This has been a relatively quiet
week for those of us not involved in stock market speculation on the Wall Street high stakes gambling casino. By the
way, if you ever want to make an enemy for life, tell someone a truth he or she
doesn’t want to hear . . . and then be proven right (especially about the stock market).
On to the news items:
• We are still working out the details needed to launch a
major fundraising drive to get the resources for our somewhat unofficial Justice University publishing program to translate a number of
significant articles (e.g., “Pope
Francis and the Just Third Way”) and other material that present concepts
that are key to solving the increasing number of crises in the world. This will be geared toward obtaining grants
from foundations, and not from the general public, at least at this stage, and
not for at least a year and a half. This
will almost certainly be launched before the end of our fiscal year on
September 30, and we could be seeing results as early as January of 2016. Of particular interest will be CESJ
co-founder William J. Ferree’s key pamphlet Introduction
to Social Justice (1948), and the Just Third Way Edition of Fulton
Sheen’s Freedom Under God (1940). We’re
starting small, though, to test the waters, so to speak, and are looking
initially at more translations of “Pope Francis and the Just Third Way” and the
paper on the Greek debt crisis currently being edited by an official with the
National Bank of Poland, scheduled for publication in September. We're also thinking about an actual "Justice University Press" imprint. After all, (almost) all universities have their own presses, right? Even that small-time operation in . . . where was it? Oh, yes, Oxford, U.K.
• CESJ Fellow Jean-Marie Bukuru is back at CESJ
headquarters, having a series of meetings with officials at the World Bank and
other agencies, both private and public.
"A good time was had by all." |
• On Tuesday, the CESJ core group had a dinner meeting with
Mr. Brian Corbin, Senior Vice President for Social Policy for Catholic
Charities USA. It’s tempting to report
that “a good time was had by all” (which has the advantage of being perfectly
true), but that doesn’t convey the importance of the meeting. Although nothing earthshaking was
accomplished, relationships were built, and some very important possible
contacts and key projects were identified.
By coincidence, Brian is also involved in the upcoming World Meeting of
Families, although he will not be attending due to the logistics of the pope
visiting Washington, DC.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 46 different countries and 49 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, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia.
The most popular postings this past week were “Halloween Horror Special XIII:
Mean Green Mother from Outer Space,” “Let’s Talk About Retirement, II: Social
Security,” “Minimum Wage or Profit Sharing,” “Thomas Hobbes on Private
Property,” and “The Population Bomb.”
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, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#