http://www.catholicscholarsforjustice.org

The group and the site are new, and their stated mission is “to promote Catholic Social Teaching on the rights of workers and the indispensible role that unions play in securing justice (1) for workers and their families, (2) in the workplace, and (3) for the universal common good.”  According to its stated purpose, CSWJ members are trying to bring the strong knowledge of Catholic social justice teachings to bear on public perceptions of those teachings and to actually apply it in real world situations involving union organizing and labor disputes.

This brings to mind individuals like George Higgins and John A. Ryan (whose papers we have here at the archives), two scholarly priests who spent their lives trying to apply Catholic teachings as expressed Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, as well as the U.S. Bishops’ teachings on economic justice.   Both Ryan and Higgins, in fact, headed the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and their opinions were highly respected by Catholic and non-Catholic leaders alike.  We are still working on processing Monsignor Higgins’ papers, but our websites feature lots of materials that anyone who wants to educate themselves on matters of Catholic social justice.  In addition to the site on the Bishops’ Program, we have a site on Catholic responses to industrialization, which focuses on three different approaches to problems of social justice precipitated by industrial change.  You can find that one here:

http://libraries.cua.edu/achrcua/industrial/cri_wel.html

Another one that focuses wholly on the question of the living wage—How Much Is Enough?  Can be found here: 

http://libraries.cua.edu/achrcua/howmuch/hm_wel.html

This last site addresses many issues that continue to be relevant, such as the role of advertising in creating need, and a Catholic perspective on when consumption shades into excess.  This 1999 OSV article suggests the continuing relevance of the question: 

http://libraries.cua.edu/achrcua/howmuch/osv.pdf

Please see campus library hours or Mullen Library hours for more information.

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http://www.osjspm.org/majordoc_us_bishops_statements_program_of_social_reconstruction.aspx

This Social Justice site offers great teaching resources that can be used in tandem with the primary document .pdfs and images on our own.

Clearly, getting the site up this late in the school year isn’t ideal for attracting educators and their students to use it, but this particular site will also be useful for researchers, since so many of the documents are unavailable elsewhere on the Web.  I’ll direct you to a real gem: here is a scrapbook depicting the National Catholic Welfare Conference’s founding years, (when it was still called the National Catholic War Council).  The album is a chronicle of the earliest organized activities of the War Council and offers a window on organized American Catholic life ca. 1919.  Sorry there are no captions, we know little about the activities depicted in most of the images. 

http://libraries.cua.edu/achrcua/bishops/slideshow.html

Your comments on the images, the new site, how it might be used in the classroom or conducting research, as well as on any of our American Catholic History Classroom sites are welcome! 

The collection description reads:

McNamara, Robert Francis. Papers. 1854-1989. 15.25 feet; 32 boxes.
Donor: R.F. McNamara, 1981, 1992, 1995.

Robert F. McNamara was born in New York in 1910. He graduated with his B.A. from Georgetown University and earned his M.A. from Harvard University. In 1936, McNamara was ordained in Rome and celebrated his celebrated his 70th anniversary in 2006. McNamara became a professor of church history and was active in a number of historical associations including the American Catholic Historical Association (ACHA) and the Association for State and Local History. He served as editor for the Catholic Historical Review (CHR) from 1948-1955. McNamara wrote a number of works on church history and Catholic education. He also wrote various articles for the New Catholic Encyclopedia. These papers consist of correspondence, photographs, maps, student letters and diaries, records, research notes, and publications dealing with the North American College at Rome (NAC), its history, alumni, and operation, including the card file used by McNamara to write his book: The American College in Rome 1855-1955.

The presentation was part of “Catholic Social Justice: Looking Back and Moving Forward,” hosted by Catholic University from February 9 - March 14, 2007.

This image is of Caldwell Hall, circa 1896 and is contained in the Bishop John J. Keane CUA Photographic Album. This, and other photographic collections from the American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC can be found on the ACUA Photograph Collection site. These collections contain images and prints of the Catholic University of America buildings and grounds, faculty, students, and University community from different periods of it’s history.