Atman, Dharma, and Seva in conversation with Catholic Social Teaching — and with the machines now pressing in on all of us On a cold night in late September 1931, a train pulled into Spring Vale Station near Darwen, Lancashire, and several thousand people stood waiting in the dark. The man who stepped off wore... Continue Reading →
Worth More Than Gold: Rediscovering Catholic Social Teaching’s Forgotten Roots
And What CST is Not! In 1884, Swiss bishop Gaspard Mermillod brought together a curious mix of European Catholics—noblemen, economists, and a handful of priests—in the peaceful university town of Fribourg, Switzerland. For seven years, this gathering, which became known as the Fribourg Union, grappled with a question the Church had long left to politicians... Continue Reading →
Did YOU read Brian Fraga’s article in NCR? “Tech billionaire Peter Thiel takes on popes, delves into end-times theology”
A reflection on eschatology, elite capital, and Christian nationalism based on Brian Fraga’s article in National Catholic Reporter entitled Tech billionaire Peter Thiel takes on popes, delves into end-times theology When the Antichrist Comes for Regulation: Peter Thiel, the Papacy, and the Theology of Silicon Valley Power I want to start with a sentence that sounds like... Continue Reading →
Making a Life, Not Just a Living: Reframing Work Through Catholic Social Teaching
Based on Kate Ward’s Making a Life: Catholic Social Teaching and the Meaning of Work (Bloomsbury, 2026). Using the See-Judge-Act Method Most of us inherited a definition of work we never actually chose. It arrived through job postings, performance reviews, LinkedIn feeds, and the quiet dread of the Sunday-night inbox. It tells us that work... Continue Reading →
The Mall That Ate Its Own Dream: Why Victor Gruen Still Matters and What Thomas Merton and Marshall McLuhan Have to Say
Victor Gruen never meant to invent the shopping mall as we know it. That’s the part of his story people tend to skip, and it’s the key to his story. The Austrian-born architect who designed Southdale Center — the first fully enclosed mall in America, opened in Edina, Minnesota, in 1956 — and over 40... Continue Reading →
The Machine and the Margin: What Slavery’s Technology Teaches Us About Today
There is a temptation, when we study history, to place ourselves safely on the correct side of it. We read about slavery and think: I would never have done that. I would have known better. But history does not offer us that comfort so easily. The dynamics that shaped American slavery — the way technology concentrated wealth... Continue Reading →
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