Where are the Jobs?
Continuing Unemployment and Worse
By Fr. Fred Kammer, SJ
The stock market is soaring to set new records. CEOs are taking home bundles of cash, stock options, and rich severance packages. Wall Street is handing out million dollar bonuses again. Congress and state legislatures seem to find no tax cut unpalatable. And big tech firms like Apple acquire smaller ones like Tumblr for a billion dollars. What is the matter with this rosy picture? Unemployment.
Border Visions and Immigration Reform
By Sue Weishar, Ph.D.
Migration theologian Fr. Daniel Groody suggests that the U.S.-Mexico border is more than an imaginary dividing line between two countries. Rather, a complex history and conflicting prerogatives have resulted in a border between “national security and human insecurity, sovereign rights and human rights, civil law and natural law, and citizenship and discipleship.” [1]
In Praise of Newcomers
By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.
A major criticism leveled against recent newcomers to the United States is that they are “takers” creating an economic drain on the nation. Not only are they takers, critics lament, but also categorically “illegal,” echoing past racist associations of criminality with African-Americans and many other people of color.
Catholic Social Thought and Solidarity
By Fred Kammer, S.J.
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church names solidarity as a core principle of Catholic social teaching:
Taxing the Poor
The Regressive Nature of State-Local Tax Systems
By Fred Kammer, S.J.
In the news lately are calls by Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and other governors to eliminate their state personal and corporate income taxes and to substitute higher sales taxes in plans that will remain “revenue neutral” (namely, no additional income, just shifting tax burdens). To assess such plans morally, one needs to look first at the current state-local tax burdens of state populations. Then we can assess the impact and morality of proposed changes.
The Gift of W.E.B. Du Bois and Double-Consciousness
By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.
Racism is a spiritual wound that afflicts all Americans. No one escapes it. For white Americans to attend to this wound, we will need to pray incessantly for God’s grace and to “see ourselves as others see us.” [1]
Among countless ways that whites might begin to see ourselves as people of color see us, I suggest W.E.B. Du Bois’s critical way of autobiography, including his articulation of “double-consciousness.” While many have examined this wound, few have probed the depth of this wound more insightfully, compassionately, and fully as Du Bois.
Catholic Social Thought (CST) and Subsidiarity
By Fred Kammer, S.J.
In 1931, in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, Pope Pius XI introduced a critically important Catholic social teaching concept, one which has remained current in political debates today. In his discussion of the social order, he stated the principle:
Immigration Reform in Retrospect
Lessons Learned, Lives Changed
By Sue Weishar, Ph.D.
Fairy-Tale or Worse?
The Ryan-Romney Budget Plan and Catholic Moral Criteria
By Fr. Fred Kammer, SJ
Thomas Merton’s “Letters to a White Liberal”
By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.
While many of Thomas Merton’s books have helped a broad lay audience understand and engage in practices of Western mysticism and Buddhism, his prophetic and contemplative stance against white racism has yet to be understood— much less practiced—by a critical mass of white people of faith. Perhaps this is partially because he directly (yet compassionately) calls whites to confront our ongoing complicity in over-privilege and the oppression of people of color.