There is a great deal going on, but much of it is in progress, so it’s difficult to report on it in a coherent manner. Still, there are a number of things going on:
Dr Jane James
• Justice University. Dr. Jane James of the University of Southern California has been working steadily on helping create “Justice University’s” certificate program for economic and social justice as understood in the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism. Her outreach has been both domestic and international, and the idea is to be able to implement a certificate program at any high school or university in the world to supplement, not compete with the current curriculum.
• Stakeholder Capitalism. On December 9, 2020, the Wall Street Journal ran an Op-Ed piece on the Great (or Big) Reset, “Profit Keeps Corporate Leaders Honest” (WSJ, 12/09/20, A-3). We agree with pretty much everything that was said (except for what appeared to be a misquote from Milton Friedman that sounded more like Karl Marx). The problem, of course, is that traditional capitalism was presented as if there is nothing wrong with it. That’s a little misleading, for if there is nothing wrong with the way things are now, why would the alternative sound so attractive to so many people? In any event, there was no solution suggested, which leaves the field wide-open for “Stakeholder Capitalism” or economic personalism . . . if we can get the word out to people.
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| John Moorehouse |
• John Moorehouse. We continue to urge people to visit the GoFundMe campaign page for John’s family and make a contribution. As regular readers of this blog are aware, a good friend and supporter of the Just Third Way, John Moorehouse, Acquisitions Editor for TAN Books (an imprint of Saint Benedict Press), died recently. We shared some thoughts in our posting of Wednesday, December 9 (“‘Farewell to a Father’”). The tribute from Inside the Vatican magazine can be found here, while the Sensus Fidelium video “Tribute to John Moorehouse” with Charles Coloumbe should definitely be viewed.
• Economic Personalism. When you purchase a copy of Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, be sure you post a review after you’ve read it. It is available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble at the cover price of $10 per copy. You can also download the free copy in .pdf available from the CESJ website. If you’d like to order in bulk (i.e., ten or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to publications@cesj.org for details. CESJ members get a $2 rebate per copy on submission of proof of purchase. Wholesale case lots of 52 copies are available at $350, plus shipping (whole case lots ONLY). Prices are in U.S. dollars.
• Sensus Fidelium Videos, Update. CESJ’s new series of videos for Sensus Fidelium contrasting economic personalism and the Great Reset is off to a good start. The latest is “Economic Personalism v. The Great Reset.” Last week’s intro video can be found on the “Playlist” for the series. The previous series of sixteen videos on socialism is also available by clicking on the link: “Socialism, Modernism, and the New Age,” along with some book reviews and other selected topics. For “interfaith” presentations to a Catholic audience they’ve proved to be popular, with more than 72,000 views to date. They aren’t really “Just Third Way videos,” but they do incorporate a Just Third Way perspective. You can access the playlist for the entire series The point of the videos is to explain how socialism and socialist assumptions got such a stranglehold on the understanding of the role of the State and thus the interpretation of Catholic social teaching, and even the way non-Catholics and even non-Christians understand the roles of Church, State, and Family, and the human person’s place in society.
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making your purchases through the Amazon Smile program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon 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.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 37 different countries and 47 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the Philippines. The most popular postings this past week in descending order were “News from the Network, Vol. 13, No. 50,” “Christianity in Action,” “What is Social Credit?” “JTW Podcast: ‘They Lived the Faith’ Book Review,” and “Thomas Hobbes 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.” Due to imprudent language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
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