Fifteen Years of Mirror of Justice

When Rick Garnett reminded us all that this is the fifteenth anniversary of Mirror of Justice, I went back and looked at the post I wrote on our tenth anniversary.  

I referenced in that post Pope Francis' then-recent Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, in which he spoke of solidarity as presuming "the creation of a new mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of the life of all over the appropriation of goods by a few.” I wrote of Francis' belief that  because Christian conversion “demands reviewing especially those areas and aspects of life related to the social order and the pursuit of the common good,…no one can demand that religion should be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life, without concern for the soundness of civil institutions, without a right to offer an opinion on events affecting society.”

In the last fifteen years, those involved in the MOJ project have disagreed with each other about all sorts of questions  -  whether particular laws and policy positions are consistent with principles of Catholic Social Thought, whether a good Catholic can vote for a particular candidate, and so on.  Those disagreements will inevitably continue - and they foster healthy dialogue.  (And I think one of the contributions to this enterprise is precisely to model that we can have disagreements - sometimes heated ones - while still maintaining respect and fraternal love for each other.)

Whatever differences there have been, there is no disputing that everyone involved in Mirror of Justice proceeds from the premise that we have a duty to help to create “a new mindset which thinks in terms of community and the priority of life of all” and that  we cannot make decisions about law and public policy divorced from the teachings of our faith.   

To call me an infrequent MOJ blogger of late would be generous; this is my first post in a very long time.  Notwithstanding that, I remain convinced of the importance of the enterprise in which we have been engaged for the last fifteen years.

I don't have an answer to Rick's question about the future of blogs in general.  But if not here, there needs to be some forum for the exchange of ideas we have had on Mirror of Justice.