Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
The Real ‘Throwaway’ Culture
The Real ‘Throwaway’ Culture
Mar 18, 2025 2:04 PM

“Pope Francis is famous for his strident denunciations of a “throwaway culture” that ruthlessly discards human beings not considered useful in an economy that ‘kills’,” says Kishore Jayabalan in this week’s Acton Commentary. But has the pope accurately identified the real cause of the problem?

My concerns were only heightened by the secret videos of Planned Parenthood officials blithely discussing buying and selling the body parts of aborted babies. Part of me is nervously awaiting the pope to denounce capitalism for this social evil as well. In fact, there are U.S. federal laws prohibiting profit-making in this type merce and Planned Parenthood itself denies making any money from it. (Even abortionists recognize the evil of profits!) But another part of me questions whether it’s the quest for profits that drives the abortion industry to not only perform but brazenly justify its barbaric practices.

Let me restate the problem this way: Assuming Planned Parenthood is telling the truth that it makes no profit in the buying and selling of fetal body parts, would that make the “crushing” and “crunching” of babies acceptable? Would it be ok to abort babies out of “humanitarian” or passionate” rather than “self-interested” motives? Are government-subsidized abortions somehow less gruesome than private-sector ones?

The full text of the essay can be found here. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
On Call in Culture and Storytelling
Last week we talked about how our memory is important to God using us where we are. Now we talk about another skill that is important to cultivate while being On Call in Culture: Storytelling. Only when we can express what God is doing through us can we truly understand our own experiences. The first step in storytelling is observation and reflection. After observing our spheres and reflecting on what happens we can begin to share with others what we...
ResearchLinks – 08.03.2012
Articles: “Invited Articles: Business as Mission” Journal of Biblical Integration in Business 15, no. 1 (Spring 2012) The most recent issue of JBIB focuses on the subject of hybrid business and features a controversy on the subject of Business as Mission. Margret Edgell, the issue’s guest editor, describes it as follows: “Three invited authors respond to each other from their different disciplinary and theological perspectives. They raise and debate the question: Is Business as Mission a new field with great...
The Faith of a Young Entrepreneur
In 2010 Alexandra Abraham slipped on a wet floor and into a business idea. According to Forbes magazine, U.S. restaurants face an estimated $2 billion in “slip and fall” lawsuits each year. So Abraham, a 23-year-old college student, designed and started manufacturing DripCatch, a plastic tray that snaps tightly on the racks that go inside industrial dishwashers to catch the water from getting on the floor. Abraham tells Resurgence how the experience has grown her faith and shown her how...
Rev. Robert Sirico Interview in ‘The Washington Times’
Brett M. Decker, editorial page editor of The Washington Times, recently interviewed Rev. Robert Sirico, president and co-founder of The Acton Institute, in response to Rev. Sirico’s latest book, Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy. In his answers, Rev. Sirico addresses the market’s moral potential as well as the present state of the nation. Excerpt: Decker: Your new book is about the moral case for a free economy. What is the morality of the marketplace...
Teacher’s Union: We Want to Help You By Suing You
For decades teachers’s unions have been giving teachers—and unions—a bad name. A prime example is the intimidation tactics used by Louisiana Association of Educators (LAE): A Louisiana teachers union is threatening private schools with legal action if they accept money from a new voucher program – and the threat has already forced at least one school to put its participation in the program on hold. The demand was sent a few weeks ago by law firm representing the Louisiana Association...
When Should Christians Refuse to Pay Taxes?
As the federal government es ever more willing to use taxpayer dollars to fund activites that violate the conscience of its citizens, we’re increasingly faced with the question of whether we should refuse to pay those taxes. Theologian R.C. Sproul Jr. says the Christian answer is clear: . . . I can say with confidence that Christians should in fact pay whatever taxes they owe even when that money ends up financing abortions. The Christian who pays such taxes has...
Radio Free Acton with Amity Shlaes
In continuing with the work of highlighting Calvin Coolidge at Acton, Marc Vander Maas and I recently spoke with Amity Shlaes. Shlaes’s biography of the 30th president will be out in early 2013. She is a big fan of the Acton Institute and praised our work saying, “Acton has been all over the Coolidge case.” Shlaes is also interviewed in the Fall 2009 issue of Religion & Liberty. Listen to the podcast below: [audio: Marc and I also recorded an...
The Tortured Logic of the Obamacare Law
The Affordable Care Act, monly known as “Obamacare”, is a strange law from the perspective of economic theories of insurance markets. Still, one can see where its designers were starting from. The individual mandate may be onerous from a liberty standpoint, but it makes sense if you understand that insurance markets are vulnerable to a phenomenon known as the “death spiral.” The idea behind the death spiral is based on the recognition that insurance is a risk management scheme. panies,...
‘An Economic Roadmap to Nowhere’
Ismael Hernandez responds to President Obama’s “You didn’t get there on your own” speech with a piece titled “Obama’s Assault on Entrepreneurship: An Economic Roadmap to Nowhere,” on Crisis Magazine’s website. Hernandez, founder of the Freedom & Virtue Institute and regular Acton lecturer, employs Catholic moral teaching to determine just how much credit the government deserves for an entrepreneur’s successes. The President’s statements, Hernandez reasons, fail to account for the freedom of the individual to make sound economic and moral...
QE: Haven’t We Learned So Much Since 1609?
In response to my post last Thursday on the Fed’s signaling the possibility of more quantitative easing (QE), mentator using the pseudonym “Milton Friedman” wrote, have you checked inflation rates lately? they are at historic lows. if the parade of horribles doesn’t happen, shouldn’t that cause you to reconsider your understanding of the economy? economists have learned quite a few things since 1609… As I responded on that post, I’m not sure what “parade of horribles” he is referring to;...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved