The living wage movement improves family life for targeted workers but has little spillover effect on wages, employment rates or poverty in the wider region, concludes researcher Benjamin Sosnaud in Social Service Review (1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637). In June 1993 BUILD (2439 Maryland Ave., Baltimore, MD 21218; www.buildiaf.org) launched what is considered the first living wage campaign. It came out of frustration over the federal minimum wage; fixed at $7.25 since 2009. Many leaders in BUILD, active... Read more

“Your sad story doesn’t obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else’s health care,” says a former Congressman from Illinois. He has apparently forgotten the definition of insurance (a hedge or cushion against risk), which is normally achieved by spreading the cost of a problem (a car accident, a fire, a surgery) among a more-or-less random pool of people. More importantly, this former legislator (now a radio commentator) and many others like him have forgotten a crucial part... Read more

For the past 300 years or more the secularism thesis has said that science, individual freedom and other features of modernity make religion irrelevant. Or at best, religion is a private option with no particular public competency. “This thesis is not true,” Luke Bretherton recently told participants at a conference sponsored by Episcopal Charities of Chicago. The morning newspaper is sufficient evidence that, although society and religious expression have changed, religion is quite influential around the globe. Religion’s influence cannot... Read more

Following each presidential election, a cottage industry of analysis appears—maps, tables, articles and books. This time around the industry is mansion-sized; it is huge, I tell you. Resentment is mentioned as a factor in some election commentaries. (Though written before the election, The Politics of Resentment by Jeremy Engels is particularly insightful.) Resentment is unrefined reaction to loss. Let’s face it, things are dying—slowly or maybe quickly. Perhaps it is a fading dream parents have for their children; that their... Read more

Nearly every business leader agrees with the idea of corporate responsibility, said Stefano Zamagni at a Catholic Social Tradition conference held at University of Notre Dame late this March. To the extent that they know about Catholic doctrine, every Catholic business leader accepts our social doctrine. It would be the rare executive or board trustee who says, “I oppose corporate responsibility.” Or the rare Catholic in business who says, “I dissent from Catholic doctrine.” However, behavior is different from language,... Read more

St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Friday this year. Thus, several Illinois bishops (though not all) and other bishops elsewhere “granted a dispensation” so that the faithful could thereby have corned beef on the feast. (Is there any evidence that workaday Catholics are incapable of making such decisions on their own? I met no such person during my evening out.) By way of two bishops, here is an alternative to fretting about shamrocks and dispensations. Pope Francis suggests we read... Read more

Children in a generally peaceful home can acquire virtue more readily than those in a disruptive home—though moral growth or sin are possible in both situations. The same is true of a city. A vigorous city makes holiness more likely; a chaotic and corrupt city requires extraordinary individual moral striving. Again, sinners can be found everywhere, as can the saintly. Urban holiness starts with its architecture, zoning and construction. A city’s shape can enhance or limit the moral lives of... Read more

Nearly 250 people, including a fair number of high school students, filled St. Barnabas church on Chicago’s southwest side for an early March conversation on neighborliness with particular focus on immigration and refugees. It was a unique event because Christians, Jews and Muslims participated. There is general assent to the importance of neighborliness in our country, said Rami Nashashibi of Inner-City Muslim Action. However, differences in attitude occur as people define neighborliness differently. For example, the geographic boundary for “my... Read more

Fr. Isaac Hecker, CSP (1819-1888) founded the Paulist Fathers, the first United States-based religious order. His sermon on “The Feast of St. Joseph” gives a summary of Hecker’s spiritual outlook: “Our age is not an age of martyrdom, nor an age of hermits, nor a monastic age. Although it has its martyrs, its recluses and its monastic communities, these are not and are not likely to be its prevailing type of Christian perfection. Our age lives in its busy marts,... Read more

The best-selling Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (Harper Collins, 2016) is about fierce loyalty within Appalachian families, including those displaced to Ohio, Indiana and Michigan for lack of jobs in Appalachia proper. These close-knit families are a source of love and fidelity. In support of this pro-family theme Vance says, for example: My grandparents “were, without question or qualification, the best things that ever happened to me” Hillbilly Elegy would not, however, be a bestseller without its companion theme, as... Read more