This is the third of my ruminations on Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World of Vatican II. You can read part one here and part two here. This post has been long delayed for a variety of reasons, so I am hoping to turn out several of these in short order to get caught up. For this discussion we read Chapters 1-3 of Part II of the constitution, paragraphs 46-72. This part of... Read more
This is the second of my ruminations on Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World of Vatican II. You can read part one here. This post has been long delayed for a variety of reasons, so I am hoping to turn out several of these in short order to get caught up. This time we read to the end of Part I of the text, paragraphs 23-45. This is a very important section, divided... Read more
In this post I continue my ruminations on Catholic social teaching, based on a reading group I am leading on the Papal social encyclicals. Previously, I have blogged about Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, Mater et Magistra, and Pacem in Terris. This month we shifted gears slightly and are reading Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, one of the most important documents of the Second Vatican Council. It was the last document written and... Read more
Recently I posted a rough draft of an essay for the Fall newsletter of my regional Secular Franciscan fraternity. As I noted, I rewrote the second half of this essay. It has appeared (and has been be posted here), so I want to share the final draft as well. This summer, the killing of George Floyd by four Minneapolis police officers galvanized a series of demonstrations, protest marches,and occasional riots across the United States. The Black Lives Matter movement, founded... Read more
This post is my fourth and final set of ruminations on Pacem in Terris, the last encyclical of Pope John XXIII. The previous posts can be found here: Part I, Part II, Part III. In our final discussion we read paragraphs 130-172, which consisted of two sections. In the first section (par. 130-145) the encyclical considers the relationship between individuals and states and the “world community”, which it treats as an organizational level in human society that is above the... Read more
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
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
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
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
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
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