While we await Pope Benedict’s first social encyclical, it has been interesting to note what he has been saying on globalization and other socio-economic issues affecting the world today. None of these amounts to a magisterial statement but there are nonetheless clues to his social thought. So that makes his address to the Centesimus Annus pro Pontifice Foundation noteworthy. The Pope spoke about the current state of globalization, reminding the audience that the aim of economic development must serve the...

Is this supposed to be capitalism? Geoff Colvin writes that a motivating factor in the recent crash in corporate profits, as well as the sharp decline in home values, was the phenomenon that “people began to believe that the more they borrowed, the better off they would be. Their thinking went like this: With the cost of capital so low and asset prices rising steadily, risk was evaporating.” The precipitating cause of the downturn was that consumers “began to live...

The Archbishop of York Dr. John Sentamu has some ments passion and consumerism in this BBC article. The Church of England leader is fearful that religious charity passion is being crowded out and under utilized. “Human rights without the safeguarding of a God-reference tends to set up rights which trump others’ rights when the mood music changes,” he says. The Archbishop also criticized calls for removal of religion from the public square, saying it would usher in rampant consumerism. You...

In an interview promoting his recent book Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, D. Michael Lindsay, describes what he sees to be the intellectual sources of evangelicalism: And the interesting thing is that the Presbyterian tradition, the Reformed tradition, has provided some of the intellectual gravitas for evangelical ascendancy. And it’s being promulgated in lots of creative ways so that you have the idea of Kuyper or a mission of cultural engagement is being...

A good hump day timewaster: APM’s Budget Hero. Try to achieve the national security, efficient government, and economic stimulus badges all at the same time. I couldn’t on my first try, although I admit I was leaning much more heavily on the “efficient government” side of the ledger. Plus there were all the built-in biases to deal with… ...

Dr. Arthur C. Brooks spoke about “happiness” at an Acton Lecture Series event last week. Dr. Brooks, a professor of Business and Government Policy at Syracuse University and a visiting scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, presented evidence which suggests that religion is the greatest factor in general human happiness in the United States. Religion, argues Dr. Brooks, is essential to human flourishing in the United States and public secularism should be strongly guarded against by everyone – religious or...

On March 29, Carl Anderson’s A Civilization of Love (HarperOne, 2008) first appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list as one of hottest-selling books in America among the “Hard Cover Advice” category. Since then the author has been on an energetic European and American tour to promote his book. In just 200 pages, Anderson writes convincingly to elaborate a treatise to dispel dominant secular ideologies whose ethical frameworks falsely aim at human fulfillment and forming good and just...

International aid groups have criticized the EU and many of its member states for falling behind their promises to step up foreign aid to 0.5 per cent of GDP by 2010 and 0.7 per cent by 2015. On the one hand, these groups are right to expose the accounting tricks governments use in order to promote themselves as saviors of Africa. On the other hand, the aid groups should consider very carefully whether their focus on state aid is really...

Here’s the key assumption in Michael Gerson’s piece from last week, “The Libertarian Jesus”: passion cannot replace Medicaid or provide AIDS drugs to millions of people in Africa for the rest of their lives. In these cases, a role for government is necessary passionate — the expression of mitments to the general welfare and the value of every human life. passion certainly could do this, and much more. Private giving generally dwarfs government programs in both real dollars and effectiveness....

Sometime Acton publications contributor and adjunct scholar Thomas Sieger Derr posts on the First Things blog under the title, “The End of the Global Warming Scare?” Derr identifies a trend that has not been ignored on this blog: increasingly vocal and widespread skepticism toward at least the most dire predictions emanating from the climate change disaster crowd. I would add to Derr’s observations that consternation over oil prices is likely to encourage reluctance to implement any costly programs that have...