Sohrab Ahmari takes a long, historical view of capitalism and finds one period in the modern era when economies worked well. In the United States this was the 40 or so years after the Great Depression and through the 1970’s – the New Deal years. In Europe it began during the recovery from the Second World War. Ahmari calls this phase in world economies social democracy, or transatlantic “socially managed capitalism.” (p. 144) To understand Ahmari’s praise of this period,... Read more
Sohrab Ahmari shows how coercion operates in the American economy, especially in its most recent “neoliberal” phase. Neoliberalism is the economic theory that exalts market freedom and claims that market coercion does not exist as long as government stays out of the way of freely signed contracts between labor and employer and free exchange of money for goods and services. Rejecting that idealistic picture, Ahmari looks realistically at a market rife with coercion resulting from inequalities of power. In my... Read more
Tomorrow the 40 days of Lent will end. These six weeks call to our minds Jesus’ 40 days in the desert and the Israelites’ 40 years of wandering to the Promised Land. Tomorrow also begins the Church’s shortest season, the Easter Triduum, and her longest Mass. Three days, Holy Thursday night through Good Friday to Saturday night’s Easter Vigil. We go to church three times, but it’s all one Liturgy. The Easter Triduum is the summit of the Church’s year,... Read more
A Maryknoll friend of mine and Orbis Press did us a service with a condensed version of several of Pope Francis’s published writings. In under 200 pages you can get the gist of ten major works of Francis’s papacy. The book is Fr. James Kroeger’s Walking with Pope Francis: The Official Documents in Ordinary Language The works that Fr. Jim walks through, in Latin and English titles, are: Lumen Fidei, The Light of Faith Evangelii Gaudium, The Joy of the... Read more
October 4 is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, patron of ecologists. On that day this month Pope Francis went back to a major theme of his acclaimed 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Si: On theCare for Our Common Home. In an apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum (Praise God), the pope spoke to Catholics and the world about climate change, an issue of great concern to him. Francis is not alone among Church leaders in that concern. Previous popes, dating back... Read more
It’s common to read the New Testament for spiritual enlightenment and moral persuasion. One can also lower one’s sights and wonder about the political arena in which Jesus lived, worked, and suffered. That’s not as common, and when we do think that way, we tend to keep the two, Jesus and politics, apart from each other: “Render to Caesar Caesar’s due, and to God” … something else. Warren Carter rejects that separation and thinks a lot about politics in the... Read more
I have written about New Testament texts and the historical Jesus in the context of life in early first-century Palestine. (See here, here, and here for examples and links to more posts.) So I felt fortunate to discover a Bible scholar doing similar work in a broader context. Warren Carter studies New Testament writings in relation to the dominating Roman Empire. This post introduces the prolific author Warren Carter and his work. A following post will examine one work in... Read more
The news source Axios reports on young workers in Asia. They seem to be turning away from factory jobs in large numbers. A story that originates with the Wall Street Journal says brands like Lowe’s and Hasbro “are having a hard time recruiting and retaining younger [Asian] workers.” It’s a problem in places that include India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. This trend, if it continues, will have consequences for consumers worldwide. Our multinational corporations will have to pay more either for... Read more
Christians say “Credo” and tell a story of God’s work on earth and in heaven. I tell the story again with the help of the Christian Creed. Credo, I believe, in One God, Father and Mother and blessed by many other names, who calls into being lands and peoples with all their strengths and beauty, who walks with us through joy and suffering on our pilgrim journey, faithful through our unfaithfulness and the tragedies of sin and death, schooling, disciplining... Read more
On Wirzba, This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World What is humanity’s purpose in this world? Or are we the end for which every other thing exists. Can we find purpose in the universe, given that science isn’t geared for anything like purpose? Or is competition for limited resources the rule for all life forms and for individuals within our species as well? Would the right answer to questions like these help turn around a world bent on... Read more
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