When es to understanding the present plight of Middle-Eastern Christianity, one author to whom I usually turn is Father Benedict Kiely. He’s the founder of Nasarean.org, which tries to help persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Sometimes Kiely’s observations are difficult to read, not least because they force Western Christians to face up to the full nature of the plight confronting their confreres that no amount of happy-talk can quite disguise. In a recent Catholic Herald article entitled “The Harsh...

The Catholic World Report recently conducted an interview with Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute. Gregg discussed many of the ideas presented in his new book, “Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization.” Gregg told CRW, In my book I maintain that the workability and sustainability of political frameworks like constitutionalism depends a great deal on the type of understanding of the nature of human beings—and therefore the nature of reason, and thus the nature of...

There’s something in our DNA to feel threatened by ideas that challenge our own. History is haunted by tragic examples of the suppression of minority views, whether it be Athens killing Socrates (399 BC), the Roman Inquisition’s placing Galileo under house arrest for advocating heliocentrism (1632), Nazi book burning (1933), or the persecution of many thousands of academics during the Cultural Revolution (1966). The suppression of minority views is a perennial issue, and it usually takes place in much less...

Acton University 2019 came to a close on June 21 with an address by Acton Institute President Rev. Robert A. Sirico, who urged participants to take what they had learned at the conference and put it to use in their day-to-day work. Sirico told the story of how he came to embrace the idea of the free and virtuous society after years spent pursuing ideas of social justice drawn from other perspectives. You can watch his entire presentation below. ...

Up to 20 forms of life are likely to survive a nuclear war: strains of bacteria, certain insects, and the myth of Nordic socialism. Despite those nations’ most dogged attempts to educate North Americans that they are not socialist, the idea that they present a model of “successful socialism” persists. Three new resources can deepen our understanding of the issue. The pares the tax rates of Sweden with the UK. True, the UK has slightly higher e inequality as measured...

In a few short days, thousands of federal inmates will be returning home on “earned good time.” That’s a result of The First Step Act, a federal prison reform bill which was signed into law in December. Criminal justice reform advocate Mark Holden joins the show to discuss the new law, why these ex-prisoners should have been freed earlier and what reforms should be made in the future. In 2013, Rose Knick of Scott Township, Pennsylvania, was forced by government...

This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, when astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins became the first people in history to land on the Moon. Here are five facts you should know about the most famous manned space mission. 1. The Apollo 11 mission was carried out by three mander Neil Armstrong, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, mand module pilot Mike Collins. But the team that took them to the moon included more than...

Who would have predicted that the hottest labor dispute of the summer would be between the workers and management of Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign? Sanders is a long-time champion of raising the federal minimum to $15 an hour, so his campaign workers assumed they’d earn that level of pay too: Campaign field hires have demanded an annual salary they say would be equivalent to a $15-an-hour wage, which Sanders for years has said should be the federal minimum. The organizers...