Next Meeting 4th May – Please save the date. Invite & More details to follow

Dear all,

Please note the dates for our next meetings : 4th May, 17th May and 21st June, at the usual times (1800-1930hrs)

I will be sending out placeholder invites for each of these. Speakers are already lined up for 17th May and 21st June. More to come on them shortly.

Prof. Adrian Pabst will be our speaker on 4th May and Prof. Philip Booth will offer a short commentary on Adrian’s remarks.

Both are UK CAPPF members.

Please see some preparatory readings attached.

Our theme will be :

Session 5 : The social and political consequences of unprecedented state interventionism and the social new world (dis)order

Topics to be addressed:

Modes of political organisation and the body politic according to Catholic social teaching
Social cleavages and the divide between the haves & have-nots
Social disruption, inequality and the educational gap
The death of political parties ? Self-serving politics, the credibility gap and the future of politics in the West
Dereliction of duty ? The delegation of power to the unelected (‘experts’ / quangos etc) and the democratic deficit

In terms of the discussion, I think it would be good for us to focus on the issue of the risks and opportunities arising from the ongoing, political tectonic shifts that were already underway pre-Covid, but which have been greatly accelerated by the crisis.

Prof. Adrian Pabst bio

Dr. Adrian Pabst is a political philosopher and commentator. He is Professor of Politics at the University of Kent and Deputy Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. Previously he was Visiting Professor at St Mary’s University Twickenham and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Lille (Sciences Po). Since 2016 he has served as Secretary to the Academic Board of the Fondazione Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice. A New Statesman Contributing Writer, he is the author of several books, most recently The Politics of Virtue: Post-liberalism and the Human Future (2016, with John Milbank), The Demons of Liberal Democracy (2019) and Postliberal Politics: the Coming Era of Renewal, which will be published in June 2021. Currently he is working together with Jon Cruddas MP on a book about rights and freedoms in the face of new threats to human dignity, and he has a new book coming out this June, called Postliberal Politics : The Coming Era of Renewal.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Post-Liberal-Moment-Manifesto-Post-Pandemic-Politics/dp/1509546804

Regards

Jean Pierre Casey
UK Coordinator, CAPPF