Manufacturing Bill Droel It is hard to get a handle on globalization because it includes nearly instant communication, instant transfers of money, plus trade policies, including tariffs and NAFTA. It is also the IMF, currency rates, immigration policies, large-scale assembly and distribution of goods, speculative trading of complex financial instruments, outsourcing and an international drug […]
Stories Are True Bill Droel Mike Houlihan is a raconteur of Chicago neighborhoods and a columnist for Irish American News. One column wisely begins: “A good story never really ends. Maybe you’ve heard a few from me before, but like the story of our lives, it continues to unravel in directions we never imagined.” Another […]
Community Colleges Bill Droel President Barack Obama is a champion of community colleges—not only in his recent State of the Union address, but regularly since the first days of his administration. Tom Geoghegan, a labor lawyer here in Chicago, is not convinced. College, especially community college, “is not a sure route to the middle class,” he […]
The Working Catholic: Too Much Sentiment, Part I By Bill Droel “A Christian worldview can exist in writing that is not necessarily Christian,” asserts Lisa Ohlen Harris in the February 2015 issue of a terrific evangelical publication, Books and Culture. Meanwhile, she continues, “our own [Christian] literature often lacks the bite and angst our worldview […]
Catholics outnumber other religions in Congress CNS photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, kisses Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as he holds the gavel after being re-elected speaker on the House floor at the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6. Boehner and Pelosi are among the 31 percent of House and Senate members […]
Dear Friends on this Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, In one month, we will be gathering for our annual Catholic Labor Network Gathering as part of the USCCB’s Catholic Social Ministry Gathering. I hope that you will be able to join us. If you have not registered yet, you can do so at: […]
Pope Francis: Concern for the Poor is Rooted in the Gospel, Not Communism Discusses Ethics Within Social and Economic Systems in New Interview Vatican City, January 12, 2015 (Zenit.org) Junno Arocho Esteves | 42 hits In an interview with Vatican journalists Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi, Pope Francis said that concern for the poor is […]
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,500 times in 2014. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people. Click here to […]
Pope Francis Describes 15 Ailments, Sicknesses, and Diseases in the Vatican Curia December 22, 2014 · by Millennial · in Blog In his Christmas address to the Vatican Curia, Pope Francis described various ailments, sicknesses, and diseases “that we encounter most frequently in our life in the Curia.” Francis said, “They are illnesses and temptations that […]
Workers’ Participation by Bill Droel Catholicism opposes collectivist or state-controlled economic approaches. At the same time it opposes an unregulated market and rejects magical economics, as implied in metaphors like rising tide, invisible hand and trickle down. Throughout the industrial era and now in our post-industrial times, Catholicism draws upon its principles of participation and […]