In his latest On the Square column, George Weigel remembers trade union activist Bill Doherty :
Bill Doherty was one of the great Catholic laymen of twentieth-century America. A bear of a man who had been a defensive lineman at Catholic University during his student days, Bill dedicated his professional life to trade unionism as an instrument of democracy-building (and hence peace-making) in Latin America. Free trade unions, he believed, were crucial components of the civil society that made democracy possible. By helping build those kinds of worker associations, Bill and his AIFLD colleagues were not only giving the poor the tools by which to pull themselves and their families out of poverty; they were giving democracy a chance in places where it had never taken root.
Also today, Richard L. Wood defends the the Catholic Campaign for Human Development :
In his recent essay for First Things, Fr. Val J. Peter insinuates Saul Alinsky into everything the Catholic Campaign for Human Development does. But both in concept and in practice the Campaign is in fact rooted firmly in Church teaching, both its moral principles and its social doctrine. Although Fr. Peter suggests CCHD substitutes “social justice” linked to institutional change for “charity in the traditional sense,” Pope Benedict XVI in his last encyclical makes clear that both are central Catholic commitments . . .
