Most of the activity this week (except for the office pool
betting when the Dow is going to hit 17,000) has been taking advantage of outreach
opportunities resulting from last week’s meeting in Emmitsburg, Maryland. The number of potential contacts was more
than enough to show the effectiveness of the “door opening” strategy, and to
inspire others to duplicate its success in promoting the Just Third Way:
• This past week members of the CESJ core group have been
sending informational packages to the people suggested by Msgr. Stuart
Swetland, with whom we met last week. We
have also sent out a number of packages to other people whom we thought might
be interested in urging Pope Francis to issue an encyclical on the principles
of economic justice (participation, distribution, and social justice), and in
promoting the Justice University concept.
• A new review (May 28, 2014) has appeared on Amazon for the
Just Third Way Edition of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s Freedom Under God: “This is a great read — so incredible to see
what a man of God could see in society decades ago and how it has come to
fruition in today's world. Good source for a compass for today's society.” — C.
Portilla.
• This past Tuesday, His Eminence Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez
Maradiaga, chairman of the committee advising Pope Francis on administrative
reforms, gave a talk at the Catholic University of America in Washington,
DC. The Cardinal’s talk was featured at
“Erroneous Autonomy: The Catholic Case Against Libertarianism,” an event
organized by the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies at the
Catholic University of America. The
tenor of the Cardinal’s remarks suggest that he would be very open to learning
about the Just Third Way, especially the monetary and tax reforms intended to
remove barriers that inhibit or prevent ordinary people from becoming owners of
the capital that is displacing them from their jobs, and causing increasing
reliance on the State.
• Guy S. in Iowa sent a beautiful photograph of his parents,
his brother, and he. Everyone except Mom
was wearing the family bowling shirt.
• CESJ will have the services of a volunteer, Astrid, from
Belgium for two months this summer.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 65 different countries and 50 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Australia. The most
popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “‘Inequality
Is the Root of All Social Evil’,” “Aristotle on Private Property,” “‘Inspired
Amateurs Should Avoid Politics’,” and “Why Did Nixon take the Dollar off the
Gold Standard?”
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.