Bishop Romulo Emiliani Sanchez says the lies and lures of human traffickers are the root cause of the surge of illegal immigrant children at the U.S. southern border. Emiliani, an auxiliary of the Catholic Diocese of San Pedro Sula in Honduras, decried the tactics of organized crime and human traffickers for tricking parents and children into thinking that a warm e and easier life awaits them in the U.S. It is unfortunate that the illusion and mirage that the U.S....

A few weeks ago, Hobby Lobby made waves when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the arts and crafts chain in its lawsuit against the Health and Human Services Contraception Mandate. West Michigan manufacturer, Autocam, has been engaged in a similar legal fight. John Kennedy, owner of Autocam, stated that his and his family’s Roman Catholic faith “is integral to Autocam’s corporate culture” and the Affordable Care Act’s requirement to provide contraceptives andabortifacients was a violation of their...

Before I try to convince you that Katha Pollitt is dangerously wrong, let me attempt to explain why her opinion is significant. Pollitt was educated at Harvard and the Columbia School of the Arts and has taught at Princeton. She has won a National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary, an NEA grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a National Book Critics Circle Award. She is, in other words, the kind of politically progressive pundit whose opinions, when originally expressed, are...

The first kind of religious freedom to appear in the Western world was “freedom of the church.” Although that freedom has been all but ignored by the Courts in the past few decades, its place in American jurisprudence is once again being recognized. Notre Dame law professor Richard Garnett explains how we should think about and defend the liberty of religious institutions: To embrace this idea as still-relevant is to claim that religious institutions have a distinctive place in our...

on concerns about liberty in the U.S., spurred on by the recent Supreme Court ruling regarding Hobby Lobby and the HHS mandate. Sirico wonders why we are spending so much time legally defending what has always been a “given” in American life: religion liberty. While the Hobby Lobby ruling is seen as a victory for religious liberty, Sirico is guarded about where we stand. Many celebrated the Supreme Court’s June 30 ruling on Hobby Lobby. But let’s not get ahead...

Peter Johnson, External Relations Officer at Acton, recently wrote an article for the Institute for Religion and Democracy’s series mentaries on social justice. This series explains what social justice is and examines what it means for Christians in light of the Gospel and natural law. Acton’s Dylan Pahman wrote the first article in this series by defining social justice. Johnson’s piece, Checking On My Privilege (And, Yes, It’s Still There) is the second in the series: The suggestion that the...

In this week’s Acton Commentary Hunter Baker wonders why are so-called progressives eager to use political power to “correct” the thinking of those they disagree with: You may not have realized it, but Tony Dungy is a heretic. Does the former football player, coach and now TV analyst hold beliefs that are considered heretical by his fellow Christians? No. But his recent doubts about Michael Sam as an NFL player (you’ll recall Sam as the All American college athlete who...

2017 will mark the 500th Anniversary of Martin Luther’s posting of his 95 Theseson the door of Wittenberg Castle Church, the event that would eventually lead to what we now know as the Protestant Reformation. In anticipation of this very significant anniversary, churches, seminaries, colleges, and many other organizations have begun the process of examining the events leading up to and flowing out from the reformations of that time, and a great deal of those organizations have joined together to...

Christian’s Library Press has now released The System Has a Soul: Essays on Christianity, Liberty, and Political Life by Hunter Baker, a collection of reflections on the role and relevance of Christianity in our societal systems. You can order your copy here. Challenging the notion that such systems are inevitably ordered by the plex machinery of state power and corporate strategy,” Baker reminds us of the role of the church in culture and political life. Rather than simply deferring to...

In an ugly twist on the world of online dating scams, ISIS (the Islamic terrorist group responsible for much evil in places like Syria and Iraq) is now actively recruiting girls and women in the West to join their cause. Jamie Detmer reports that ISIS is now using social media to seek out females who want to join the cause, mainly by stressing the domestic life that supports it. The propaganda usually eschews the gore and barbaric images often included...