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Sep 2020
Last Sunday I used the example of homesteading in the settlement of the American west to illustrate how land is appropriated to families through use and development, which involves work. I made the further points that land is the most fundamental form of property; that private property is ordered first to the maintenance of families, but through their work becomes a benefit to the larger community. I further added that more extensive acquisition of property, in principle at least, needs to be justified somehow in relation to the family. Nevertheless, by using......
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September 11, 2020
The Universal Destination of Goods and Private Property (Part II)
Last Sunday I introduced the topic of the relation between human work and both property and the environment. This involves the “dominion” that God gave to man over the physical creation. This dominion that is...
September 04, 2020
Man’s Dominion over creation: The universal destination of goods and private property
For some time now I have been writing about social justice, seen through the eyes of faith, built around the pillars of the right worship of God, through the Mass, on the Lord’s Day, and...
August 28, 2020
The gradations of human dignity: the degradation of vice and the elevation of virtue and grace
Last Sunday I began writing about the dignity of the human person, how it is equal, how it is unequal, how it can never be lost, and in what way it can be diminished or...
August 21, 2020
The fundamental dignity of the human person
I have spent some time writing about the place and dignity of work in the realm of social justice, that is in a just social order. Even without considering the remuneration that people receive for...
August 14, 2020
The greatest of privileges: Married parents, the Catholic faith, Divine grace
Last Sunday I commented that privilege of birth (and lack thereof) involves an extraordinary coincidence of countless accidents; each one of us, individually and impersonally, from the perspective of all created causality, is most improbable....
August 07, 2020
Privilege of birth: Atheism vs. Divine Providence
Last Sunday, I pointed out that there will be some who enter into this life in a more privileged condition, whether as regards health, or wealth, or access to education, or nationality, or social standing,...
July 31, 2020
Social Justice: Equal opportunity and privilege
Last Sunday, I observed that at the heart of American democracy is the promise of equal rights under the law, which provides for ‘equal opportunity’, especially for social, economic, and political advancement. This is very...
July 24, 2020
Equal of Rights vs. Equality of Results
Last Sunday I wrote about the dignity of the workman in comparison to the dignity of the work done, noting that sometimes the workman dignifies the work by the nobility of his character, but sometimes,...
July 17, 2020
The dignity of the workman vs. the dignity of the work
Last Sunday I wrote about the dignity of different kinds of work. There are types of work that are downright shameful, types of work that are pretty meaningless, and there are types of work...