Dominating the Vatican news cycle over the past week was a controversial statement made by the Chancellor of the Vatican’s Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences. In a Spanish interview, it was the Argentine BishopMarcelo Sánchez Sorondowho said upon returning to Rome from Beijing: “Right now, those who are the best at implementing the [Catholic] Church’s social doctrine are the Chinese.” Just to be clear: Bishop Sánchez was not inferring that the Chinese Catholic Church or Chinese Catholic faithful were...

“Usury humiliates and kills,” Pope Francis recently told the John Paul II Anti-Usury Non Profit Association in Italy. “Usury is a grave sin. It kills life, stomps on human dignity, promotes corruption, and sets up obstacles to mon good.” Catholic social teaching condemns usury, yet many would be at a loss to define the term. Distinguishing it from charging interest on a loan often devolves into the vaguest generalities. Philip Booth – a professor of finance, public policy, and ethics...

Given the breakneck pace of improvements in automation and artificial intelligence, fears about job loss and human obsolescence are taking increasing space in the cultural imagination. The question looms: What is the future of human work in a technological age? In A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and the Future of Work, a new collection of essays from AEI’s Values and Capitalism project, four academics explore those concerns from a Christian perspective.“Will job e in new sectors that we cannot...

Earlier today, President Trump released his new $200 billion infrastructure plan. Here is what should know about the 53-page legislative outline: What is infrastructure? TheFederal government has defined infrastructureas the framework of interdependent networks and prising identifiable industries, institutions (including people and procedures), and distribution capabilities that provide a reliable flow of products and services essential to the defense and economic security of the United States, the smooth functioning of governments at all levels, and society as a whole. While...

Yesterday, President Trump released his fiscal year 2019 budget plan. The president’s annual budget request tells Congress how much money the president thinks the Federal government should spend on public needs and programs; tells Congress how much money the president thinks the government should take in through taxes and other sources of revenue; and tells Congress how large a deficit or surplus would result from the president’s proposal. Here are seven figures from the proposal you should know: 1. Overall...

Christian life relies on faith, not on sight. But it is a serendipity when social science bears out its teachings about spiritual and religious freedom – and it is particularly delicious when those findings are featured on NPR. “The world’s wealthiest and most individualistic countries also happen to be some of the most altruistic,” wrote Georgetown University’s Abigail March on the news service’s website. A 2017 study (which relies, in part, on the work of Angus Deaton) has found “dramatic...

“This is where the church needs to be: going to every part of the world of mere affluence and turning it into a vineyard.” –Andy Crouch In a recent essayinThe Atlantic, William Deresiewiczexpressed concern that the rise of “creative entrepreneurship” would mean “the end of art as we know it,” fearing that capitalism’s expansion of creative empowerment would mean “the removal of the last vestiges of protection and mediation” for higher ideals of beauty and truth.The risks are real. But...

The team the worked on the original puter claimed that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had a “reality-distortion field.” As Andy Hertzfeld explains, the “reality distortion field was a confounding melange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.” Some countries have this same ability that Jobs had. The Soviet Union, for example, used to be able to convince American leftists that Russia was ing a utopia rather...

“Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese,”said Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. He contrasted China, which has a “positive national conscience,” favorably with U.S. President Donald Trump, whom he believes is overly influenced by “liberal [read: free market] thought.” One could quibble with this description of President Trump. However, China violates the most fundamental pillars of Catholic social doctrine: 1. Denying the freedom...

It isn’t news that a large number of millennials gravitate towards socialism. Older generations who have lived in the shadow of socialism and similar ideological regimes however, may wonder why. Why do those who have experienced the benefits of capitalism wish to live under the kind of governments that slaughtered millions in the previous century? One reason young people support socialism is that they desire justice, says Acton Institute Research Fellow Michael Matheson Miller. “Young people rightly feel frustration with...