An important part of the work of the Acton Institute is promoting the scholarship of tomorrow. Aside from offering conferences, seminars, and publication, the Acton Institute promotes scholarship monetarily. The Calihan Academic Fellowships, Research Fellowships, and Travel Grants provide monetary assistance to students of special potential, encouraging them to explore the intersection of religious principles with human dignity, the importance of the rule of law, limited government, and religious and economic liberty. Following are some examples of our Calihan...

As a research and educational institution, the Acton Institute has always held that its advancement of a “free and virtuous society” must reach the widest possible audience to be effective. You don't change the world by shutting yourself up in an ivory tower. You may think of Acton's research, publication, munications efforts as a spectrum that, on the one side, starts with serious, well respected academic work and, at the other, reaches into the popular media of mentaries, talk...

For 15 years, the Acton Institute has been reaching out to religious leaders, students, scholars, and business people in highly focused events in the United States and abroad. Now, Acton University will bring all of these groups together in a single “main event” to learn together and share experiences from all over the world. Acton University reaches a large and diverse audience and will be offered to the general public. With more than 40 courses in philosophy, theology, economics,...

The Acton Institute has long had an international presence, monly in the conferences it has hosted around the world. These gatherings include our standard Toward a Free and Virtuous Society conferences, as well as two Catholic Bishops' conferences. Acton scholars also speak regularly at other conferences around the world, from Hungary to Guatemala. But in recent years, Acton has expanded its international efforts, most notably with the founding of an office in Rome. This post has allowed the institute...

Because the Acton Institute deals with issues often at the heart of political debates, some people assume that Acton is a political organization and somehow aligned with a particular agenda or political party. This is simply not the case. Acton is not and does not desire to be affiliated with any political party or candidate or any partisan movement. There are two reasons why the Acton Institute does not lobby for or against specific candidates or legislation. The first...

The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man” (Genesis 2:23). When Adam awoke from his nap and uttered these words about his wife, he offered a view of how God's perfectly formed male-female relationship was meant to look. Only eight verses later, this ideal es to an end when man and woman fall from the perfect plan of God. In...

The Acton Institute is hosting a series of lectures celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II's landmark encyclical. The following is taken from President Aznar's address delivered on May 4, 2006, at the Italian Parliment in Rome. The myth of the perfect society is certainly nothing new. The idea of an earthly paradise organized by superior men –whether they be aristocrats, wise philosophers, or members of a self-appointed proletarian avant-garde –has been an incessant theme...

Europe is a unique cultural and spiritual phenomenon that was formed over the course of centuries and is currently undergoing fundamental changes. Why does the fate of Europe concern us, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church? Because Russia, while possessing a distinctive culture and self-consciousness, is also an integral part of Europe. It is not by chance that Dostoevsky, who like nobody else was conscious of Russia's uniqueness, nevertheless called Europe his second home. In the Russian soul, Europe...

The many works of the Acton Institute bring us constantly into contact with the creative power of human liberty. We are regularly impressed, I think, with the potential for economic growth and dynamism. In this issue of Religion & Liberty, our thoughts turn to situations where that growth and dynamism is most needed: the desperate situations of poverty and hunger that still persist. “To feed the hungry” remains a basic work of mercy, the goal of much charitable activity....

St. Augustine once wrote, “You cannot love what you do not know.” He was making a disarmingly simple point about the first great mandment to love God, wholeheartedly. However, St. Augustine's words also apply to the second mandment – to love our neighbor, unselfishly. The application is especially important now, in our newly globalized world, and Pope Benedict XVI's recent encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, provides a timely framework for seeing how that is so. In the second half of...

Deuteronomy 8:3 He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that not by bread alone does man live, but by every word es forth from the mouth of the Lord (Deuteronomy 8:3). It was never easy to be God's chosen people. As some have noted, God singled out Israel from among the nations to beat into their heads certain truths about...

I remember being a teenager, proudly lacing up a new pair of Nikes as a news story blared on the television. The story reported on the poor children in Asia who crafted my new fashion statement in cruel conditions for mere pennies a day. I won't lie; it stole the luster for me. I was unaware then that there was more to the story than simply poor children in a sweatshop and fancy me in my Nikes. Now that...