I've just launched a new web site, Penny Justice. (I mean just launched, like, right before lunch.) It's not only a blog, but a free bimonthly ezine, too, so I'm excited. Finally I have a loom on which to weave my wandering researches into a coherent whole. What do Linux, organic gardening, Leo XIII, and Humanure have in common? Now I won't be the only one who knows.

Here's a bit from the shiny new about page:

I hope that Penny Justice can be a place where Catholics find out about Distributists, Distributists find out about Permaculturists, Permaculturists find out about Catholics, everyone finds out about Humanure—you get the idea.

I'm especially interested in making it easy for you to understand the Catholic Social Doctrine, which is currently even less beloved than humanure. Both through selections and through attractively typeset free ebook versions of social encyclicals, I hope you'll find these documents a treasure trove, as I have.

These documents outline a magnificent system of social justice for our times. But actually living justice day in and day out is turning out to be not only difficult, but ridiculously complicated...

People are working out answers all over the place. I've been hunting for a few years now, and it finally occured to me to start linking them together in one place. I hope to hear what you've found too.

The first issue's already online. Let me know what you think. Especially of this here logo:

Not your usual Distributist font, I reckon.

I'm also happy (more than I'd thought I'd be) to dedicate the project to Our Lady of Guadalupe. I wonder what she thinks. That's the neat part, wondering what she thinks. I've had intermittent thoughts lately of how rarely I think about believing in a Queen of the Universe.

The homily I heard this past Sunday was an stern exhortation to believe in—Santa Claus. For the Church teaches that Santa Claus is real. We don't believe in the silly old flying reindeer, of course, just an immortal being, currently disembodied, who can travel at the speed of thought, survey your innermost secrets with an immaterial glance, and directly interact with every human who's ever lived. (Or at least the ones on his side of the chasm).

Harry Potter's got nothing on the Catholic cosmos.

Neither do the Brothers Grimm. Our Lady is a fairy princess. More than a fairy princess, of course, but I get a much brighter glimpse of her as a laughing Grimm princess in her third and best dress, more radiant than the moon and the stars, than any statue or painting may ever give me.

With the possible exception of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I know it sounds contrived to leap from a living, breathing princess to a picture, but I've been down to Mexico City. There's a quality of reality to that image—once you've seen the original—that's in a whole other realm than most religious art.

So a happy feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe to you and yours.