From a 2017 vantage point, it’s easy to forget just how radical this book was, says Samuel Gregg in this week’s Acton Commentary. In penning theSpirit of DemocraticCapitalism, Novak was the first theologian to really make an in-depth moral, cultural, and political caseforthe market economy in a systematic way. Needless to say, Novak’s book generated fierce reactions from the religious left. The opprobrium was probably heightened by the fact that theSpiritconfirmed what had e evident from the mid-’70s onwards: that...

For far too long, Westerners have simply accepted the status quo of foreign aid, building ever-larger systems and programs for global charity even as they’re proven to squander resources and disempower the munities they intend to assist. As films like Poverty, Inc.and thePovertyCureaptly demonstrate, when es to charity, we need a profound shift in our heads, hands, and hearts — “from aid to enterprise, from poverty alleviation to wealth creation, from paternalism to partnerships, from handouts to investments.” Such a...

Embed from Getty Images The Christian season of Lent starts next Wednesday. Lent is a season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Saturday. The period represents the forty days represents the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring the temptation of Satan and preparing to begin his ministry. Lent is a time, says Margarita Mooney, when Christians engage in particular practices to remind ourselves of our nature as persons and our...

Ask any economist what the greatest force undermining prosperity is, and hewill answer with one word: uncertainty. But since economics is just human action, uncertainty hurts every aspect of peoples’ lives, upending their plans and delaying – or destroying – their dreams. In Europe, a growing number of young people are unable to engage in the rites of passage that marked the entrance of previous generations into adulthood – a subject Marco Respinti explores on the Religion & Liberty Transatlantic...

People do not love markets,” says Pascal Boyer of the International Cognition & Culture Institute, “there is a lot of evidence for that.” Sadly, Boyer is right and I suspect he’s right about the cause too: People do not like markets because people seem not to understand much about market economics. We don’t fully understand this antipathy, Boyer notes, because there hasn’t been much research on folk-economics, a study of “what makes people’s economic modules tick.” But I think Boyer...

Note: This is the sixth in a weekly series of explanatory posts on the officials and agencies included in the President’s Cabinet. See the series introductionhere. Department of Education / U.S. Department of Education (Public Domain) Cabinet position:Secretary of Veterans Affairs Department:Department of Veterans Affairs Current Secretary:David J. Shulkin Succession:The Secretary of Veterans Affairs is sixteenth in the presidential line of succession. Department Mission:“The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is responsible for providing vital services to America’s veterans. VA provides...

American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks joined us here at the Acton Institute on Monday evening as part of the Acton Lecture Series, and as usual he delivered a great and optimistic message, even in the midst of this time of deep divisions in the United States. It’s impossible to avoid the fact that America is more deeply divided politically today than it has been in decades, and the question is whether or not the current state of affairs...

Leaders from the world’s two largest churches say that Christians in the West are facing “unprecedented” hurdles to living out their vocation according to their conscience. A statement from Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians says that as traditional Western culture – liberally influenced by Christianity – is replaced with relativistic secularism and radicalized Islam, Christians are facing new barriers to entering whole sectors of the workplace, as well as other forms of hard and soft persecution. A misunderstanding of...

Embed from Getty Images If our new Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, is looking for a creative way to fix our public schools, she should look to homeschoolers. As Thomas Purifoy explains, homeschooling offers a model for how our schools can be run more effectively. “Public education is the fount of most problems in the United States, not simply based on content, but also on structure,” says Purifoy. “Simply put: it is economically impossible for American public education to be successful...

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty made a mistake of historic proportions at the 2017 Academy Awards, when they mistakenly awarded the Oscar for “Best Picture” to La La Land. They should have awarded it to The Founder, the new biopic about McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc which, alas,did not garner any Oscar nominations. I saw The Founder on February 8. By happenstance, that is the birthday of Joseph A. Schumpeter, the Viennese economist whose key contribution to his discipline was his...