News from the Catholic world
June 6, 2023
On June 5, Pope Francis appointed three scholarsincluding a Chinese critic of political equality and a prominent Australian theologian, al Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
According to his statutes, the academy aims “to promote the study and progress of the social sciences, mainly economics, sociology, law and political science. The academy, through an appropriate dialogue, thus offers the Church the elements it can use in the development of its social doctrine and reflects on the application of this doctrine to contemporary society.
Members, who do not need to be Catholic, are appointed for 10-year terms “on the basis of their competence in the social sciences and their moral integrity”. Since 2022, Cardinal Peter Turkson is the grand chancellor of the academy.
Tongdong Bai (Twitter), 53 years old, is a professor of philosophy at Fudan University (China), a prominent neo-Confucian political philosopher and author of Against political equality: the Confucian case (First things first review). he voice Confucian meritocracy as a correction of democracy. “What I’m trying to do is save liberalism by curbing democracy and equality,” he said. explained.
Bai does not hesitate to intervene in US politics: for example, he has done so he tweeted“Between the politically correct emptiness of the left and the politically incorrect cruelty and stupidity of the Trump right, Republican Never-Trumper columnists often have interesting things to say.”
“It’s a joke that Trump wants to make America 1950s again,” he said he tweeted after the Dobbs abortion decision. “With Roe overturned, thanks to three Trump justices, it’s really happening. Who says Trump couldn’t do anything?!”
Justin Farrell (Twitter), 39, is a professor of sociology at the Yale University School of the Environment. A Wyoming native who was a first-generation college student, he is the author Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Rich and the Remaking of the American West. Recent journal articles include “Elevated Severe Psychological Distress, Economic Disruption, and the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Nonmetropolitan US West” and “Effects of Land Dispossession and Forced Migration on Indigenous Peoples of North America.”
In 2021, Farrell organized a workshop for the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences on “Truth and post-truth in communication, media and society“; he described the workshop as “a fantastic few days in the Vatican to investigate the philosophical and profit drivers of science denial”. At the beginning of the year, he spoke at a workshop of the Pontifical Academy on the subject “Large-scale analysis of colonization and climate change.”
Tracey Rowland, 59, is a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame Australia and former dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family in Melbourne (2001-2017). She is the author of 150 articles and eight books, among them Ratzinger’s faith: the theology of Pope Benedict XVI.
Pope Francis named her a term of five years at the International Theological Commission in 2014, and received the Ratzinger Prize in 2020. Most recently, in May 2023, he wrote “Ten Theological Principles of the Treasury of Benedict XVI.”
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