“We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance.” -Hans Urs von Balthasar Last night, I...

Note: This is the latest entry in the Acton blog series, “What Christians Should Know About Economics.” For other entries inthe series seethis post. The Term: Money What it Means: In economics, money is a broad term that refers to any financial instrument that can fulfill the functions of money (more on that in a moment). There are three basic ways to exchange goods and services: gifting (e.g., I give you a banana, expecting nothing in return); barter (e.g.,...

File under allegory: An Austin, Texas, resident whose property tax bill has her “at the breaking point.” As noted by Katherine Mary Ham at HotAir, the resident in question, Gretchen Gardner, deems the $8,500 bill for which she’s on the hook a wee tad cumbersome. “It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” she said. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now...

I had a chance to talk with Michelle Boorstein yesterday about David Brat and a bit of his work that I’ve been able to e familiar with over the past few days. She included some of ments in this piece for the Washington Post, “David Brat’s victory is part of broader rise of religion in economics.” I stressed that Brat’s research program, which in many ways emphasizes the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, has at least two basic features. First,...

While Michelle Obama grows vegetables in the White House garden, her husband’s administration grows every government program it can. At The Federalist, Sean Davis gives 12 reasons why Medicaid should not be expanded. Since Medicaid is a health care program, we should see some improvements in American’s health, right? Not so, and this is Davis’ first reason why we should not consider expanding this program. According to an extensive, randomized study of people who enrolled in Oregon’s 2008 Medicaid lottery,...

I met Naomi Schaefer, not yet Riley, while she was editor of “In Character” and just about to have her first book “God on the Quad” published. I invited her to be a speaker at a Catholic business conference that I was involved with in southern California. The following week she married Jason Riley. The writing career continues to produce good stuff. And there are three kids now and a house in the burbs. Good stuff all around. Her latest...

Meriam Ibrahim is living under a death sentence. Shackled in a Sudanese prison, with her toddler son and newborn daughter with her, Ibrahim will likely be executed. Her crime: being Christian. A Sudanese high court delivered the sentence when Ibrahim refused to denounce her Christian faith. This may seem like an aberration, an isolated throwback to more barbaric times, but according to Pew Research, one-quarter of the world’s countries have blasphemy and apostasy laws. A new analysis by the Pew...

The most recent issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality, vol. 17, no. 1, has been published online at our website (here). This issue features an array of scholarship on the foundations and fabric of free and virtuous societies, ranging from David VanDrunen’s examination of the market economy and Christian ethics, offering an unique synthesis between pro- and anticapitalist perspectives, to David Urban’s examination of liberty and virtuous self-government in the works of the seventeenth-century English poet John Milton....

Next week at Acton University I am giving a lecture titled, “Calvin Coolidge and his Foundational Views on Government.” One of the great things about studying Coolidge is that he is extremely accessible. Coolidge noted during his political career that practicing law was valuable for munication skills that promote brevity and clarity in speech. The Coolidge lecture at Acton University will attempt to do likewise. He’s a president that probably would have little trouble with the 140 character limit on...

Acton Institute President and co-founder, Rev. Robert Sirico was recently interviewed on both Bloomberg TV as well as Fox & Friends’ Varney & Co. Sirico spoke with Trish Regan on Bloomberg’s “Street Smart” about financial reform in the Vatican: On Fox, Sirico discussed millennials, Cardinal ments on the free market and the Virginia primary: ...