Today, Dr. Samuel Gregg of the Acton Institute delivered a lecture entitled “Why Love Matters: Understanding Pope Benedict XVI’s First Encyclical, Deus Caritas Est.” The address explored Pope Benedict’s first encyclical – the subject of which came as a surprise to many – and delved into the background of the pope’s encyclical on Christian love, outlining its implications for the Church’s social teaching and its engagement with the world. If you weren’t able to attend the lecture in person, you...

Regular readers may have already inferred that I am fascinated by demographics. So I enjoyed this piece at by Arthur C. Brooks, who uses survey data to show that conservatives have more babies than liberals. He presses the statistics, moreover, into the service of demonstrating that the trend bodes ill for Democratic Party political success. pletely seriously, there are problems with the analysis—for example, what “liberal” and “conservative” mean with respect both to survey answers and to politics—but taken light-heartedly,...

Fox News broadcast a one hour special the other day titled: “The Purpose Driven Life: Can Rick Warren Save the World?” Accidentally, while channel surfing from the Red Sox vs. Yankees baseball game on ESPN to various news channels, I got in on the opening segment of the Warren special and was hooked for the whole. Much of the Rick Warren story is widely known but some things came together in this brisk, but largely focused, video presentation. My admiration...

Anthony Bradley, a research fellow for the Acton Institute, looks back on the effects of the welfare reform of 1996. Many people criticized this legislation as it was being passed and predicted that the result would be increased poverty. However, the results of the legislation have been overwhelmingly positive. Poverty, especially amongst single mothers, has declined significantly. Employment among people formerly claiming welfare has increased dramatically. The number of welfare cases has dropped from 4.3 to 1.89 million — that’s...

The editors of PC World magazine have done a little survey of how users around the world access the Internet, based on the responses of over 60 worldwide publications that “either carry the PC World name or are associated with us in some way.” You can check out the piece here. Here’s a brief summary of some of the interesting findings: Our colleagues report that many countries are substantially ahead of the United States in many respects. For example, in...

As I’ve written before, you don’t need to be a climate change convert to believe that nuclear power represents a very attractive alternative to nonrenewable fossil fuels. In this lengthy piece in Cosmos magazine, Tim Dean examines the possibility of nuclear reactors based on thorium rather than uranium. Regardless of your position on climate change, and Dean certainly makes it a key point in his article, the essential reality is that “fossil fuels won’t last forever. Current predictions are that...

The fable “The Blind Men and the Elephant” offers great insight about how Americans seem to perceive how charity and public welfare is done. Remember that depending on his placement around the elephant, each blind man had a different perspective, i.e., the guy on the tail had a much different perspective than the one grabbing the elephant’s trunk. We get a lot of contradictory messages in the media. People are giving more to charity than ever before or charities can’t...

The secularized West is experiencing a growing disaffection with both militant atheism and traditional Christian faith. The Vatican recently addressed this issue in a study published by the Pontifical Council for Culture. It is more than interesting to me to see how this document begins to address this problem. It suggests that any effective pastoral strategy must begin with seeing “the importance of witnessing the beauty of being a person loved by God.” This document, titled “The Christian Faith at...

The Indiana Youth Institute will present the workshop “Raising Resources for Faith-Based Youth-Serving Organizations” from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sept. 6 at the League for the Blind and Disabled, 5821 S. Anthony Blvd., Fort Wayne, IN 46816. The workshop will feature Karen Woods, director of the Center for Effective Compassion, which is a part of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. Cost of the program is $20; to apply for the session, call 1-800-343-7060 or...

Here’s a supply-side economics lesson that’s going to be learned the hard way by some folks up in Alaska. Away the "Ocean Rangers!” Alaska voters Aug. 22 were poised to approve an initiative that imposes a series of new taxes and environmental regulations on the cruise ships that bring about 1 million passengers a year to the state. With 87 percent of Alaska precincts reporting, the initiative was passing by a margin of 52.4 percent to 47.6 percent, according to...

In 1936 Congress passed the Aid to Dependent Children Act to help widows stay home and raise their children. From 147,000 families on welfare in 1936 the number rose to five million by the 1994, the peak year. Ten years ago today, August 26, President Clinton signed into law the Welfare Reform Act. Last year the number of families receiving welfare had declined to 1.9 million. Contrary to the cries against the bill in 1996, which were numerous, the reform...

Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president of the Acton Institute, will address “Capitalism and the Common Good: The Ten Pillars of the Moral Economy” on September 14, 2006, at The University Club of Chicago. Join Rev. Sirico as he examines ten features of market economy that often are viewed as disruptive, but in actuality are positive forces in forming the cultural, moral and behavior traits most often associated with virtue, responsibility, and good society. Reserve your spot here today. ...