Peter Maurin was a saintly and inspiring Catholic devoted to a life of prayer and service with the poor. Along with Dorothy Day, he founded the Catholic Worker movement. In 1934, he published a series of what he called “Easy Essays.” These very brief essays were powerful and to-the-point. They presented a radical vision for how Catholic Social Teaching can change our historical and political narratives, the life we live, and the world we all share.
In 2019, we call for new Easy Essays to continue building the Kingdom of God. Many people who are interested in integralism or the Catholic Worker movement aren’t sure exactly what all these ideas mean. Easy Essays will define important terms, explain the fundamental ideas of Catholic Social Teaching, provide historical insights, analyze data, and provide strategies to organize the Works of Mercy and take direct action.
All of this will be done in short essays, with simple language. Political life cannot be limited to only the academics. Long and complicated philosophic papers have their place, but the mission of our Easy Essays will be to provide straightforward answers to simple questions. Maurin’s Essays were about 100-150 words each. Ours will be bit longer, but never more than 500 words. It takes less than 5 minutes to read an Easy Essay.
We recommend reading more of Peter Maurin’s Easy Essays on the Catholic Worker website and this archive. Here are two of his Easy Essays which are still extremely relevant to integralism today:
Blowing the DynamiteWriting about the Catholic Church, a radical writer says: “Rome will have to do more than to play a waiting game; she will have to use some of the dynamite inherent in her message.” To blow the dynamite of a message is the only way to make the message dynamic. If the Catholic Church is not today the dominant social dynamic force, it is because Catholic scholars have failed to blow the dynamite of the Church. Catholic scholars have taken the dynamite of the Church, have wrapped it up in nice phraseology, placed it in an hermetic container and sat on the lid. It is about time to blow the lid off so the Catholic Church may again become the dominant social dynamic force. |
Church And State1. Modern Society believes in the separation of Church and State.
2. But the Jews did not believe in it.
3. The Greeks did not believe in it.
4. The Romans did not believe in it.
5. The Mediaevals did not believe in it.
6. The Puritans did not believe in it.
7. Modern society has separated Church and State but it did not separate the State from business.
8. The State is no longer a Church’s State.
9. The State is now a Business Men’s State. |
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