“He summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits. They drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” (Mark 6:7, 13)
There are still demons in the world, and the Church has been commissioned to the front lines of the spiritual battlefield.
Is he not the τέκτων?
In today's Gospel reading, we learn about Jesus’s profession before his ministry. The evangelists tell us little about Jesus’s life between the age of 12, when he was lost in the temple, and 30, when he started his ministry, except that he was a “carpenter.”
However, I think there is more to this word than the traditional translation portrays.
The etymology of tektōn (Latinized) derives from the root techn-, meaning art or skill. It's where we get the modern English words architect or technology. It's believed that Jesus worked as a builder in Sepphoris, a new town within walking distance of his hometown of Nazareth. His work could have inspired the basis of his parables: observing the strained relations between a landowner and the tenants (Mark 12:1-12), customers running out of money (Luke 14:28-30), building a foundation for a house (Matthew 7:24-27), hiring assistants who complained about pay (Matthew 20:1-16).
However, I want to propose a deeper meaning to explore. As Pope Francis explained in a homily on work, “[God] created the world, He created man, and He gave man and woman a mission: to manage, to work with, and bring forward creation. […] work is none other than the continuation of God’s work: human work is man’s vocation received from God at the end of the creation of the universe.” Jesus came to align his creation back to the Father’s plan. He did this not only through his preaching but also through his daily work.
Undoubtedly, the Gospel captures the essential aspects of Jesus’s teachings necessary for salvation. But it’s worth meditating on Jesus’s three decades of life outside his public ministry, where, as an adult, he worked to continue the creation of the world aligned with his Father’s will. He planned, created, and built seemingly in mundane ways but always oriented back to the divine. In a secular society obsessed with building technology, it's easy to fall into the trap that everything we do in the material world is contrary to God’s plan, but it's not. Instead, we should work as tektōn, building new things while applying our modern scientific knowledge to continue divine creation, for this is the true purpose of work and technology.
It is also worth noting, as providence would have it, the adjacent Greek root of Jesus’s earthly vocation was given to Our Lady, the Θεοτόκος, Mother of God, to remind us of her Son in our daily lives.
“Fourth of July” is the “Happy Holidays” of Independence Day 🇺🇸 🗽
Catholics Should be Bitcoiners
Catholics face many challenges living the faith together in an increasingly secular age. However, Catholic communities can uphold their faith in the modern world with a simple action: adopt Bitcoin.
Freedom Money
Pope St. John Paul II famously told his American audience, “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” Bitcoin gained early notoriety for its permissionless nature to enable criminals. However, just because a man can undermine his freedom does not diminish its inalienability. As a man can freely speak so others may come to know the truth, he can also use speech for harm. Similarly, the freedom to transact is necessary to provide for the common good, even if a man can use money for personal destruction. Bitcoin enables the freedom needed for the expression of public morality. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote, "It is good for people to realize that purchasing is always a moral — and not simply economic — act. Hence the consumer has a specific social responsibility, which goes hand-in-hand with the social responsibility of the enterprise." (Caritas in Veritate 66) As a large portion of the population is unbanked because of their social status and governments de-bank political opponents, protecting the freedom to transact is more crucial than ever to maintain the right to support what we ought.
Sound Monetary Policy
Regarding wealth concentration in 1931, Pope Pius XI wrote, “This dictatorship is being most forcibly exercised by those who, since they hold the money and completely control it, control credit also and rule the lending of money. Hence they regulate the flow, so to speak, of the life-blood whereby the entire economic system lives, and have so firmly in their grasp the soul, as it were, of economic life that no one can breathe against their will.” (Quadragesimo Anno 106) The Federal Reserve, which creates US Dollars by fiat, is the single controller of the world economy because it controls the ‘life-blood’ of the world reserve currency. This arbitrary power undermines a family’s ability to save for the future and rewards cronies of the central bank by the Cantillon effect, cementing an unjust economic order.
Contrary to the Federal Reserve, whose monetary policy is at the whims of politicians, the creator of Bitcoin established an immutable and predictable monetary policy at its inception to issue all 21 million Bitcoins. Although Bitcoin may experience volatility, its sound monetary policy enables families to securely store their resources, safeguard their future, and empower them to contribute to the common good. Before Bitcoin, no one could resist the unjust exercise of power demonstrated by the central bank of the most powerful nation. However, now we can resist and are obligated to do so.
Practical Distributism
G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.” After the Industrial Revolution, while affirming the market economy, the Church has always warned against the centralizing forces of unbridled capitalism. It has sought to create a new economic framework: Distributism. “Economic development must remain under man's determination and must not be left to the judgment of a few men or groups possessing too much economic power or of the political community alone or of certain more powerful nations.” (Gaudium et Spes 65) In Bitcoin, monetary policy is decentralized to the point that any changes need unanimous consent, which means it is practically impossible to change. A prosperous nation-state has no more power than an individual running a Bitcoin server. Decentralized money is the first step toward a Distributist future from which distributed economic activity can flow. With further technological advancements, the Bitcoin network will be able to support dense local economic activity and allow a community to organize around the common good while removing the unjust influence of the central bank.
Lastly, Pope St. John Paul II left us invaluable wisdom about the post-World World II attempt to create a just economic order: “In general, such attempts endeavour to preserve free market mechanisms, ensuring, by means of a stable currency and the harmony of social relations, the conditions for steady and healthy economic growth in which people through their own work can build a better future for themselves and their families.” (Centesimus Annus 19) Let us heed his wisdom and adopt Bitcoin to create a more just future for families and communities.
I wrote a blog post about The Sovereign Family: Why The Sovereign Individual is only a half-great book.
“Bitcoiners underestimate the technical difficulty of mundane tasks in Bitcoin and overestimate the technical aptitude of the population. Focusing solely on individuals threatens to undermine the entire Bitcoin experiment.”
https://sovereign.app/blog/the-sovereign-family
Bitcoiners Should Be Catholic
With skepticism and moral relativism more prevalent than ever, it's unsurprising that people are inclined to think one's religion has the same level of importance as a favorite sports team. However, everything in life is ordered toward a highest intrinsic good. It is vital to acknowledge what that good is. The Catholic deposit of faith supports principles Bitcoiners cherish, agreeing on what is truly good.
We believe in objective truth.
A signature is valid, or it's not; a transaction is confirmed or not; a block is accepted or not. These are the fundamental objective truths that form the basis of Bitcoin. These truths are not subjective to personal judgment or the whims of politicians. Grounded in mathematics, Bitcoin takes its form in the objective reality of the universe. Yet, many people today don't believe there are objective truths, or at least, if there are objective truths, they think we can't know what they are. However, it is contradictory to say it is true that there is no truth. Objective truth describes reality, so it is true or false for everyone. Since religion, properly understood, describes reality, its central claims are objective and can be investigated. Any religion worth pursuing puts objective truth in the middle of its dogmas. Catholics believe “Man tends by nature toward the truth.” (CCC 2467) Central to the Christian claim is that God is the truth: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Bitcoiners are some of the only people in our secular world who understand objective truth.
We believe in solidarity.
A society maintains a proper monetary order when the hardest money becomes the only money (Copernicus-Gresham's Law). Furthermore, Bitcoin is a consensus protocol. The network rules bind every participant together, and we all share in the fruits of the network. Users, miners, and developers depend on each other to maintain the network's health. Similarly, the Church teaches all creation orders toward solidarity: "Interdependence must be transformed into solidarity, based upon the principle that the goods of creation are meant for all." (Sollicitudo rei Socialis 39) Humans are social animals who flourish in a community bound together toward common objectives. Bitcoiners intuitively grasp this fundamental Catholic social teaching.
We believe in subsidiarity.
While the Bitcoin network is a shared resource for the common good, it is not a collectivist enterprise. Not your keys, not your coins, flows from the ethic of subsidiarity: “A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.” (Centesimus annus 48) Fiat currencies have perverted this principle by introducing the unnatural institution of the central bank. Bitcoin rightly reorders money management back to the lowest level of society: the family, who can hold their keys to save, earn, spend, and invest their own money with sovereignty. Finally, “the principle of subsidiarity is opposed to all forms of collectivism. It sets limits for state intervention. It aims at harmonizing the relationships between individuals and societies. It tends toward the establishment of true international order.” (CCC 1885) Bitcoiners understand the proper international order Catholics have been discussing for centuries and are working toward making it a reality.
Bitcoiners should discern the Catholic faith to deepen their understanding of these principles that resonate deeply with the ethos of Bitcoin. Catholicism offers more than a belief system. It provides a path to spiritual fulfillment and a community grounded in timeless truths, with teachings that will always be true, like the immutable ledgers we keep on our full nodes. Joining the Catholic Church means embracing a tradition that stands the test of time and offers profound purpose and social cohesion in accordance with the eternal law. Join our journey to seek the truth.
Bitcoin is the narthex to our cathedral: it's just the start.
View quoted note →A short explainer of how our vaults work at
https://sovereign.app
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https://sovereign.app I'm excited to launch my company today for public beta testing! Sign up and let me know what you think
https://sovereign.app/blog/introducing-sovereign-app