Tag: Pope Leo XIII

On
George Weigel

John XXIII and John Paul II: Canonizing the bookends

Pope Francis’ bold decisions to canonize Blessed John XXIII without the normal post-beatification miracle and to link good Pope John’s canonization ceremony to that of Blessed John Paul II just may help re-orient Catholic thinking about modern Catholic history.

For what Francis is suggesting, I think, is that John XXIII and John Paul II are the twin bookends of the Second Vatican Council — and thus should be canonized together.

Summoning an ecumenical council

On January 25, 1959, less than three months after his election, John XXIII surprised the Catholic world by announcing that he would summon the 21st ecumenical council in history.

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On
William Dagnon

Popes talk about new approaches to the economy

To the editor:

Tony Magliano’s reflections on Pope Benedict’s Day of Peace message in the January 10 Catholic Herald is relevant to this time and place. As noted by the pope, inequality has been increasing for decades as a result of selfish and individualistic deregulation of financial markets.

Deregulation caused the financial crisis of 2008 and recession. Millions lost their jobs, families lost their homes, and $16 trillion in household wealth evaporated. But since then, 93 percent of new wealth has accrued to the richest one percent.

A week later followed the economic column in the Catholic Herald by Anthony Esolen about some of Pope Leo XIII’s views on socialism in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. The pope denounced socialism because it deprives working people of the gains of their wages in the form of private property.

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On
B.L. Johnson

Socialism has resulted in poverty, repression, death

To the editor:

I want to thank the Catholic Herald for running the excellent article on Pope Leo XIII’s assessment of socialism as evil. It truly is.

Socialism, with its tempting allure of equality, has not produced equality, only poverty, repression, and death. Socialism has manifested itself worldwide in many forms and variants, but always with a similar end result of poverty and death.

Whether it was the millions killed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the genocide of Hitler’s German Socialist Workers Party, or the mass desert graveyards of Saddam Hussein’s Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party in Iraq, the result is always the same.

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On
Mary C. Uhler, editor

People must come first: As society deals with changes in the economy

Editor's View by Mary C. Uhler

Some of us have made calls to a business and encountered a person with an Indian accent on the other end of the phone. That person might be working at a call center in India.

It’s just one example of the many changes we’ve been experiencing recently in the way we work. We can barely keep pace with innovations in technology and communications in a truly global economy.

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