Pope John Paul II’s encyclical, Centesimus Annus, is a marvelous defense of capitalism and attack on socialism in its feudal, totalitarian, and welfare state forms. One is particularly impressed by Pope John Paul’s argument that the burdens that the welfare state places on the poor are immoral. Accordingly, this teaching does more than simply return the Catholic church to the position originally expressed by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum, whose one-hundredth anniversary it celebrates. In Rerum Novarum, Pope...

If we accept the fact that economics is a human discipline designed, in its original sense, to provide for the acquisition and management of household goods, we can perhaps admit that economics is not a wholly “autonomous” discipline that has no relation to other considerations about human life. The fact that economies are nation- and world-wide, themselves highly mathematicized, does not change the principle behind this observation. Aristotle was quite sure that a household, as well as the polis,...

Sixteen years ago, Bill married Jennifer, his high school sweetheart, in a joyful ceremony at which I officiated. A few months ago, they stunned me with the news of their divorce plans. They had attempted to reconcile, but were mitted to ending the marriage. They informed me that since they were both rational people who respected one another, they were determined to divorce amicably. Right now, however, Bill and Jennifer are embroiled in bitter divorce litigation. Legal fees have...

How would you like half a million dollars? There are only two conditions for you to receive it. The first is that you give it all away to the poor. That is disappointing, but on reflection still attractive: Quite nice to be able to give away $500,000 to those in need. The second condition is that you give it away efficiently. This means you must be able to show it went to those most in need, that they did...

Among its many features, religion is primarily the worship of God. If the desire to worship God is genuine, then there naturally will arise a suitable code of morality as man’s expression in action of what is true and good. This is due to man’s innate need to satisfy God, that is, to do what is pleasing in his sight. By nature, man fears God; a fear born out of ignorance of God. Unless his fear overwhelms him in...

In April, a distinguished assembly of some forty Catholic officials and lay people met in Mexico City with several experts on demographic issues. There they were to discuss substance and strategy related to the United Nations’ 1994 decennial conference on population in Cairo. It is widely expected that the Cairo conference will once again call for large scale population control programs and planned development. In the vanguard of this push is the environmental movement and groups such as the...

We are everywhere reminded that liberty is the “delicate fruit of a mature civilization,” as Lord Acton wrote. Thus we find that freedom, responsibility, and even manners, seem to wax and wane together. The Founders, schooled in ancient and modern history, intended to keep the state in its proper sphere, to prevent it from invading domains suited to the church, family, and individual. But they also knew their institutional structure was not sufficient to sustain a free society. In...

David Brower is, by wide agreement, the most influential environmentalist of the past 50 years. In the 1950s and 1960s he pioneered many of the tactics later used by environmentalists to stop the construction of dams, roads, shopping centers, and all manner of projects all over the United States. He was the executive director of the Sierra Club for seventeen years, and later founded another environmental organization, Friends of the Earth. Brower was also a leading figure in a...

Of the various influences that shaped Lord Acton’s distinctive understanding of history, none was as decisive as his education. His intellectual formation was in fact unique, the product of social position, conditions within English and Continental Catholicism, revolutionary ideas in the Germanic world pertaining to the study and methods of history, and the epic debate in North America over the nature and future of the Union of the States. All of these developments converged in Acton’s life during the...

When Lord Acton set out in the late nineteenth century to write prehensive history of liberty, he planned to chronicle its growth from antiquity. It is a mentary on this century that an updating of his work would require the last chapter to chronicle liberty’s decline. There is afoot in the land a reassertion of what might be called the principle of fragmentation. This is seen in the partmentalization of personal life–the “either/or” mentality that separates one’s work from...

In 1819, Benjamin Constant argued that the apparently unitary concept of liberty in actuality described two sharply distinct understandings: one variant which was most “dear to the ancient peoples,” and the second which was “especially precious to the modern nations.” He explained that what most differentiated these two understandings of liberty was the status awarded to the individual. Indeed, ancient political liberty was patible with plete subjection of the individual to the authority of munity.” From this perspective, “no...

One casualty during the heyday of secularism was the historic teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. A once virtually-universal voice, which for centuries had been the dominant Christian voice on political matters in many nations, was shunned by secular and atheistic political models. Besides secularism, there has also been a virtual symbiosis of the Protestant Reformation and the spread of western democracies; thus in much of the western world, Roman Catholic political theology frequently remained unknown. Yet, there is...