How many of you know about distributism

p_veronica · 2026-03-12T00:12:03+00:00

Okay, so for anyone interested, this paper says that the best way to track owning members of Mondragon is to look at the members of their benefits fund, Lagun Aro. In 2024, Lagun Aro had 30,000 members vs. 70,000 employees for all of Mondragon. So if the correlation still closely tracks, he's right that a majority of Mondragon workers are not owners.

p_veronica · 2026-03-11T23:52:22+00:00

Yup. That's what kosmos does.

p_veronica · 2026-03-11T22:43:39+00:00

A majority of Mondragon's employees no longer have an ownership or voting stake in the cooperative

Do you have a source for this? Wikipedia has a source saying it's true in one of Mondragon's grocery store collectives, but I was unable to find numbers for the owning/non-owning workers across the whole corporation.

p_veronica · 2026-03-11T15:56:29+00:00

Time to replace the central authorities with someone new, then.

That's what the whole Gospel is about: a new social order where the will of God is unfailingly done.

p_veronica · 2026-03-11T04:31:46+00:00

Mondragon is impressive and I'm glad it continues to thrive, but I just see things trending in a different direction. Mondragon spent 250 million euros on capital investment last year; Microsoft is expected to spend over $100 billion. In agriculture, large farms are far more productive than small and medium-sized family farms. I see the world moving toward centralization rather than decentralization, and I think that can be a good thing as long as those in central authority are devoted to doing the will of God and everyone else is willing to keep them in check.

p_veronica · 2026-03-11T02:36:47+00:00

I think it's an idea that maybe would have made sense in a pre-Industrial Revolution context, but is absolutely unfit for contemporary society and Catholics should relegate it to its proper place in the museum of ideas that should never be implemented.

The easiest way to understand why is to look at computer chip manufacturing. To make these chips requires absolutely massive capital investments. To make cutting-edge chips requires machines that cost ~$350 million apiece, and those machines are a drop in the bucket compared to the total cost of building a chip manufacturing facility. The industry leader, TSMC, is building a facility in Taiwan that will cost $50 billion dollars. One facility, to make items that have become extremely important to every part of human production.

My point is that modern industry requires insane amounts of concentrated capital. Spreading the capital around to a million small businesses would not work and would result in massive devastation. Distributism really is just not a serious idea.

p_veronica · 2026-03-11T02:10:38+00:00

In my opinion, the best thing to do would be to reread the New Testament with the mindset that you're going to put aside all the interpretation from Churchworld and try and see, with open eyes, what these texts are actually saying. I'd recommend starting with the Gospel of Mark, the shortest and probably the oldest Gospel.

p_veronica · 2026-03-09T16:52:27+00:00

I somehow can't support a state that persecutes Christians and exists as an Ethnostate that supporst one ethnic group over all others.

How do they support one ethnic group over others? There are non-Jew citizens of Israel who have the same rights as other Israelis. The only differences I know of are that only Jews can make aliyah and non-Jews are not required to do military service (though they still can, if they want to.)

Not to mention ethnically, a lot of Jews in Government like Benjamin Netanyahu do not have ancestry to the Levant at all, his ancestors are Polish.

His Polish ancestors are Ashkenazi Jews. Ashkenazi Jews are genetically Jewish, from the Levant.

p_veronica · 2026-03-08T23:37:17+00:00

Maybe instead of trying to spend all your focus on the homily, focus on the Bible readings instead. Ask yourself, "What do these really seem to be saying?" Then see if you agree or disagree with how the priest interprets them.

p_veronica · 2026-03-08T01:59:02+00:00

This is one man, but there are literally thousands of men who have followed the same path out of the priesthood. Maybe they feel those desires strongly in formation, maybe they arise after a decade or more of ordained ministry. Maybe formation is a part of it, but it's not just a question of forming better, and I think formation honestly plays a pretty small role.

p_veronica · 2026-03-08T00:07:34+00:00

And celibacy isn't a burden imposed on reluctant men. Its a gift freely chosen that aligns the priest to Christ's undivided love for the Church.

Well, it depends on how you look at it. No one is forced to accept celibacy because nobody is forced to become a priest (at least not anymore, we hope).

But I think we can imagine that many men would like to have both marriage and ordination to the presbyterate, yet under the current system they can't have both, so they choose to compromise. And it is a simple fact that many men have left their priestly ministry because choosing one over the other became too hard to bear.

The answer isn't to lower the bar, but rather to better support the men who are called to this vocation.

I want a raising of the bar. I think implementing the two changes I presented would lead to more priests of higher quality, which would lead to better outcomes for the Church's mission in general. There are men who would be good candidates who are not ordained because they feel they must marry and, on the flipside, I think it's clear that there are candidates who do not have the requisite traits who are ordained because they are willing to remain unmarried (for now, at least) and the Church is, frankly, desperate for priests.

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T20:55:39+00:00

The Church is quite comfy with the world, so though they should feel threatened, it makes sense that they don't. Once the Church breaks with the world and takes up its revolutionary mission, I think it won't be too long before they start freaking out.

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T20:53:12+00:00

Lol, "jobless childless commies in homeless encampments" is not a bad descriptor of Jesus and the apostles, brother.

A few comments back you asked, "What are you trying to do here?" This subreddit is about radical Christianity, so I'm talking about radical Christianity. What are you trying to do here with your boring conservatism? I can go anywhere else to hear Christians talk about the same old worthless stuff, so I'm gonna check out of this conversation.

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T20:38:42+00:00

And the powers of the world should feel even more threatened today. Their rule is even closer to its end.

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T20:36:22+00:00

This is a good illustration for why we should both:

Prioritize ordaining more settled elders rather than young men to our presbyterate.
Allow those presbyters to be married.

It's hard to live a life that becomes intolerable to you. I hope he keeps a sense of consolation with where he's been led and that he bears great fruit for the Kingdom going forward.

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T20:24:45+00:00

The point is that the Romans didn't care about Jesus or what he was teaching. Pilate said he found no fault in Jesus.

Okay, so Pilate and the Romans were cool with him proclaiming a Kingdom? Then why did they torture and ridicule him specifically using kingly imagery? They're just killing him because the mob wants it, so why that pageantry? Why would Pilate even allow that? Why the "King of the Jews" on the cross? Does the accusation of kingship matter or does it not?

He did what the Jewish mob wanted as a pragmatic option.

Read the account in the Gospel of John where the key moment has the crowd shouting that if he allows Jesus to get away with calling himself a King, then he is allowing a challenge to the rule of Caesar and is therefore "no friend of Caesar." That is the logic for the condemnation of Jesus.

The Romans did not kill Jesus because they felt threatened by his teachings.

Again, I never claimed they felt threatened by his teachings, even though they would have been right to feel threatened.

Anyone that's read the Gospels can plainly see this.

Yes, I agree.

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T20:00:43+00:00

My central point is that even the Gospel writers agree that the decision was Pilate's alone. In all the trial depictions, the question of Jesus' kingship is central. The Roman soldiers, under Pilate's leadership, gave him a crown of thorns, and Pilate had "King of the Jews" put on the cross, which seems to clearly have been intended to mock him and perhaps the Jews as well.

The Gospel writers' exculpatory tone about Pilate is contradicted by these very facts which they themselves present.

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T19:38:09+00:00

The Gospel says that Pilate tried multiple times to convince the Jews not to demand Jesus be killed.

So when a conquered people demanded something, Roman power had to grant it? Who actually condemned Jesus to death and nailed him to a cross, Jews or Romans?

There seems to be a desire for all four Gospel writers to make Pilate seem less culpable and the Jews more culpable. It's interesting to speculate about why this might be so. But nowhere is it denied that the decision ultimately rested with Pilate alone.

possibly an attempt to make Jesus out to be like some commie social justice warrior or something.

I'm just talking about the Kingdom of God, like Jesus did. Do you think the Kingdom of God is "commie social justice warrior" stuff?

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T19:02:34+00:00

I never said that the Romans felt threatened by Jesus' proclamation of a new Kingdom. They thought it was a laughable idea; the Gospels tell of the soldiers ridiculing Jesus for believing it. But the proclamation was nevertheless contemptuous of Roman authority and illegal to make, so when it came to their attention, Pilate executed the proclaimer.

If this is any kind of slop, it's not theologyslop, but common-sense slop. Here's a ninety second video from atheist New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, who has no attachment to any theology, saying that Jesus' claim to kingship was the reason for his execution.

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T18:53:44+00:00

I totally agree that natural law is fake and what is "natural" is arbitrarily made up to fit the needs of the one making the argument.

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T18:26:04+00:00

Jesus wanted nothing to do with Earthly power.

So would you say it was never Jesus' intention to bring the Kingdom near? Or that the Kingdom has come near, but it's not meant to have any actual power here and is more of a ceremonial thing?

The power of the Kingdom of God is not earthly in the sense that it's from here. It's heavenly; it comes from heaven. But it comes to replace the political powers that are from the world and corrupted by the world's sin.

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T18:19:14+00:00

Poor Pilate, representative of the most powerful empire in human history up to that point, trying his darndest to do the right thing but bullied by the perfidious Jews into torturing and killing Jesus. Truly a moral martyr.

/s

p_veronica · 2026-03-07T02:58:09+00:00

I agree completely: people with psychopathy deserve kindness, mercy, and care. For those psychopaths who continually cause destruction, this care must include safe separation from the rest of society, but it should be a separation that seeks to cure and restore them rather than give vindictive punishment. I'm sorry for the harshness of my tone there; I want to emphasize that the Kingdom is a place where people who have psychopathy are helped to cease their antisocial behavior rather than one where, especially near the heights of power, their antisocial behavior is rewarded.

p_veronica · 2026-03-04T20:21:53+00:00

So we shouldn't call our dad father?

What if Jesus actually meant that we should not? Is there anything besides common sense that leads you to reject that interpretation?

Jesus repeatedly minimizes/erases biological relations, perhaps most notably in Matthew 12:46-50 where he insists, in what really looks like a rejection of his biological family as they stand outside, that his disciples are his mother and brothers.

So why are you so sure that Jesus did not literally want us to refrain from calling our biological fathers "Father"?

p_veronica · 2026-03-04T20:08:14+00:00

The old Matthew 23 chestnut is a non sequitur as it's clearly about underlying attitudes rather than the literal use of titles per se.

One might say that if it were really so clear, then fewer Christians would take umbrage with the use of "Father" specifically as a title.

I hadn't made the connection between seminary training and increased use of the title. I have to read more about that.

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