Last week’s spike in gasoline prices hasn’t slowed Nuns on the Bus a whit. The nuns and Network, their parent organization, are squeezing every drop of mileage out of their new-found fame, which has more to do with supporting liberal causes than reflecting church principles of caring for the poor and limiting government’s role in the private sector. Over the weekend, the CBS program 60 Minutes had a sympathetic overview of the supposed Vatican crackdown of the sisters’ activities –...

In 1989, Erol Ricketts, a researcher with the Rockefeller Foundation, found that between 1890 and 1950, blacks had higher marriage rates than whites, according to the U.S. Census. The report, titled “The Origin of Black Female-Headed Families,” published in the Spring/Summer issue of Focus(32-37), provides an overview that highlights an important question. Ricketts observes that between 1960 and 1985, female-headed families grew from 20.6 to 43.7 percent of all black pared to growth from 8.4 to 12 percent for white...

According to a new study by the Urban Institute, “when es to saving, owning a home, paring down debt, and growing a retirement nest egg, those under age 40 have stagnated as their parents’ generation accumulated.” Average household net worth, even after the ripples of “the Great Recession,” nearly doubled from 1983 to 2010, but not for those born after GenXers or Millennials (those born after 1970). In fact, the average inflation-adjusted wealth in 2010 for young adults was 7...

Joseph Sunde’s fine post today on vocation examines the dynamic between work and toil, the former corresponding to God’s creational ordinance and the latter referring to the corruption of that ordinance in light of the Fall into sin. Read the whole thing. Joseph employs a distinction between “needs-based” work and something else, something privileged, a first-world kind of “fulfilling” work. The point DeKoster makes is right on target; we need to, in Bonhoeffer’s words, break through from the “it” of...

The morticians wanted the monks shut down—or even thrown in jail—for the crime the Benedictines mitting. Until 2005, the monks of St. Joseph Abbey in St. Benedict, Louisiana had relied on harvesting timber for e. But when Hurricane Katrina destroyed their pine forest they had to find new sources of revenue to fund the 124-year-old abbey. For over 100 years, the monks had been making simple, handcrafted, monastic caskets so they decided to try to sell them to the public....

Increasingly, governments and private parties are arguing that there is only one appropriate view of the relationship between religion and money-making: Exercising religion is fundamentally patible with earning profits. This claim has been presented recently by state governments and private parties in litigation over pharmacy rights of conscience, and by state governments enacting conscience clauses with regard to recognizing same-sex marriages (non-profits are sometimes protected, but never profit-makers). The most prominent and developed form of the argument has been made...

The Montreal Economic Institute produces a “Free Market Series” of videos interviewing experts such as Michael Fairbanks and Steve Forbes. This video highlights the Rev. Robert Sirico discussing the role of free markets in economics, and the false sense of utopia offered by other economic systems. “People are beginning to understand that we can’t create a utopia just by wishing it into existence, that we can’t abolish the right to private property, that if we do we create economic disaster.”...

Note: We’ve discovered an issue with different phone resolutions and app patibility. This includes the Lumia 920 and HTC 8X phone models. This error will be corrected soon and the post will be updated. Currently, the app works on phones with the same resolution as the Lumia 822 (from Verizon). We’ve launched a new app for phones that allows individuals using Windows Phones to access new content from Acton Institute. This app joins our current lineup of Apple and Android...

John Mackey, the well-known CEO of Whole Foods, sat down for an interview with Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie this week and I found a few quotes from their exchange particularly interesting. You can watch the full interview here: John Mackey Video When asked what the original “higher purposes” of his business were when Whole Foods began, Mackey responded: “Sell healthy food to people. Make a living for ourselves. Have fun. But our purposes have evolved over time…I would say one...

Over at the Hang Together blog, Greg Forster takes a long look at the images of the gospel as “pearl” and “leaven” and the implications for Christian engagement and creation of culture, particularly within the context of the Great Commission and the Cultural Mandate: The main difficulty we seem to have in discussing Christian cultural activity is the strain between two anxieties. These anxieties create unnecessary divisions between brothers, because those who are more worried about making sure the gospel...