Some very interesting things have been happening this week .
. . some of the best of which we can’t tell you anything about because they’re
still in the formative stages. We do
have enough, however, to show that we’re starting to make some significant
progress:
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| Fake photo . . . but still great. |
• Completely by coincidence this past week we discovered the
full text of a “long lost” talk by Judge Peter Stenger Grosscup of the United
States Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that His Honor gave on or about October
25, 1907, at a conference on “Trusts and Combinations” in Chicago. We found it in the published proceedings of
the conference when we were looking for any connection we could find between
Judge Grosscup and Archbishop John Ireland of Minneapolis. It turns out that Grosscup and Ireland, both
strong progressives and friends of President Theodore Roosevelt whose views on expanded capital ownership were
very similar, served on the “Committee on Arrangements” for the conference.
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| Judge Peter S. Grosscup |
• We also located the full text of three articles by
Grosscup first published in the North
American Review. We had been unable
to find them for years because our source, the old Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, gave the publication in
which they appeared as the North American
Magazine, an entirely
different journal. No wonder we couldn’t
find them; we kept looking in the wrong place!
A Grosscup compendium might not be too far off. As soon as we get the Ferree compendium
published, that is, as well as a host of other projects.
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| Fulton Sheen Mini-me |
• Regarding yesterday’s posting on Pope Francis’s comment,
“Inequality is the root of all social evil,” we got a very nice comment
(unsolicited) from a reader who said, “I had my spiritual director (priest)
read your article, and he had high acclaim to it supporting G. K. Chesterton
and Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Well done!”
That’s (almost) a free plug for the Just Third Way Edition of Sheen’s Freedom Under God!
• Pope Francis is certainly stirring things up. Deacon Gorini of Heat and Light Ministries,
Inc., alerted us to
an interesting article in Crisis magazine on some reactions to the “Inequality Comment.” As Deacon Joe remarked, “The topic of income inequality is popular, but is it a
real social problem? If so, is the issue of income inequality proportionate to
other social issues such as, let’s say, abortion or enslavement to the national
debt? In my opinion, indeed, income inequality can be an individual or group
problem, but it is only a social problem if the “system” brought it about and
not individual or group limitations or behaviors. The following, although not a
full treatment of the topic, again in my opinion, is a good and stimulating
read.” That’s two supportive
statements from the Catholic clergy. So
far.
• We recently sent a package to His Eminence Achille
Cardinal Silvestrini, a friend of CESJ at the Vatican. Cardinal Silvestrini was a good friend of
CESJ Counselor Father Cassian Yuhaus, and we are asking for a letter of support
from the Cardinal for a project that will, we believe, keep Father Cassian’s
legacy alive.
• Amazon is still using CESJ Director of Research Michael D. Greaney’s book, So Much Generosity,
a survey of the fiction of Cardinals Wiseman and Newman, and Monsignor Robert
Hugh Benson, as a “loss leader.” Today
it’s down yet even more to $4.50. That’s
the best price ever. The book is published by Universal Values Media, Inc.,
which has a co-marketing arrangement with CESJ.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 68 different countries and 56 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and India. The most
popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle
on Private Property,” “‘Inequality Is the Root of All Social Evil’,” “Why Did
Nixon take the Dollar off the Gold Standard?” and “Focus on the Fed, I: How the
Federal Reserve Creates Money.”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we
know about. If you have an
accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at
mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we’ll see that it gets into the next
“issue.” If you have a short (250-400
word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog —
do not send them to us to post for you.
All comments are moderated anyway, so we’ll see it before it goes up.