This week’s news notes . . . which
we’ll amplify on later today (we hope):
• The big news, of course, is the “Brexit.” This has sent shock waves around the world. Such is the confused nature of things these days, however, that no one seems to know either what it means, or what to do. Naturally, we do, but we won’t address it here. We’ll put something together for a posting later today, outlining a “Where do we/they go from here?”
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| Rev. John A. Ryan, "Monsignor New Deal" |
• Yesterday we received a very rare copy (all the way from a
rare book dealer in Tokyo, Japan) of the autobiography of Msgr. John A. Ryan, Social Doctrine in Action: A Personal
History (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1941). Msgr. Ryan, of course, was the social justice
guru who ruled the Catholic University of America for twenty years. We haven’t had a chance to read it yet, just
flipped around a bit and looked through the index, but already we’ve seen a
number of problematic assertions and the omission of key information. For example, Msgr. Ryan carefully failed to
note that the dissident priest Father Edward McGlynn, a follower of Henry
George, ultimately fully recanted his adherence to the principles of
georgism. Msgr. Ryan merely commented
that Fr. McGlynn’s excommunication for disobedience was lifted, thereby making
it appear that it was the Vatican that changed its opinion of the agrarian
socialism of George, not Fr. McGlynn. In
another instance, Msgr. Ryan quoted from an article by Dr. Harold G. Moulton,
who opposed the Keynesian New Deal, in a way that made it sound as if Moulton
supported Keynesian programs. Other
examples of equivocal statements and careful omissions abound throughout the
book, many of which can easily be disproved or rectified . . . perhaps
explaining why the book is so rare! One
of our personal favorites is the space accorded Ignatius Loyola Donnelly, whom
Msgr. Ryan claimed “exercised more influence upon my political and economic
thinking than any other factor.” (John A. Ryan, Social
Doctrine in Action: A Personal History. New York: Harper and Brothers
Publishers, 1941, 12). And who was
Ignatius Donnelly? Msgr. Ryan described
him as a populist politician who wrote novels and a volume of Shakespearean
scholarship that attributed Shakespeare’s plays to Francis Bacon. Msgr. Ryan carefully omitted the interesting
facts that Donnelly was a former Catholic turned spiritualist, a primary source
for Madame Blavatsky’s theosophy (being quoted as an authority on Atlantis at
length in The Secret Doctrine), an
ardent follower of agrarian socialist Henry George, rejected private ownership
of land (and made two fortunes speculating in real estate), advocated
nationalization of the railroads and major industries, and was generally viewed
as a nutcase, especially when at the age of sixty he married his eighteen year
old typist.
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| Fr. Vincent McNabb: God will provide. |
• We also obtained a copy of Father Vincent McNabb’s
collection of essays, The Church and the
Land (1926). Oddly, for a Dominican
who claimed to be a Thomist, the essays seem to try and force reality into an
ideal mold, rather than develop a vision starting with reality. That might be just our impression, though,
especially since the basic theme that appears to run through the essays is
don’t be concerned with sound theory or even too much with practical matters,
for God will provide . . . at least for the godly who run away from the city
and return to ultra-low tech subsistence farming. Interestingly, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire
Belloc, and Msgr. Ronald Knox all make a point of mentioning just how
“unworldly” Fr. McNabb was — something that comes across as strikingly evident
in these essays, which come across as rather sneering at anyone who worries
about the Who, When, Where, How, and Why of something instead of just getting
to work on the What and letting God take care of the details. McNabb’s essays are difficult reading for
those of us who don’t have magic wands or access to the slave of a lamp or
ring.
• A Brexit tie-in?
Repeal of the 1800 Acts of Union that joined the U.K. and Ireland has
been “the” Irish Question from their passage down to the present day. We actually get into this in CESJ’s latest
book, Easter Witness: From Broken Dream
to a New Vision for Ireland, which 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.
• Here’s the usual announcement about the Amazon Smile program, albeit moved to
the bottom of the page so you don’t get tired of seeing it. 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.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 50 different countries and 43 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, Brazil, South Africa, and Australia. The
most popular postings this past week in descending order were “Thomas Hobbes on
Private Property,” “The Purpose of Production,” “Financial Resilience,” “How
Not to Limit Capital,” and “Aristotle on Private Property.”
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#