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What Pope Francis Misses About the Morality of Capitalism

“Defending capitalism on practical grounds is easy,” writes economist Donald Boudreaux at the Mercatus Center. “It is history’s greatest force for raising the living standards of the masses.” What’s more difficult, it seems, is understanding its moral logic, spiritual implications, and which of each is or isn’t inherent to private ownership and economic exchange. At what level, for instance, is freely buying a gallon of milk at a freely agreed-to price from a freely employed worker at an independent grocery...

Audio: Sam Gregg And Al Kresta On The Papal Visit

The pontificate of Pope Francis has inspired a great deal of discussion and analysis from the very beginning, and the discussion has only grown with the releases of Evangelii Gaudium and Laudeto Si’, his pastoral letter and first encyclical, respectively. Often that discussion es heated, and even angry, as various political or social factions attempt to claim Pope Francis as an advocate for their cause. From time to time it’s helpful to step back and have a calm, rational discussion...

As Environment Rebounds, Progressives Light A Candle

The Vatican Information Service reported on last week’s address by Pope Francis to the collected environment ministers of the European Union. In his remarks, the Pope reiterated the environmental concerns expressed in his encyclical, Laudato Si: This morning, before the Wednesday general audience, the Pope received the environment ministers of the European Union who will soon face two important events: the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and the COP 21 in Paris. Francis remarked that their mission is increasingly...

A Drug Price Jumped 5,000 Percent Overnight. Blame the Government, Not the Free Market

In the early 1950s, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Gertrude Elion developed the drug Daraprim bat malaria. Daraprim is now also used to fight toxoplasmosis, which infects people whose immune systems have been weakened by AIDS, chemotherapy and pregnancy. It’s such an important drug that it’s on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines, among the most important medications needed in a basic health system. A single pill used to sell for $1, but the price was raised around 2010...

Video: Kishore Jayabalan On Pope Francis’ Address To Congress – France 24

As the Pope’s address to the US Congress drew to a close, France 24 Television turned to Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Istituto Acton in Rome, for a reaction to Francis’ message. You can view his analysis below. ...

20 Key Quotes from Pope Francis’s Address to Congress

This morning Pope Francis became the first pontiff in history to give an address the United States Congress. In his 30 minutes speech, which he delivered in English, the pope touched on wide range of issues, from the economics to the environment toglobal poverty. Here are twenty key quotes from that address (quotes bined by topic and not necessarily presented in the order given in the pope’s speech): The Role of Law and Politics [Speaking about Congress] You are called...

Video: Sirico Comments On Pope’s Arrival On Bloomberg TV

Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico is in Washington, D.C. to participate in the papal visit to the US; tomorrow he will be attending the Pope’s address to the US Congress. In the meantime, he’s being called upon ment on Pope Francis’ trip and the challenges the Pope will offer to both sides of the political debate in the United States. Below, you can view Sirico’sinterview on Bloomberg TV from this morning. And stay tuned to the PowerBlog for more...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

Adam Smith and the Poor

Adam Smith did not seem to think that riches were requisite to happiness: “the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments). But he did not mend beggary. The beggar here is not any beggar, but Diogenes the Cynic, who asked of Alexander the Great only to step back so as not to cast a shadow upon Diogenes as he reclined alongside the highway....

Jul 28, 2026

How Dispensationalism Got Left Behind

Whether we like it or not, Americans, in one way or another, have all been indelibly shaped by dispensationalism. Such is the subtext of Daniel Hummel’s provocative telling of the rise and fall of dispensationalism in America. In a little less than 350 pages, Hummel traces how a relatively insignificant Irishman from the Plymouth Brethren, John Nelson Darby, prompted the proliferation of dispensational theology, especially its eschatology, or theology of the end times, among our ecclesiastical, cultural, and political...

Jul 28, 2026

Spurgeon and the Poverty-Fighting Church

Religion & Liberty: Volume 33, Number 4 Spurgeon and the Poverty-Fighting Church by Christopher Parr • October 30, 2023 Portrait of Charles Spurgeon by Alexander Melville (1885) Charles Spurgeon was a young, zealous 15-year-old boy when he came to faith in Christ. A letter to his mother at the time captures the enthusiasm of his newfound Christian faith: “Oh, how I wish that I could do something for Christ.” God granted that wish, as Spurgeon would e “the prince of...

Jul 28, 2026

Creating an Economy of Inclusion

The poor have been the main subject of concern in the whole tradition of Catholic Social Teaching. The Catholic Church talks often about a “preferential option for the poor.” In recent years, many of the Church’s social teaching documents have been particularly focused on the needs of the poorest people in the world’s poorest countries. The first major analysis of this topic could be said to have been in the papal encyclical Populorum Progressio, published in 1967 by Pope...

Jul 28, 2026

Lord Jonathan Sacks: The West’s Rabbi

In October 1798, the president of the United States wrote to officers of the Massachusetts militia, acknowledging a limitation of federal rule. “We have no government,” John Adams wrote, “armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, and revenge or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.” The nation that Adams had helped to found would require the parts of the body...

Jul 28, 2026

Conversation Starters with … Anne Bradley

Anne Bradley is an Acton affiliate scholar, the vice president of academic affairs at The Fund for American Studies, and professor of economics at The Institute of World Politics. There’s much talk about mon good capitalism” these days, especially from the New Right. Is this long overdue, that a hyper-individualism be beaten back, or is it merely cover for increasing state control of the economy? Let me begin by saying that I hate “capitalism with adjectives” in general. This...

Jul 28, 2026

Jesus and Class Warfare

Plenty of Marxists have turned to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Memorable examples include the works of F.D. Maurice and Zhu Weizhi’s Jesus the Proletarian. After criticizing how so many translations of the New Testament soften Jesus’ teachings regarding material possessions, greed, and wealth, Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has gone so far to ask, “Are Christians supposed to be Communists?” In the Huffington Post, Dan Arel has even claimed that “Jesus was clearly a Marxist,...

Jul 28, 2026

Mistaken About Poverty

Perhaps it is because America is the land of liberty and opportunity that debates about poverty are especially intense in the United States. Americans and would-be Americans have long been told that if they work hard enough and persevere they can achieve their dreams. For many people, the mere existence of poverty—absolute or relative—raises doubts about that promise and the American experiment more generally. Is it true that America suffers more poverty than any other advanced democracy in the...

Jul 28, 2026

Up from the Liberal Founding

During the 20th century, scholars of the American founding generally believed that it was liberal. Specifically, they saw the founding as rooted in the political thought of 17th-century English philosopher John Locke. In addition, they saw Locke as a primarily secular thinker, one who sought to isolate the role of religion from political considerations except when necessary to prop up the various assumptions he made for natural rights. These included a divine creator responsible for a rational world for...

Jul 28, 2026

C.S. Lewis and the Apocalypse of Gender

From very nearly the beginning, Christianity has wrestled with the question of the body. Heretics from gnostics to docetists devalued physical reality and the body, while orthodox Christianity insisted that the physical world offers us true signs pointing to God. This quarrel persists today, and one form it takes is the general confusion among Christians and non-Christians alike about gender. Is gender an abstracted idea? Is it reducible to biological characteristics? Is it a set of behaviors determined by...

Jul 28, 2026