The “veto culture” is often motivated by the desire to seek an easy payout. There is something fundamentally tawdry about this and we should not be ashamed to comment on it. An attitude prevails that if you can extract a little compensation bundle from the government, you would be a fool not to take it.
The turning of the year prompts us to look back and look forward. In JCFJ in 2025 we were delighted to deliver a special issue of Working Notes dedicated to marking the 10th anniversary of Pope Francis’ groundbreaking Laudato Si’ and to follow that up with an issue focusing on the ethical and policy dimensions… Read more »
Pope Leo XIV gave the first insight to what direction his papacy would take early last month when he published his first official teaching – Dilexi Te – (“I have loved you”). This document had been begun by his predecessor, Francis, and he gladly took it up, made it own, and has issued it as… Read more »
Naming the Assumptions Let us start by stating two common assumptions: The first position used to be extended often by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and their ilk. I have heard it myself: that religion is a sort of psychological crutch for people who can’t quite cope. While it seems like it might have some… Read more »
Once upon a time, long ago, I found myself sitting in a hotel bar having coffee with a prominent writer who self consciously presents themselves as a defender of the best of conservative political theory. The conversation flowed pretty naturally. I love to talk about ideas, especially with people who come at things differently from… Read more »
In October 2022, two young people from the environmental activist group, Just Stop Oil, walked into the National Gallery in London carrying tins of soup. They opened one tin and hurled it over the glass protecting Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting Sunflowers. The painting itself was unharmed. The seventeenth-century Italian frame was splashed. It needed some… Read more »
Every August and September, the housing shortage shows up on campus. First year students move across the country without certainty about where they will sleep. Returning students juggle long commutes, term-time sublets, and rising rents. Parents bounce desperate messages into WhatsApp groups looking for leads. This is now a familiar seasonal pattern, yet it points… Read more »
In April 1815, the Mount Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted with a force unmatched in recorded history. A massive plume of ash and gas reached the stratosphere, darkening the skies. The year before, a lesser eruption in the Philippines had already primed the atmosphere. Together, they ejected extraordinary quantities of debris into the environment. The… Read more »
A rallying cry heard throughout the 20th century was “Bread, not bombs.” The original phrase captured the moral demand to prioritise human need over militarism, often in Cold War and anti-poverty contexts. But in the face of climate collapse, biodiversity breakdown, ecological injustice, and environmental racism, a reframing is badly needed. The drums of war… Read more »
Next week, I will be presenting at a gathering of theologians, ethicists, and social scientists in Salzburg, Austria. The event, organised by the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Social Concerns, and its focus is democracy. Or more precisely, democracy under threat. For many years now, Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has affirmed democracy as the… Read more »
Working Notes is a journal published by the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice. The journal focuses on social, economic and theological analysis of Irish society. It has been produced since 1987.
