There is one thing certain about picking a new pope: there is nothing certain about picking a pope. While there are predictions that the conclave could begin as soon as tomorrow, it likely will take longer for the cardinals to start the sealed process. The Rev. Robert Sirico, President of the Acton Institute, believes the process will moved quickly once it begins. Sirico, who is traveling to Rome this week, said he expects the process to move swiftly. “I will...

Fourteen members of Congress—including 13 women—sent a letter to the House leadership today asking that conscience rights be included in the ing budget bill. They mentioned specific violations of conscience rights, including the HHS Mandate: “This attack on religious freedom demands immediate congressional action,” the 14 lawmakers wrote. “Nothing short of a full exemption for both nonprofit and for-profit entities will satisfy the demands of the Constitution mon sense.” The continuing resolution that House appropriators released Monday would not cut...

In a story about looming budget cuts associated with the federal sequestration, Acton Research Fellow Kevin Schmiesing was called on by Aleteia to suggest “ways Catholic social teaching might be used to guide the cuts.” Schmiesing pointed out that the “cuts” are really “only a slow-down in the rate of growth in federal spending.” More: “Much more dramatic cuts and/or revenue increases are needed to reach a position of fiscal responsibility,” he said in an interview. But the principle of...

Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal that every conservative should read—and heed: Conservatives are fighting a losing battle of moral arithmetic. They hand an argument with virtually 100% public support—care for the vulnerable—to progressives, and focus instead on materialistic concerns and minority moral viewpoints. The irony is maddening. America’s poor people have been saddled with generations of disastrous progressive policy results, from welfare-induced dependency to failing schools that continue to...

reports on a video about wealth inequality that has now gone viral, with over 2.2 million views in just a few months. A video made shortly after the 2012 election showing how much greater the disparity actually is, has gone viral in the last few days thanks to links from websites including Reddit and Mashable. First, it lays out what people see as ideal, a system in which wealthy Americans get a lot more but poor Americans are slightly...

At last fall’s evangelical-oriented Resurgence Conference, Grammy award-winning hip-hop artist Lecrae Moore encouraged the American church to rethink how it engages culture, urging Christians to move beyond what has e a narrow, overly introverted “sacred-secular divide” (HT): We are great at talking about salvation and sanctification. We are clueless when es to art, ethics, science, and culture. Christianity is the whole truth about everything. It’s how we deal with politics. It’s how we deal with science. It’s how we deal...

At The American Spectator, Jackson Adams reviews Samuel Gregg’s new book, ing Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future: “Europe” is a concept Europeans are still getting used to. It should not, therefore, be surprising that it took a book written primarily for Americans to determine the sort of morass into which Western European social democracies have stepped. In his new ing Europe, Samuel Gregg provides a detailed dissection of Europe’s economic climate and the...

On the website of Crisis Magazine, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg looks at the “tsunami of unsolicited advice from pop atheists, incoherent playwrights, angry ex-priests, and celebrity theologians that has erupted since Benedict XVI’s abdication.” Then there’s Hans Küng’s article in the New York Times: Much of Küng’s article involves his familiar tactics of citing dubious polls (as if polls somehow determine Christ’s will for His Church) about Catholics’ views of the usual subjects as well as propagating myths about...

When future historians attempt to narrow down the exact point at which the concept of free speech died in Canada, they’ll likely point to Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott, specifically this sentence: Truthful statements can be presented in a manner that would meet the definition of hate speech, and not all truthful statements must be free from restriction. Jesus might have claimed that “the truth will set you free” but in Canada speaking the same truths proclaimed in God’s...

Alex Chafuen’s Forbes article on “champions of innovation,” which Michael Miller blogged here recently, is now one of the top features on the contributors page at The Blaze. Here’s an excerpt: When Adam Smith wrote his famous “Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,” he helped shift the terms of the discussion. Centuries earlier, work focused on different aspects of poverty. Jurists and city authorities analyzed whether the poor should be allowed to beg freely and...