Today’s post is by Jenica Lee, part of the On Call in Culture team. She shares about where God has her working and why she is privileged to share His love with others on the job. For the past few months, I have been working as a Chiropractic and Physical Therapist Aid. For various reasons, I absolutely love my job. One of those reasons is that I get to work with people; more specifically, people like me. About 6 months...

It is alarmingly clear that so-called “Obamacare” has troubling implications for parents and children, not just employers with religious convictions regarding artificial birth control and abortion. According to an article in the National Catholic Register, Matt Bowman, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, Obamacare “tramples parental rights” because it requires them to “pay for and sponsor coverage of abortifacients, sterilization, contraception and education in favor of the same for their own children.” To date, 26 states and the District of...

Very often in charity and foreign aid work, we forget that the people to whom charity and aid are given are quite capable, smart and resourceful but are simply caught in difficult situations. I recently had a chance to speak with Mary Dailey Brown, the founder of SowHope. She shared with me her organization’s method of meeting with the leaders of villages and areas that SowHope is interested in helping, listening to what they have done and wish to do,...

The European Court of Justice has ruled that those who are unable to practice their religion openly are entitled to claim asylum on the continent: In what could prove a landmark ruling for oppressed Christians, the European Court of Justice has ruled that people who are persecuted in their native countries due to their religion have the right to apply for asylum in Europe. Confirming the ruling of a German court, the European Court of Justice – the highest court...

A recent survey contains one of the most disheartening statistics I’ve ever read: In eastern Germany the survey was unable to find a single person under the age of 28 who claimed they were “certain God exists.” The survey was taken in 2008, which means that not a single person born after the fall of the Berlin Wall could be found who expressed no doubt about the reality of their Creator. In contrast, 17.8 of young people in western Germany...

As noted already at the PowerBlog today, Sam Gregg has a fine piece on plex relationship between law and morality, or constitutions and culture, over at Public Discourse. As a follow-up (read the piece first), I’d like to point to an interesting aspect of James Buchanan’s advocacy of a balanced-budget amendment. As Gregg notes, Buchanan is an example of someone who thought that “America’s constitution required amending to bestow genuine independence upon a monetary authority,” or advocated for the “constitutionalization”...

During the electoral season of 2004, philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre wrote aprovocativeessay titled, “The Only Vote Worth Casting in November.” In the essay he writes, [T]he only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between [X’s] conservatism and [Y’s] liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target. Andrew Haines, founder of the Center...

World Politics Review recently interviewed Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg about the Vatican’s foreign policymaking: WPR: What are the main policy initiatives that the Vatican is currently promoting on the international stage, and how receptive are other nations to its interests? Gregg: At present, one major initiative concerns the promotion of religious liberty. The Holy See believes this right is poorly recognized in many nations — especially in the Middle East and China — and that Christians are suffering as...

A review of Rev. Robert Sirico’s Defending the Free Market is featured in the National Catholic Register, written by Fr. C. J. McCloskey. The National Catholic Register is reviewing a number of books, in an effort to help readers discern issues pertinent to the ing election. In Fr. McCloskey’s review of Defending the Free Market, he notes: Father Robert Sirico could not have written a timelier book than his latest, Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free...

Are you a risk-adverse investor? Then you may want to avoid choosing a mutual fund that’s headquartered in an area with lots of Catholics. New research from the University of Georgia and Southern Methodist University and published in Management Science shows that the dominant local religion—whether Protestant or Catholic—significantly affects mutual fund behaviors. Specifically, the findings show that mutual funds headquartered in heavily Catholic areas tend to take more risks and funds in heavily Protestant areas take less risks, said...