Currently, there are forty cases against the Obamacare HHS mandate. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 requires employers to provide, as employee health care, “preventative services” such as abortion and sterilization. John Daniel Davidson, in First Things, says that the president and his administration have grossly misjudged this entire situation. In Davidson’s view, the administration “in their conceit” seemed to think that millions of Americans would simply put aside their deeply held religious and moral convictions and play along with...

Romecontributorto ZENIT, Stefanie DeAngelo, recently interviewed the Acton Institute’s 2012 Novak Award winner, Professor Giovanni Patriarca. During the interview Prof. Patriarca speaks candidly about some of his academic influences, including Michael Novak and Benedict XVI. He also offers his reasons for hope in ing the prolonged global economic crisis. Some Contemporary Reflections: An Itinerary from Novak to Benedict XVI by Stefanie DeAngelo 2012 Novak Award Winner Prof. Giovanni Patriarca ZENIT: You have recently received the Novak Award. What are some...

Today (Dec. 4) memorated an important, though sometimes little-known, saint: St. John of Damascus. Not only is he important to Church history as a theologian, hymnographer, liturgist, and defender of Orthodoxy, but he is also important, I believe, to the history of liberty. In a series of decrees from 726-729, the Roman (Byzantine) emperor Leo III the Isaurian declared that the making and veneration of religious icons, such as the one to the right, be banned as idolatrous and that...

Acton President Rev. Robert Sirico presents the 2012 Novak Award to Prof. Giovanni Patriarca An overflow crowd, which included two current and one former rector of Rome’s pontifical universities, enthusiastically turned out on November 29 to support the winner of the Acton Institute’s Novak Award. Students, professors, journalists, entrepreneurs and politicians alike packed the Aula delle Tesi auditorium at the Pontifical University of Thomas Aquinas to hear Prof. Giovanni Patriarca deliver his lecture “Against Apathy: Reconstruction of a Cultural Identity”....

What is the “fiscal cliff”? The term “fiscal cliff”, which is believed to have originated in Congressional testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, refers to the substantial changes to tax and spending policies that are scheduled to automatically take effect in January 2013. The changes are intended to significantly reduce the federal budget deficit. What are the tax and spending policies that will change? Several major tax provisions are set to expire at year’s end: The 2001/2003 Bush tax...

Can capital markets be moral? At The Veritas Forum at Cambridge University, Rev. Richard Higginson explains how we should rethink our capital system to avoid problems like the financial crisis. His five part plan includes: 1. Rediscovering capital virtues like moderation and prudence, 2. Adopting sound policy like reducing debt and spreading risk, 3. Reviewing the purposes and scrutinizing the practices of banking by a reputable international body, 4. Continuing to invest and give as a sign of hope, and...

Patrick McKinley Brennan, a professor at Villanova University School of Law, has a new paper that considers the place subsidiarity in the tradition of Catholic Social Doctrine: Subsidiarity is often described as a norm calling for the devolution of power or for performing social functions at the lowest possible level. In Catholic social doctrine, it is neither. Subsidiarity is the fixed and immovable ontological principle according to which mon good is to be achieved through a plurality of social forms....

mented last week on the “textbook bubble” (here) and mented in the past on the “higher-ed bubble” and the character of American education more generally (see here, here, and here). To briefly summarize, over the last few decades the quality of higher education has diminished while the cost and the number of people receiving college degrees has increased. The cost is being paid for, in large part, through government subsidized loans. But with the drop in quality and increase in...

Rev. Robert Sirico, author of “Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy,” appears at a Rome press conference for his book. The Catholic News Agency recently interviewed Acton’s president Rev. Robert Sirico during a press conference held last week in Rome for Vatican journalists. The local media were introduced to his new book, “Defending the Free Market: the Moral Case for a Free Economy.” In the CNA article “Fixing economic crisis requires financial and moral truth,...

Earlier this week we noted that Patrick Brennan posted a paper, “Subsidiarity in the Tradition of Catholic Social Doctrine,” which unpacks some of the recent background and implications for the use of the principle in Catholic social thought. As Brennan observes, “Although present in germ from the first Christian century, Catholic social thought began to emerge as a unified body of doctrine in the nineteenth century….” Brennan goes on to highlight the particularly Thomistic roots of the doctrine of subsidiarity,...