Any editorial comment on recent
events would be superfluous, as they either explain themselves, or are
manifestly contrary to reason. That
being the case, here are this week’s news items:
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| "I AM smiling...and the name's THEODORE!" |
• But before we start, here’s the usual announcement about
the Amazon Smile program. To participate in the Amazon Smile program
for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon, you
can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using our
secure server” button.) Once you have
signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and you
have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift through. Once you’ve typed (or copied and pasted) “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you will be taken to
the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• Another example of the growing chaos the world is in,
although this one not directly related to the failure to implement the Just
Third Way, is the fact that no one knows what time it is in Chilé. The government has been “tinkering” with the
time so much that people have no idea what the “real” time actually is,
according to an article in today’s Wall
Street Journal.
• CESJ’s latest book, Easter
Witness: From Broken Dream to a New Vision for Ireland, is available from Amazon
and Barnes
and Noble, as well as by special order from many “regular” bookstores. The book can also be ordered in bulk, which
we define as ten copies or more of the same title, at a 20% discount. A full case is twenty-six copies, and
non-institutional/non-vendor purchasers get a 20% discount off the $20 cover
price on wholesale lots ($416/case).
Shipping is extra. Send enquiries
to publications@cesj.org. An additional discount may be available for
institutions such as schools, clubs, and other organizations as well as retailers. Initial sales are encouraging, and CESJ
(although interfaith) has applied for an “imprimatur” which will allow the book
to be used as a text in Catholic schools.
We received word that the books ordered for the Archbishop of Dublin
have been shipped and should arrive today or early next week.
• Many people assume that Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J., who
recently died, was an advocate of, and activist for “social justice.” Whether his acts were just is one issue, but
they were clearly not social justice, as this article, “Father
Daniel Berrigan Found Fame in the Pursuit of Justice,” suggests, and (as
the title of the article suggests) may have been motivated by a bit of self-interest. On the other hand, the contention of Father
John Courtney Murray, S.J., that a just social order might be established and
maintained by relying on natural law is, in our view, correct — but impossible
without the Just Third Way, which not only insists on a just social order based
on the precepts of the natural law, but proposes specific means and techniques
to establish and maintain a just social order, without which it is all just
talk.
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• Another illustration of the egregious misunderstanding of
“social justice” today is seen in the hysteria over a
“prom” photograph that most people who saw it thought was “cute” (a word we
generally detest, but it’s appropriate here).
The term “social justice” has been used as a club to oppress and
denigrate others, instead of as a way to help establish and maintain a just
social order.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 62 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, Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Australia. The most
popular postings this past week in descending order were “Thomas Hobbes on
Private Property,” “Aristotle on Private Property,” “Curb Your Dog(ma),” “Why a
Central Bank: More Practical Considerations,” and “The Purpose of Production.”
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.