recently asked me ment on statements made by Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, president of the Vatican bank, about the economic effects of demographic decline in Western industrialized countries. Tedeschi told the Zenit news service that the “true cause” of the financial crisis is the low birth rate in these countries. “Instead of stimulating families and society to again believe in the future and have children […] we have stopped having children and have created a situation, a negative economic context...

Via Victor Claar (follow him on Twitter here), an op-ed in The Oracle (Henderson State University’s student paper) by Caleb Taylor, “Tiger Woods and Capitalism.” A taste: “Contrary to what Michael Moore thinks, capitalism promotes moral and ethical behavior. In Woods’ case, it punishes poor behavior. Sponsors such as Nielsen, AT&T, Gillete and Gatorade have all either suspended or removed their endorsement deals with Tiger due to his moral mistakes.” ...

The Civil Society Trust reviews Jay Richards’ book “Money, Greed and God” (buy it here) and reflects on passion. We can read in Genesis that man was created by God, in His own image. Richards expands on that in a way that struck me as particularly novel. If God is the Creator with a capital ‘C’, then being created in His image, mankind has been endowed with the ability to create as well — we are creators with a little...

It is a good thing from time to time to step back and remember just what it is that we who believe in the free society fight for each day. I stumbled across Michael Totten’s exploration of Romania – Twenty Years After the Fall of the Tyrant. With the passage of time, it is easy to forget – at least for those of us who never directly experienced it – just how suffocating and cruel the Communist dictatorships of the...

Last Saturday Pope Benedict XVI addressed a group called Italian National Civil Protection, made up largely of volunteers. This is the organization that provided much of the crowd control at two of Rome’s largest public events, the World Youth Day in 2000, and the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005. (I was in Rome for both events and can personally attest to the surprising order these volunteers brought. If only the same order could be seen in everyday...

Joseph D. Martinez, a 2008 alum of Acton’s Toward a Free and Virtuous Society program, produced a great video to introduce readers to my new book, Liberating Black Theology (now in the Acton Book Shoppe. Buy it here). Thanks, Joe! “Liberating Black Theology” book promo from Joseph D. Martinez on Vimeo. ...

In many urban areas, maintaining Catholic schools and maintaining some semblance of educational choice are synonymous: the old Catholic schools represent the only alternatives to a big, clumsy, and often unsatisfactory public school district. The issue is especially poignant because the student populations served by these schools are frequently the most educationally challenging populations in the nation. Thus, proponents of school choice are dismayed at the continued shuttering of dozens of major-city Catholic schools across the country. The search for...

Power Line has a post over at its site titled “Why Don’t Christians Care?” Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit also linked to the post today. Powerline’s question refers to the lack of concern from the “mainstream” munity on Christians being massacred by Muslims in the Middle East and Africa. It’s a great question to ask. Just for the record, we want to remind people that the Acton Institute cares. Last month I wrote a piece that received a lot of attention...

Choosing the Common Good from Catholic Westminster on Vimeo. In today’s Acton Commentary, I review a new statement titled Choosing the Common Good (download it here) from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. In the introductory video linked above, The Most Rev. Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, introduces Choosing the Common Good and discusses the key themes in Catholic Social Teaching “as a contribution to the wide-ranging debate about the values and vision that underpin our society.” Here...

El alivio de la pobreza y el desarrollo económico dependen en gran medida de la creación de riqueza que proviene de la iniciativa empresarial y de negocios. Pero ni ercio ni la libertad empresarial podrán florecer en un ambiente donde la estabilidad monetaria está ausente, el sistema bancario es débil, los derechos de propiedad carecen de protección, y el marco legal es arbitrariamente quebrantado. ¿Cuáles son los fundamentos morales y económicos de estas instituciones? ¿Cómo se pueden crear y proteger...