I hear the happy sound of a hut being built! Let me fetch the burning pitch, some bells, incense and a cigar.
Fr. C., here. By way of introduction, I am a native Washingtonian, who traveled to the wilds of Indiana to study history and political theory at DePauw University in Indiana. I confess to being a recovering lawyer, having taken my degree at Georgetown in 1982. I practiced for many years in the areas of international trade, intellectual property and commercial litigation, when not serving as a Naval intelligence officer. (Yes, two of the three oldest professions.) Along the way, I did a stint as a trade negotiator in the Uruguay Round of the GATT, and as part of the NAFTA debacle. Among my bar memberships is that of the august state of West Virginia, where the admissions ceremony involved spitting clean across a boxcar.
After nearly 20 years of government and private practice, I found myself taking a variety of ecclesiastic cases, mostly in the area of property ownership, and studying canon law with the late Kenneth North at the Canon Law Institute in Washington, D.C. Following Ken's entry into the larger life, I was named executive director of CLI, and began to plague presumptuous prelates, bumptious bishops, and freaky friars on matters pertaining to morals, dogma and the ongoing battle of who owns what in the church.
As proof of God’s overarching Grace and incredible sense of humor, I found myself called into vocation as a traditional Anglican priest (emphatically not within the Episcopal Church) of the Anglo-catholic persuasion. Following a Masters in Theology at the Dominican House of Studies where my work centered on the theology of preaching, and a stint in various missions in Virginia, my archbishop sent me back here to D.C. to pastor the Parish of Christ the King. As well, I am the priest-in-charge of St. Athanasius Anglican Mission in Ashland, Virginia, a militant band of Christians who took the saint’s moniker as a matter of public witness to the faith once-delivered.
As to the economic (and not as aspects of the Trinity), I like to think of it being concurrent with the faith. I suppose I am a free-market catholic. In a great article, Prof. Tom Woods notes,
the normal operation of the market tends toward an increase in the laborer’s standard of living. So benevolent an institution is the market that no one’s gain has to come at the expense of anyone else. Everyone can gain simultaneously. That being the case, it is this approach that Catholics should take when seeking to increase people’s standard of living…
But Tom puts the whole thing better than I can in Morality and Economic Law: Toward a Reconciliation at http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods25.html
But, hey, here am I with a Jesuit law degree, and a Dominican religious training. Via media anyone?