In medieval Europe merchants would often writeDeus enim et proficuum (“For God and Profit”) in the upper corners of their accounting ledgersorA nome di Dio e guadangnio (“In the Name of God and Profit”) on partnership contracts. These words reflected their authors’ conviction that banking and finance were economically useful endeavors,saysSamuel Greggin this week’s Acton Commentary. Luis Molina and the many other Christians who explored these areas throughout history were not searching for greater marketplace effi­ciencies. Their concern was moral....

On its website, Trinity Health trumpets its shareholder activism. Based in Livonia, Mich., the Catholic health care provider boasts operations in 21 states, which includes 90 hospitals and 120 long-term care facilities. For this last, Trinity should be lauded. For the first, however, your writer is left shaking his head. Among Trinity’s list of five shareholder advocacy priorities, two stand out: • uphold the dignity of the human person. • enable access to health care. In other words, issues any...

New articles from the indefatigable Samuel Gregg, research director of the Acton Insitute: Amoris Laetitia: Another Nail in the “Overpopulation” Coffin, The Catholic World Report Here the pope signals his awareness of the efforts of various organizations—the UN, the World Bank, the IMF, the EU, particular US administrations—to push anti-natalist policies upon developing nations. A Revolutionary Pope for Revolutionary Times, Crisis Magazine Between 1878 and 1903, Leo issued an astonishing 85 encyclicals. Many dealt squarely with the political, social, and...

In an earlier post pared the political economy of superheroes in the DC and Marvel universes. And today I have a piece up at The Stream examining the figure of Lex Luthor, the crony capitalist villain featured in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. As I write in that piece, Luthor is certainly more than a crony capitalist, but he is not less than one, and it is this corruption of democratic capitalism that serves as a backdrop for his...

Samuel GreggOn Monday evening, Acton Institute Director of Research Samuel Gregg joined host Sheila Liaugminas on Relevant Radio’s A Closer Look to examine Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg address as we approach the tenth anniversary of its delivery. Greggemphasizes the fact that our understanding of who God is and what his nature is has important implications for how we understand human liberty and rationality, and argues that as western nations have gradually abandoned the Christian religious principles that formerly undergirded their...

Pope Francis’s recently released apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitiahas received considerable attention because of the issue of divorce munion. But the 60,000+ word document has much more to say about family life than the dissolution of marriage. For example, it provides pelling reasons for all Christians (not just Catholics) to support school choice. The term “school choice” refers to programs that give parents the power and opportunity to choose the schools their children attend, whether public, private, parochial, or homeschool. While...

They faced potential starvation, imprisonment, torture, and made a dangerous journey to freedom only to discover new struggles that they never could prehended in their former lives. Stories and reports of North Koreans fleeing their country aren’t particularly unusual. There are dozens of books written by or about North Korean defectors. Last week, thirteen North Koreans who worked for a restaurant fled to South Korea. It’s also been recently reported that a high-ranking colonel from North Korean military’s General Reconnaissance...

“What the pope has brought forth is honest, timely and sensitive,” writes Rev. Robert A. Sirico, co-founder and president of the Acton Institute. “Amoris Laetitia explores plicated pastoral situations that any confessor will know all too well: challenges of how weak and fallen people can authentically live the faith.” In the Detroit News, Rev. Sirico discusses Pope Francis’s love letter to the family: The pope’s reflections are aimed at how to make a solid moral discernment in the midst of...