On April 17, 2026, The New Yorker published an article on The College of St. Joseph the Worker, a new Catholic trades school in Steubenville, Ohio, wrapping up its second academic year.
“The college aims,” the article reported, “to give its students an education that is not just about work but about their lives — instilling in them a sense of purpose, restoring their feeling of competence, teaching them virtue.”
“Earn a degree, learn a trade, and graduate without crippling debt,” the college’s home page promotes. Addressing the shortage of trained tradespeople, the college enables student to earn a certificate in carpentry, HVAC, electrical work or plumbing, but also study the liberal arts. As the website states, this prepares students for the lay vocation: “Sanctifying your family, your workplace and your community.”
Its founders are proponents of out-of-the-box economic ideas that invest capital in local communities. Students are investing "sweat equity" as well, renovating buildings in downtown Steubenville.
A story of two libraries
The philosophy behind the College of St. Joseph the Worker embodies principles of “distributism.” This socio-economic model was developed by 20th-century figures like G. K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc. It centers around Catholic social teaching’s understanding of subsidiarity, where local and small-scale business ventures keep the family as a central economic unit over the state or large capitalist models.
As this institution’s life begins, a different organization with a similar outlook is coming to a close — the Catholic Central Verein of America (Deutscher Römisch-Katholischer Central-Verein von Nord-Amerika). Founded in 1855, the “Verein” (German for union) is the oldest association of Catholic men's societies in the United States.
Its current and last president, Michael Cross of St. Louis, began the Verein’s final chapter in 2024. Realizing the large sum of money needed to revamp the organization, he told Aleteia, “Now it is time for our organization to conclude its mission.”
As they liquidate their resources, financial and material donations have been made including a collection of handwritten correspondence between late 19th-century and early 20th-century popes and the Verein, entrusted to the St. Louis Archdiocesan archives.
St. Joseph the Worker College was chosen as the recipient of the bulk of their large library collection. Cross announced in a February 26 post:
“Many of these books are from the 19th, 18th, and 17th centuries (and a few from the 16th century which I've kept for my personal collection). These books and manuscripts will be an invaluable source of inspiration for the promotion of social justice and the economic principles of distributism, an economic philosophy based upon the work of economist Heinrich Pesch and the encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno. Since 1855 we have condemned both capitalism and socialism and have strived to promote this more sustainable economic model…”
Cross feels St. Joseph the Worker is the “ideal” recipient, as it is offering immediately employable skills with the liberal arts that “really forms you as a person.” He knows the importance of both as an international travel small-business owner and graduate of the University of Louvain in Belgium where he earned master’s degrees in both Theology and Religious Studies, and International Relations.
St. Joseph the Worker College President Jacob Imam shared with Aleteia his appreciation for the roughly 30,000 volumes received from the Catholic Central Verein by way of Cross.
“A great boon to our burgeoning library. Especially given our admiration for the Germanic building tradition and the dependence we have on so many great German theologians (such as Joseph Ratzinger), the collection has come to a fitting home — not merely to sit on shelves but to be stewarded by an active academic research faculty.”
Papal promotion of Catholic Social Teaching
One of the Catholic Central Verein’s outreach efforts was the publication of books on Catholic social teaching, and a monthly journal, The Social Justice Review. It was initially published in German, as the native tongue across immigrants in the Midwest; an English edition was later added and became the publication’s only language edition post-World War II. Copies were provided to every American bishop and also sent to the Roman Pontiff.
Cross described the magazine as, “the sole orthodox and faithful-to-actual-Catholic [one] in the U.S. While many skewed to the left, this one stayed true to the teachings laid out by Pope Pius XI in his May 1931 encyclical, Quadragesima Anno."
Pius XI’s teaching commemorated the 40th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed capital, labor, and the condition of the working class. It coincided with the spread of the Industrial Revolution across Europe and America. Considered one of the greatest economists who ever lived by the New Oxford Review, German Jesuit Heinrich Pesch, S.J., influenced both the Verein’s publications and Pope Leo XIII’s writings.
According to Cross, Pesch was “a ghost writer” of sorts as his “solidarism” was very influential for both Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XI.
With the election of Pope Leo XIV, interest has been renewed in these social teaching principles and documents, as the Church readies for the new pope's own contribution to this body of doctrine.
All noteworthy achievements of the Verein within the U.S. — whose membership reached 150,000, with chapters in every state — centered around “the promotion of Christian practice,” Cross shared, “specifically helping to effect a Christian reconstruction of society that was based upon principles of the great papal social encyclicals of the 19th century and later.”
Among these are: supporting laws that promoted credit unions (a more fair and balanced approach to banking at the time); establishing workmen’s compensation and promoting fair wages along with employee-owned businesses that benefited families; supporting Catholic schools and procuring legal rights for Catholic school children to use public transportation (a necessity as many of these students came from very poor families and had no access to transportation).
During and after the Second World War, until the 1960s, the Central Verein served as the official agency of the Archdiocese of St. Louis for resettling refugees and displaced persons, in the immediate region and across the U.S. They would also offer interest-free loans in line with distributist ideals.
These efforts were responsible for the resettlement of Cross' maternal grandparents (and their children, including his mother Ada) from the Trieste region of Italy, along the border of then-communist Yugoslavia, in 1955. The Verein kept all those refugee documents, particularly meaningful for Cross' immediate and extended family.
Given this connection, along with his own German ancestry, Cross' father Joseph served as the Verein’s longstanding treasurer.
“The Verein was very influential in rebuilding Europe after the Second World War,” Cross explained, “gathering donations – especially to rebuild Germany.” In the 1950s-60s, their advocacy shifted to include “people of all ethnic backgrounds,” donating millions of dollars to humanitarian and missionary efforts across the Philippines, Central and South America.
“We have stood with the suffering, homeless, and forgotten from the Philippines to Palestine, from war torn Germany to Nicaragua, for 175 years,” he stated.
Continuing in a new way
While Cross values the historic importance and adaptability of the Catholic Verein, he considers that “there was nothing else for it to evolve into …”
Remaining a strong advocate for “the general public to understand real, orthodox Catholic social teaching and practice,” he is pleased to support the founders of St. Joseph the Worker College.
“There is a lot of confusion, especially in today’s political climate, of what social justice actually refers to in the Catholic context,” he said. Some misinterpret distributism as a form of communism, but Cross clarified, “All of the popes have been 100% against Communism … and have actually maintained the ideal of an economics of distributism,” which also strongly cautions as well against capitalism and consumerism.
Catholic social teaching defends private property, along with living wages and businesses where employees have some actual ownership in the company, he affirmed.
Cross also noted the “very similar outlook” of New Polity Magazine, also run by the College founders. As the Verein’s journal ceased publication in 2016 after the last editor died without a succession plan in place, he sees this new publication filling the need for authentic Catholic social teachings to be understood and shared.
“I’m very confident that this mission of the Central Catholic Verein has ended but the mission of the Church continues; and what our mission was will continue in new ways through other organizations.”
