A few weeks ago we noted a study on the better quality and efficiency of care provided by religious, and specifically Christian, hospitals. Now es a report that “doctors who hold religious beliefs are far less likely to allow a patient to die than those who have no faith” (HT: Kruse Kronicle). These results are only surprising for those who think religion is a form of escapism from the troubles of this world. Instead, true faith empowers the human person...

I blogged about the Jim Wallis funding controversy here and here. Now Jay Richards, a former Acton fellow, has more at NRO, beginning with a look at Wallis’s “clarification” of his earlier denials: Note that Wallis does not apologize for falsely accusing Marvin Olasky of “lying for a living.” Instead, he blames his own misrepresentation of the truth on the “spirit of the accusation.” The “clarification” of his earlier statement is equally unsatisfying. First, Wallis is still trying to claim...

The Detroit News picked up Anthony Bradley’s Acton Commentary this week, and republished it as “Teachers unions, civil rights groups protect failed schools.” Bradley: Civil-rights groups including the NAACP, the National Urban League, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, recently released a joint statement objecting to the Obama administration’s education reform proposal, which includes the closing of failing schools, increasing use of charter schools, and mon sense moves toward choice and accountability in education. These groups reject Obama’s so-called “extensive reliance on charter...

Acton University faculty member Jeffrey Tucker has aninsightful essay over at , “Why Catholics Don’t Understand Economics.” Throughout the piece, Mr. Tucker employs a distinction between scarce, economic goods, and non-scarce, infinitely distributable, spiritual goods: I have what I think is a new theory about why this situation persists. People who live and work primarily within the Catholic milieu are dealing mainly with goods of an infinite nature. These are goods like salvation, the intercession of saints, prayers of an...

The escalating legal battle over the recent health care legislation has spilled out of the federal judiciary into state governments. An August 14 story from the New York Times reports: Faced with the need to review insurance rates and enforce a panoply of new rights granted to consumers, states are scrambling to make sure they have the necessary legal authority to carry out the responsibilities being placed on them byPresident Obama’s health care law. missioners in about half the states...

In “Recycling Bins Go Big Brother on Cleveland Residents,” writer Ariel Schwartz reported that the city is introducing a $2.5 million “Big Brother-like system next year to make sure residents are recycling.” Chips embedded in recycling carts will keep track of how often residents take the carts to the curb for recycling. If a bin hasn’t been taken to the curb in a long time, city workers will go rummaging through the trash to find recyclables. And if workers find...

Forgive the blunt title of this blog post, but the point needs to be made in no uncertain terms. The Zenit News Agency has interviewed John Medaille, author of Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More, which calls for a direct if brief (more later, perhaps – I have yet to read the book) response from this Catholic defender of the market economy. Whether or not Pope Benedict’s...

I’ve been meaning to write something on the “locavore” phenomenon, but nothing has quite coalesced yet. But in the meantime, in last Fridays’s NYT, Stephen Budiansky does a good job exploding the do-gooderism of the locavore legalists. Here’s a key paragraph: The best way to make the most of these truly precious resources of land, favorable climates and human labor is to grow lettuce, oranges, wheat, peppers, bananas, whatever, in the places where they grow best and with the most...

Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute, will be on the Fox Business network show Freedom Watch with Judge Andrew Napolitano this weekend. Tune in Saturday at 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. EDT, and Sunday at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. EDT. Rev. Sirico will engage in a friendly repartee with fellow guest Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, about freedom of religion. ...

As a follow-up to last week’s popular discussion (thanks to Glenn Reynolds) on prison rape, Justice Fellowship has just released a statement, “Left-Right Coalition Demands Stop to Prison Rape.” The news alert begins, “A broad coalition from the political left and right has called on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to cease any further delay in eliminating prison rape. Calling the high incidence of prison rape ‘a moral outrage,’ Prison Fellowship and supporters from both liberal and conservative organizations unveiled...