Here are the highlights from the latest issue of our Regenerative Reader! Attached to the bottom of this post is a .pdf document where you can find the entire issue. Be sure to sign up for our mailing list so you will be the first to see what is coming up!
Eating Up Easter: Film Screening & Conversation with the Filmmakers
By Dr. Miriam Dominguez
The most remote inhabited island in the Pacific Ocean, Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), occupies a place in the popular imagination with its iconic stone statues. It is in the remoteness and beauty of this landscape that filmmakers Sergio Mata’u Rapu and Elena Kouneski Rapu documented the paradoxes that arise when indigenous and local communities seek both economic development and ecological sustainability.
Sergio and Elena Rapu will screen their film documentary Eating Up Easter for The Maurin Academy and participate in a discussion and Q & A session on June 24 at 7 PM CST. Stay tuned for an interview with the filmmakers and the details on how to participate on our first movie event!
More Real than the World: Ancient Insights into the Nature of God
Using selections of texts from Plato’s Republic, Gorgias, Symposium, and Laws, Laurie will discuss key ideas that attracted early Christians: Plato’s idealism (doctrine of the forms), his views on justice, the role of human love, the existence of God, and the afterlife. The last half hour, at least, will be for open discussion.
Each session will run roughly 1.5 hours. To attend, join the Maurin Academy Patreon or register on Eventbrite! Catholic Workers, email maurinacademy@gmail.com for free access. Word of Life Church members attend free–register at WOLC.
Tentative Schedule:
May 20: Platonic idealism and the relationship between the intelligible and the material world. Core text: Republic.
May 27: Plato on human nature and the distinction between true justice and conventional justice. Core text: Republic.
June 3: The ladder of love: how human affection is a (pale) reflection and indication of divine love. Core text: Symposium.
June 10: Proofs of God’s existence and the eternality of the human soul. Core texts: Laws, Gorgias.
Dustbowl Diatribes
For season three we’re covering the various theories about Techno-Feudalism and looking into the current state of the Catholic Worker movement. In short, our hypotheses are that the coming period of capitalism can be accurately characterized as quasi-feudal and that the Catholic Worker movement is currently hamstrung by a radical split between those adhering to Peter Maurin’s comprehensive vision for constructing a Christian social order and those adhering to Ammon Hennacy’s Tolstoyan/Radical Liberal vision for protesting our way towards social justice.
Along those lines, Laurie and Spencer recently talked to two long-time Catholic Workers–Lincoln Rice and Benjamin Peters. They’ve also interviewed David Holmgren (one of the “co-originators” of Permaculture about different “energy descent scenarios”, and with the Traditionalist Catholic John Rao about Catholic Social Teaching and his beef with French personalism. Spencer also interviewed his cat for April Fools.
Communio Study Circle
Our reading group recently finished the late David L. Schindler’s, Heart of the World, Center of the Church, at our November meeting. In December we read and discussed a Communio article related to the encyclical, Laudato Si. As for January and February, we read A Personalist Manifesto by Emmanuel Mounier. And now we look forward to discussing Laborem Exercens by Pope John Paul II for our upcoming meeting in May!
Now (and always) would be a great time to join this reading group!
You can sign up for this group by joining our Patreon, Salt of the Earth, tier patreon.com/maurinacademy, or emailing us at maurinacademy@gmail.com.
The next meeting of this group is Saturday, May 18 at 4 p.m. US Central Time, in person and on Zoom.
