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Samuel Gregg on the Pope’s problematic view of Venezuela

In a new article for theWSJ, writer William McGurnwrites that while Pope Francis and the Vatican have stubbornly resisted speaking out against Venezuela’s regime, a recent uprising in Venezuela pushed the Vatican to finally admit “profound concern.” When the Pope and the Vatican criticize America however, ments seem much more incendiary. To explain the Pope’s attitude of inattention so far given to Venezuela’s regime, McGurn quotes Acton Institute’s Director of Research, Samuel Gregg:“Venezuela’s crisis doesn’t fit into Pope Francis’s standard...

What old age teaches us about Christian vocation

We live in a society that is prone to an increasingly utilitarian and consumeristic way of thinking, a mindset that can quickly pollute our imaginations when es to work, vocation, and economics. For some, vocation and work are primarily about self-interest and status, a mechanism for gaining power, influence, and wealth that may, in turn, lead to other mutual value. Yet this is nowhere near the beginning or end of our role as Christians within the economic order. As human...

Entry, exit, and supply curves: Increasing Costs

Note: This is post #44 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. As industry’s output increases, what happens to costs? Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution University look at three options: an increasing cost industry, a constant cost industry, and a decreasing cost industry. (If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d mend watching them at 1.5 to 2 times the speed. You can adjust the speed at which the video plays by clicking on “Settings” (the...

How did business shape Jesus’s life?

“What life experiences would best prepare Jesus for his later public ministry,” ask Klaus Issler, “for his distinctive divine-human role as Messiah and Savior of the world?” We might think being born into a priest’s family would provide an excellent heritage for the Messiah, which was the life situation for Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptizer (Luke 1:5–17). Days could be devoted to studying Scripture, prayer and daily access to the temple precincts. Yet Jesus came into a layperson’s family, devoting...

Classical high school students say this attribute defines the West

Josh Herring teaches history at a secular, classical academy – but as with all teachers, sometimes he learns valuable lessons from his students. As high school students at theThales Academyprogress from studying ancient cultures to modernity, they invariably tell him they are struck by one principle that sets the Judeo-Christian West apart from previous civilizations. In a new essay for Religion & Liberty Transatlantic, Herringwrites: In ninth and tenth grades, students study the ancient and classical world. They track the...

An invitation to an encounter

It was with great interest that I have been following exchanges related to the now well-discussed article that appeared in the Vatican associated journal La Civilta` Cattolica several weeks ago. Written by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, SJ and Rev. Marcel Figueroa, a Presbyterian minister, the former being the editor of La Civilta` Cattolica while the latter is the editor of the Argentine edition of the Holy See’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. In their essay, they outline in vigorous terms their concern...

Solving for inefficiencies: Why a law firm is hiring social workers

Growing up on the east side of Michigan, I still remember the jingle for the law offices of Sam Bernstein. How could I not? mercials were everywhere and so were the faces of him and, later on, his children who joined the law firm. Turn on the TV or radio and you will quickly encounter a similar sort mercial for a law firm in your area. Search the web and you will find dozens of local firms. petition is fierce:...

RELIGION & LIBERTY

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...

Jan 15, 2025

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...

Jan 15, 2025

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...

Jan 15, 2025

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....

Jan 15, 2025

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...

Jan 15, 2025

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...

Jan 15, 2025

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...

Jan 15, 2025

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,...

Jan 15, 2025

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...

Jan 15, 2025

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...

Jan 15, 2025