I am often asked to write a more elaborate statement of what “Catholic anarchism”—as it seems to me—is all about. People like blueprints after all. Generally, I hesitate to do so as the relationship between the two terms is not fixed or final, but always moving and flexible. The best I can do—especially using the medium of a blog which I consider to be a sort of “testing ground” for tentative and evolving ideas—is offer some thoughts here and there toward what a Catholic anarchism might look like.

Halden recently raised the question of theological capitalization which got me thinking about one of my recently adopted blogging practices. A year or two ago I consciously stopped capitalizing various words in my blogging here and at Vox Nova. The words that get the most attention are america, american, united states of america, etc., but I also tend not to capitalize words like republican and democrat. Predictably, I am questioned on this practice regularly, usually by people who are automatically offended without even bothering to ask why I do it, and the assumption is that I must “hate america” if I tend not to capitalize the word. Sometimes people do bother to ask what it means, especially since I do capitalize the names of most other countries. I’ve not really developed a detailed explanation for it, but I generally tell them that I am trying to draw attention to and critique various forms of american exceptionalism and to perhaps make people question the assumed place of “america” in the world, in their minds, and in their theologies.

In the above video, U.S. Catholic Magazine asks Fordham professor Michael Lee five questions on liberation theology. The full interview with Lee on liberation theology today can be found here. Lee’s recent book, Bearing the Weight of Salvation, is a revision of his very good dissertation on the themes of soteriology and discipleship in the theology of Ignacio Ellacuría, SJ, one of the Jesuits martyred in El Salvador in 1989.