From the President's Desk - June 23, 2023

Welcome back to Legatus' From the President’s Desk!

From the President’s Desk is a chance for me to share with you what has held my attention this week. The weekly update will present a selection of observations and news stories focused on Catholic, business, and secular affairs, oriented to inform and empower Catholic professional leaders like you.

🕝 5.7 min read

Let’s get started:

🌟 Legatus Member Opportunity: Father and Adult Son Retreat

Inheritance. That is the theme of this year’s Legatus Father and Adult Son retreat led by Renewal Ministries. We will meet this year July 24-26, 2023 at Crystal Mountain Resort in Thompsonville, Michigan.

You won’t want to miss this!

Be sure to register here, and check out this YouTube video about the retreat from Pete Burak, Vice President of Renewal Ministries.

🧳 On the Road

Last week, while visiting our Washington DC chapter, I was able to visit the Catholic Information Center (CIC) downtown. The CIC

is committed to making the Catholic Church alive in the hearts and minds of men and women living and working in our nation’s capital. Through a variety of spiritual, intellectual, and professional programs, the CIC offers the tools to live an integrated life and to engage in all areas of human endeavors.

It has recently undergone a renovation, and has a beautiful chapel, which houses the closest tabernacle to the White House. The CIC offers daily Mass, and when I arrived at the CIC around 12:30 pm, Mass was just getting out. It is frequented by Catholics from all different backgrounds: politicos, businesspeople, and young professionals. If you visit the nation’s capitol for work or vacation, make it a point to have the CIC on your agenda for Mass or one of their informative talks.

 😎 Summer Break the Catholic Way

Summer is a blessing: many of us get some time off, we can spend more time with family, and perhaps go on vacation. Unfortunately, sometimes we wind up taking a vacation from our faith during the summer.

Let’s make this summer an opportunity to strengthen our faith by having a game plan to navigate the next few months.

Ascension Presents has a great video, A Catholic Guide to Summer Break, to help us think about the summer months in a way that is Catholic. Take a few moments to watch, and make sure your faith is central to your summer plans!

⛪ Religious Freedom Week

Yesterday was the beginning of Religious Freedom Week. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has terrific resources (like the image above) that can be found at this link about the centrality of religious freedom. Each day of the week features Pray—Reflect—Act resources that can be accessed here.

The First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. As Catholics, we are free to live as Catholics in all spheres of our lives, and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ where and when appropriate. Freedom of religion must be respected, and protected. Religious Freedom Week reminds us of these key points.

Please join me in praying this week in a special way that our freedom of religion remains paramount in our country, and that religious freedom worldwide is strengthened and deepened.

As the USCCB highlighted, Religious Freedom Week began this year on the feast Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher. Let us invoke them now and in the future when we contemplate religious freedom at home and abroad.

👷 Jobless Claims Are Up

MarketWatch has the headline: Jobless claims hit highest level since late 2021. Are layoffs getting worse? But there are some key details that provide more context. From the story:

A sharp increase in jobless claims in the past month has fueled talk that the labor market is finally feeling the effects of the rising interest rates orchestrated by the Federal Reserve to quench high inflation.

New filings have risen above 260,000, from around 230,000 in early May.

The unadjusted figures tell a similar story. Actual jobless claims totaled 250,000 in the latest week, up from around 200,000 as recently as the beginning of May.

Still, not every state is showing a steady increase. Most of the rise in new claims last week was concentrated in California, with Connecticut and New Jersey also reporting sizable gains.

Yet new jobless claims also fell in 36 of the 53 states and territories that report these figures to the federal government.

The number of people collecting unemployment benefits in the U.S., meanwhile, is telling a somewhat different story. That number dipped by 13,000 to 1.78 million. It has now fallen in four of the past six weeks, after hitting a one-and-a-half-year high of 1.83 million in April.

Thank you for reading, and be on the lookout for our next From the President’s Desk!

Stephen Henley