Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Video: Justice Scalia on Capitalism, Socialism, and Christian Virtue
Video: Justice Scalia on Capitalism, Socialism, and Christian Virtue
Apr 22, 2025 9:48 PM

Earlier this month, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia gave a lecture at the Lanier Theological Library, in which he explored the values of capitalism and socialism and their relative consistency with Christianity and mon good. While not asserting that either system is inherently “more Christian,” he ment on the extent to which Christian principles are able to participate in each. He states:

While I would not argue that capitalism as an economic system is inherently more Christian than socialism … it does seem to me that capitalism is more dependent on Christianity than socialism is. For in order for capitalism to work – in order for it to produce a good and a stable society – the traditional Christian virtues are essential.

Additional quotes from the lecture are featured in a Houston Chronicle article by Cindy George, which was listed as a PowerLink on the Acton Blog a few weeks ago.

See plete video of Justice Scalia’s lecture below.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
7 quotations: John Lukacs on capitalism, racism, bureaucracy, and faith
John Lukacs, the renowned historian who munist tyranny in his native Hungary in 1946, passed away this morning at the age of 95. Lukacs was born Lukacs Janos Albert on January 31, 1924, to a Roman Catholic father and a Jewish mother and raised in the Catholic faith. After settling in the United States, he taught at Chestnut Hill College for 48 years, chairing the college’s history department for 27 years. He wrote more than 30 books dealing munism, fascism,...
German churches will lose half their members in 40 years: Report
The membership of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches will fall by half in Germany by 2060, experts forecast. Most of that will be due less to Germans’ low birth rate than to Christians actively renouncing their religion. The number of Catholics and Lutherans will drop from 45 million today to 22.7 million in a generation, according to a new missioned by the Catholic German Bishops Conference and the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). The writing has been on the...
The 3 most important things today (so far): Asia Bibi, Royal baby, Hayek birthday
This morning three events took place that deserve the attention of those who support a free and virtuous society: Persecuted Christian Asia Bibi has received asylum in Canada, the royal baby’s name has been revealed, and it is the birthday of one of the greatest economic theorists of our time. 1. Asia Bibi arrives safely in Canada Asia Bibi, the Pakistani convert to Christianity who spent years on death row for “blasphemy,” has arrived safely in Canada to be with...
Is behavioral economics blind to its blindness?
I find some of the work of behavioral economists, especially that of Daniel Kahneman to be very interesting and important. Thinking Fast and Slow is essential reading. His distinctions between what he calls Type I and Type II thinking is very insightful, and the broad critique that human beings don’t always act like rational maximizers is a correct. Jennifer Roback Morse deals with this issue well in her excellent book, Love and Economics. Yet despite many good elements of behavioral...
How we benefit from billionaires
mon claim made by those who focus on economic inequality is that if business people have acquired massive wealth they must have done so at the expense of others. The solution, they claim, would be a tax on wealth that allows could be redistributed to the working poor. A key problem with this line of thinking is that the business rich aren’t as rich as we may assume. The reality, as economist Timothy Terrell explains, is that most business wealth...
Acton Line podcast: Andrew Klavan tackles AOC propaganda film; Rev. Robert Sirico on religious left
On the episode of Acton Line, Andrew Klavan, award winning novelist, screenwriter, and regular host at the Daily Wire, joins the show to talk about the new Netflix documentary, “Knock Down the House.” The new political documentary follows four far left-leaning women during their run for congress in 2018, eventually leading up to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional win. Klavan explains the ideas under girding the movie and why he defines it as propaganda. After that, Acton’s co-founder and president, Rev. Robert...
Catholic ‘anti-liberalism’ – a response to Dan Hugger
My colleague Dan Hugger’s latest post on the PowerBlog titled “The dangers of Catholic anti-liberalism” got me thinking about a subject that has always intrigued me: The relationship between the Catholic Church and liberalism. In my view, there are at least two problems in the argument presented by Hugger in his article and the discussion developed by Korey D. Maas on anti-Catholicism—fully adopted by Hugger. In the first place, there is no precise definition of the nature of liberalism, and...
When the Fed does too much
Note: This is post #122 in a weekly video series on basic economics. If you think through all of the variables that shape a country’s economy, it’s no wonder that monetary policy is difficult, says economist Alex Tabarrok. It should e as no surprise that the Federal Reserve doesn’t always get it right. In fact, sometimes the Fed’s actions have made the economy worse off. Prior to the Great Recession, and in response to the recession of 2001, the Fed...
5 facts about Margaret Thatcher
This past Saturday marked the fortieth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher taking office as the prime minister of the United Kingdom. Thatcher served as PM for nearly a decade, during which time she became, along with Ronald Reagan, one of the West’s greatest champions of free enterprise, munism, and individual liberty. (Ronald Reagan called her the “best man in England” and she called him “the second most important man in my life.”) Here are five facts you should know about the...
Why capital markets matter
Of all the ponents of a market economy, I don’t think that any are as misunderstood — or reviled — as capital markets. They have never been held in high esteem, and the financial crisis of 2008 did enormous damage to their already low reputation. Yes, there has been, is, and will be considerable bad behavior in financial markets. That also happens to be true of all sectors of the economy. I also know that without capital markets, all of...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved