If these words were true when he first wrote them, a handful of others, myself included, would eventually follow him to the same ecclesial bilingualism and, if not quite an official dual citizenship, an inescapably dual identity as self-described Mennonite Catholics. More precisely, 10 years ago today, with Ivan standing behind me as my sponsor, I… Read more
October 23, 2020
What’s Past Is Prologue
October 23, 2020 By Jeannine Pitas
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In November 1900, a fashionable, urban Polish poet from an upper-class background married a rural peasant. In a region of Europe where people of different class backgrounds were usually kept apart by strict social norms, this was a rare event. But some were seeking to break that pattern. In 1795 Poland had been completely colonized by Prussia, Russia and Austria, and the Polish people had spent the entire nineteenth century fighting a series of failed uprisings. Many believed that marriages… Read more
October 19, 2020
Reading Pacem in Terris, Part II
October 19, 2020 By David Cruz-Uribe
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This post is the continuation of my ruminations on Pacem in Terris from my Catholic social teaching reading group. The first part can be found here. For this meeting we read the second section of PT, paragraphs 46-79, on the relationship between the state and the individual. This is a shorter but interesting statement. In line with the previous documents, John XXIII takes the existence and need for the state as something given by the natural law: Human society can… Read more
October 13, 2020
Reading Pacem in Terris, Part I
October 13, 2020 By David Cruz-Uribe
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With this blog post I am going to start recording my ruminations on Pope John XXIII’s encyclical, Pacem in Terris. This blog post continues the posts generated by my reading group on Catholic Social Teaching. To read about previous encyclicals, follow the links for Mater et Magistra, Quadragesimo Anno, and Rerum Novarum. This post is rather late–we started reading it a month ago. So over the next week I hope to get caught up. The encyclical PT was published April… Read more
October 9, 2020
Saul Alinsky and Catholic Social Teaching
October 9, 2020 By David Cruz-Uribe
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This post got started because of a what I suspect is a very bad movie. Someone on a Facebook group I belong to was touting a new movie on gender ideology as a “must see” event. I quickly googled the film and the directors and could not find much about them (except they are are EWTN a lot) but I did find that they made a previous movie: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing, a documentary about the late Saul Alinsky. … Read more
October 7, 2020
Holding Your Nose: How to Vote Like a Catholic
October 7, 2020 By Brett Salkeld
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This November, American Catholics will participate in an event of historical, even cosmic, proportions, an event that, though it shows up in our calendars with predictable regularity, is arguably more important to Americans this year than ever before. If approached with a well-formed and thoroughly Catholic perspective it has the potential to alter the fate, not only of the United States, but of the world, and not only of government and politics, but of individual eternal souls. I am talking,… Read more
October 4, 2020
An American Wake-up Call?
October 4, 2020 By Jeannine Pitas
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It has become something of a cliché, but like all clichés it holds a truth: the American Dream has become the American Nightmare. For many groups of people living in this country, this is nothing new. Founded on the genocide of indigenous people and built with the labor of people forcibly taken from their homes, enslaved and abused, the United States of America originates in a story that was a dream for some and a nightmare for others. Meanwhile, as… Read more
September 27, 2020
The Two Spectres Haunting the Catholic Church
September 27, 2020 By David Cruz-Uribe
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In 1848, Karl Marx opened the Communist Manifesto with the now famous sentence, A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. Reflecting recently on the challenges facing the Church in the United States today, I realized that many of our problems can be summarized by paraphrasing Marx: Two spectres are haunting the Catholic Church — the spectres of communism and racism. In the original, spectre meant a ghost, a phantom or phantasm, an apparition. It was, like the… Read more
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