St. Mary’s University has been a leader in research in the area of modern slavery for a number of years, especially through the work of the Bakhita Centre.
Read more >>Healing the wounds of modern slavery
Category: Globalisation
A Review of ‘Refuge Reimagined – Biblical Kinship in Global Politics’ by Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville
In ‘Refuge Reimagined – Biblical Kinship in Global Politics’ Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville have created an innovative inter-disciplinary way to rethink conversations surrounding refugees and displaced people. Drawing on both theology and the subject area of international relations, each discipline representing the authors’ separate academic fields, Mark Glanville and Luke Glanville challenge us to rethink and re-imagine current arguments as individuals, as church communities, as a nation and as a globe, proposing instead a more compassionate response grounded in the notion of a biblical ethic of kinship.
Read more >>The Real ‘Patria Grande’: Africa’s 55
As 2020 ended Pope Francis’s Fratelli tutti called with passion for the world to discover the energy to rediscover ‘lost dreams’. Building on his experience in Buenos Aires and his creation of a Pontifical Commission for Latin America to bring that region into the heart of the Roman Curia, he specifically suggested that a symbol of such a dream was a ‘patria grande’. The idea of ‘patria grande’, of course, has a long history in the Americas: part rallying cry of Simon Bolivar, part lament at the division of what had been ‘Spanish America’ and part radical social and economic project. Like many visions at scale it is fed by multiple sources.
Read more >>The universal Church and global governance
In this further article on Fratelli tutti, the concept of global governance, which is a recurrent theme of papal encyclicals and other Church documents, is discussed. It is reproduced by kind permission of the Catholic Herald where it was first published.
Read more >>Weigel – liberal or conservative? Simplex labels and complex theologies
One of St. Mary’s University’s core values is “generosity of spirit”. In this post, Francis Davis reminds us that we should take those with whom we disagree seriously rather than dismiss them. That way, we might all grow in knowledge and wisdom.
Read more >>Covid-19 and international solidarity
What has Catholic Social teaching to say about the Covid-19 pandemic? As the Church reflects on both the ethics of healthcare resource allocation and the running of the economy, there is quite a lot for us to say; but here I simply want to look at how the United Kingdom’s international policies, and the attitudes underlying them, have affected the country’s response to the crisis. Some policies have been mistaken because they stem from flawed moral attitudes. We have a duty to question and challenge policies: while we are trying to ‘pull together’ governments and public authorities need to be held to account, particularly if mistakes have cost lives. For Christians this is in the best tradition of the Old Testament prophets.
Read more >>Five decades on from Populorum Progressio, have we achieved one world?
At this time of the rapid spread of coronavirus we can, of course, easily see one the downsides of globalisation. However, globalisation has been coming under pressure for some time with some even questioning its economic benefits. For example, this is, President Trump:
“You go to New England, Ohio, Pennsylvania …manufacturing is down 30, 40, sometimes 50 per cent. NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere”.
Read more >>The late scholastics and globalisation
While the understanding of Catholic social thought as a structured and articulated body of thought is relatively recent, its roots go back much further. The work of St. Thomas Aquinas is certainly pivotal in this regard (and merits its own analysis), but in several matters the first consistent reflection on applied global economic and social issues from a Catholic perspective ought to be credited to the late scholastics and particularly to the so-called School of Salamanca.
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