The Big News this week is the CESJ core group’s trip to
Cleveland, Ohio. A great deal of work
was done on this trip. The schedule was
so full that both sightseeing tours were cancelled, no visits or calls were
made to friends and family, but the results were well worth it. The only downside was that somebody forgot to
set up a meeting with Drew Carey to discuss how much better Cleveland could rock under
the Just Third Way:
• On Friday of last week, August 8, 2014, CESJ President Dr.
Norman G. Kurland and CESJ Fellow Astrid Uytterhaegen met with Alpha Condé, the
president of Guinea, a small but key country on the west coast of Africa, and
later with the president’s planner. Some
important concepts were introduced to Mr. Condé, and he expressed great
interest in learning more about the potential of the Just Third Way to guide
his country to a more just and humane future in which all Guineans can
participate. Also present were H.E.
Mamady Conde, Guinea’s new ambassador to the United States, and H.E. Mamadi
Touré, Guinea’s delegate to the United Nations, as well as a faculty member
from Georgetown University.
• On Monday of
this week members of the CESJ core group, Dr. Norman G. Kurland, president of
CESJ, Dawn K. Brohawn, CESJ Director of Communications, Michael D. Greaney,
Director of Research, Astrid Uytterhaegen, Fellow, traveled to Cleveland, Ohio,
for a series of meetings arranged by Monica Woodman, who is coordinating the
formation of a Cleveland CESJ chapter, and Commander Rob Woodman, Monica’s
brother, who a while back was the “point man” in the effort to have the
officers and seamen of the Oglebay-Norton line purchase the vessels. As many of our readers might recall, the
workers were outbid by another group, which had to sell the vessels itself a
few years later to a Belgian company, and left Cleveland in 2008 after more
than a century and a half in the city.
The Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on
November 10, 1975, during a storm on the Great Lakes, was the flagship of
Oglebay-Norton’s Columbia Transportation fleet. An informal dinner party was held at the Pearl of the Orient restaurant
in Cleveland on Monday evening. Kudos is
due to Monica, who worked long and hard to arrange the trip and events.
• On Tuesday, the
Dixon family of Ashtabula, Ohio, contributed several pounds of high quality
vegetables, approximately two bushels, from their personal garden to CESJ. Some of the vegetables went into the lunch
prepared by Monica Woodman for the group that day, while the bulk was brought
to Arlington to use in the daily luncheons provided for staff, volunteers, and
guests, and will be featured in the CESJ Executive Committee meeting scheduled
for Monday, August 18, 2014. The Dixon
garden is a model of intensive micro-farming, and is extraordinarily
productive. Commander Woodman has vowed
to work to duplicate the effort in the Spring of next year after he returns to
Maine.
• Also on Tuesday, the
CESJ core group and members of the CESJ Cleveland chapter in formation met at
St. Columba’s Church with Father Begin, the outgoing pastor, and Dr. Torma of
Walsh University. The meeting was very
positive and very productive for an introductory meeting. Dr. Torma was left with a great deal of material
to reflect on, while Father Begin renewed his intention to focus on CESJ after
he retires and settles in to his new life.
• Tuesday night the
CESJ group ate at Merwin’s Wharf on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. During the first part of the gathering,
before a storm came up and the group moved inside off the terrace, the Buffalo, an ore carrier, passed very
close to the restaurant. Commander Woodman,
who had served on the Buffalo, got
the attention of the captain and crew, and the ship saluted the CESJ group, to
the mystification of the other restaurant patrons.
• Early on Wednesday
morning the CESJ group met with faculty and staff of the Boler School of
Business of John Carroll University.
This meeting also went very well, although somewhat limited in scope due
to time constraints and the nature of introductory meetings. CESJ hopes to sponsor talks with students and
faculty at John Carroll, following up on last year’s very positive meeting with
Father Thomas Schubeck, S.J., who expressed great interest in the research CESJ
has been carrying out involving the work of the later solidarists, as students
of Father Heinrich Pesch, S.J., are called.
• Late morning on
Wednesday, Monica Woodman took members of the CESJ core group through sections
of East Cleveland. An initial quick assessment
is that the area might be a good place to apply the “Citizens Land Bank”
concept developed for East St. Louis, Illinois, but that halted when Wyvetter
Younge, the Illinois State Representative who had championed the project, and
who shepherded the initial legislation through the Illinois House, 114-0, died.
Funding for a feasibility study could be obtained from local foundations, and
possibly carried out with assistance from local universities. Then, financing for the actual community
development in which all residents can participate as owners could potentially
be obtained from local commercial banks by discounting eligible paper at the
commercial bank, collateralized with capital credit insurance and reinsurance,
and then rediscounted at the Cleveland Federal Reserve.
• On Wednesday
afternoon, the CESJ group met for lunch at Monica Woodman’s house, and later met
with Mr. Robert B. Jaquay, Executive Director of the George Gund Foundation, in
another introductory meeting. The
meeting was very friendly, and Mr. Jaquay was introduced to a number of new
concepts. Significantly, one of the
concepts was that of “future savings,” a concept promoted by Dr. Harold G.
Moulton in his book, The
Formation of Capital
(1935). Moulton was president of the
Brookings Institution from 1928 to 1965, and the Gund Foundation recently made
a $300,000 grant to Brookings. Commander
Woodman, who arranged the meeting, will also be arranging follow-up.
• On Wednesday
evening, members of the CESJ core group from Washington, D.C., and members and
friends of the CESJ Cleveland chapter in formation met for a pasta dinner at
the home of Denise Roznovsky. An
informal songfest followed dinner. A
brief chapter meeting was held afterwards, during which short reports of, and
reactions to the various meetings were presented.
• Deacon Joseph Gorini,
CESJ Counselor, co-founder with fellow CESJ Counselor Father John Trigilio of
Evangelization Enterprises, Inc., has been sending out packages of CESJ
material to key laity and clergy in the Catholic Church. The immediate goal is to participate in the
Synod on the Family, which is scheduled to take place in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, in September 2015. Over
the long-term, the goal is to clarify concepts of economic and social justice
that, due to many factors, have become confused in the modern world, a
situation that affects people of all faiths and philosophies. Deacon Joe is also a member of the Board of
Directors of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy (CCC), while Father Trigilio
is president of the organization, as well as a radio and television host on
EWTN, the Catholic cable network. Deacon
Joe recently introduced a resolution at the CCC convocation this past July to
develop a formal relationship between the CCC and CESJ.
• CESJ will be
following up with CESJ Counselor Father Edward Krause, C.S.C., Ph.D., son of
the University of Notre Dame’s famed Athletic Director Edward “Moose” Krause,
who is scheduled to return soon from the annual meeting of the Central Bureau
of the Catholic Central Union of America in St. Louis. Father Krause will be reporting on the
reaction to a proposal to raise funds for the CCUA to complete, publish, and
market a book with the working title, What
Happened to Distributive Justice?, a study of key events and shifts in
thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that
have resulted in widespread misunderstanding of the natural law and its
application in the principles of economic and social justice.
• The Opus
College of Business at the University of St. Thomas, where CESJ Counselor Dr.
Michael Naughton heads the John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought,
invites applications for the Barbara and David Koch Endowed Chair in Business
Ethics to begin Fall, 2015. The mission of the Koch Chair is to
institutionalize and advance the role of Business Ethics in the educational
programs of the University of St. Thomas through teaching, research, faculty
development, and curriculum development.
This appears to be consistent with CESJ’s “Justice University” proposal,
which has been discussed with staff and faculty at a number of colleges and
universities, and for which funding is currently being sought.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 43 different countries and 47 states and provinces in the United
States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from
the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Philippines.
The most popular postings this past week were “Church, State, and Humanity, III: A
Fundamental Change in the Idea of the State,” “Church, State, and Humanity, IV:
A Fundamental Change in the Idea of Religion,” “The State is God, God is the
State, Part V,” “The Purpose of Production,” and “News from the Network, Vol.
7, No. 30” (containing the week before last’s press release about Father
Trigilio and Deacon Gorini joining the CESJ Board of Counselors.)
Those are the happenings for this week, at least those 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.
#30#
