All are welcome at 7 p.m. tonight for a live-streamed concert with Fr. Paul Turner and members of the Kansas City Symphony. They will play music by Telemann, and share their connections to Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement. Donations will be accepted for the John Paul II Catholic Worker Farm. Here's the link... Continue Reading →
Maurin Academy Co-founders Spencer Hess and Emily Larner of the John Paul II Catholic Worker Farm are featured in a piece from The Nation on the Anarchism of the Catholic Worker, commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Catholic Worker. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/catholic-worker-dorothy-day-peter-maurin/
Spencer, Emily and Laurie continue their conversation about the history and "failure" of the first attempt, instigated by Spencer, to start an urban farm collective, based on sharing resources and labor, in Kansas City. We discuss the various obstacles Spencer, and then Emily too, continued to face as they tried to cooperate with others who claim to share the same values and goals. What does it take to get people who agree they are of like minds to actually consistently cooperate? This is not an easy question to answer, but it gets to the heart of why most experiments like this are ultimately deemed "utopian." If we understand the main pitfalls, does that help us find a way to succeed, even a little
Please sign up for our free newsletter here. Dr. Larry Chapp of the popular blog Gaudium et Spes joins Spencer and Laurie for a discussion about ressourcement theology, the inspiration for the international Catholic journal Communio. Dr. Chapp cares for a Catholic Worker farm and, through his blog and numerous YouTube videos, brings his own version of Peter Maurin's "agronomic university" to a larger audience. We share a lot in common with Dr. Chapp, both in philosophy as well as practice, as we also are attempting a Catholic Worker farm, as well as an agronomic university through the Maurin Academy.
Laurie and Spencer interview retired Lutheran Pastor Tom Mundahl. Mundahl has made action the center of his ministry, including leading a venture into Catholic Worker hospitality in a Campus student group. We discuss why it is difficult for pastors to move beyond the comfort zones of their parishioners to lead them into new ways of living and interacting with others. We discuss the obstacle of Christian nationalism as the latest inhibitor of Christian action.
Spencer and Laurie interview "the last Marxist", Christ Cutrone about his experience with Catholic Worker-style Christians, the limits of the left, and what is to be done.
The Maurin Academy for Regenerative Studies 