In my lifetime I’ve witnessed some odd pairings – Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga being among the most recent – but none so bizarre as Pope Francis and Naomi Klein. The Pope needs no explanation, but Ms. Klein may leave some readers scratching their heads. The telegenic Canadian activist actually was invited to participate in a stacked-deck of climate-change true-believers at the Vatican. Organizers of the event, “Planet First: The Imperative to Change Course” – held July 1 and July...

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to make same-sex marriage a constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment,” says Zack Pruitt in today’s Acton Commentary, “will generate huge conflicts—in some cases unforeseen—with the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.” Fortunately, some legislators are already attempting to do something to prevent such conflicts. Even before the recent Supreme Court ruling, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-ID) introduced legislation to clarify and strengthen religious liberty protections in federal...

July 4, 2015 will be America’s 239th Independence Day, the day Americans celebrate our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. Here are five facts you should know about America’s founding document and the day set aside for memoration. 1. July 4, 1776 is the day that wecelebrate Independence Dayeven though it wasn’t the day the Continental Congress decided to declare independence (they did that on July 2, 1776), the day we started the American Revolution (that had happened back in...

We’ve all seen the pictures: a little African boy wearing nothing but an dirty, over-sized t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a U.S. sports team, or a little African girl, dressed in rags and pitifully surrounded by flies. As you might imagine, Africans don’t particularly appreciate the rest of the world viewing them this way. Frustrated by the constant images of poverty and disaster, a new Twitter movement started by young Africans shows that the continent is much more diverse...

Pope Francis will begin a tour of Ecuador, Bolivia and Paraguay on Sunday, returning to the continent of his birth for the first time since his election in 2013 and visiting areas of extreme poverty. Peter Johnson, the Acton Institute’s external relations officer, told the Associated Press that the pontiff’s criticism of the free market neglects to account for the economic improvements made in Latin America in the last decade. The three countries on Francis’ tour all have made economic...

This weekend marks the 143rd birthday of the best president you (probably) don’t know: Calvin Coolidge. Most presidents are judged by what they do in office. For instance, they are expected to “do something” about the economy even if their actions are counterproductive and detrimental. Coolidge took a different approach: he preferred to do “nothing”—to take as much inaction as possible. The liberal journalist Walter Lippman once wrote, “There has never been Mr. Coolidge’s equal in the art of deflating...

On Friday, the Instituto Ludwig von Mises Brasil published a Portuguese translation of Samuel Gregg’s recent article about the economic flaws in Pope Francis’s environment encyclical. Matheus Pacini of the IMB translated mentary, originally published June 19 in The American Spectator. Nos dias posteriores à publicação da nova encíclica do papa Francisco, Laudato Si’ (Louvado Seja), a maioria entários abordava as possíveis implicações da mesma para o debate sobre as mudanças climáticas. Um esforço para influenciar esse discussão — sendo...

A French translation of Samuel Gregg’s The American Spectator article on Pope Francis’s eco-encyclical was published earlier this week in Nouvelles de France. Gregg is the Acton Institute’s director of research, and the article, titled “Laudato Si’:Well Intentioned, Economically Flawed,” was translated by Emmanuel d’Hoop de Synghem. Peu avant la publication de l’encyclique du Pape François, Laudato Si, la plupart mentaires focalisaient sur les implications et les liens qu’a cette encyclique avec le débat sur le changement climatique. Une tentative...

I know why Victorian women fainted so much. They were too hot – literally. Wearing layers and layers of clothes, corseted to the point of not being able to breath, attempting to make merry in rooms draped and swathed and festooned with velvet furniture and bric-a-brac. If you think about London in the summer … you’d faint too. I will happily keep my modern clothing and my air conditioning, thank you. Not so fast, says Pope Francis. His encyclical, Laudato...

The Acton Institute’s seven-part film series, For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles, was created for a wide-ranging Christian audience, whether Baptist or Catholic, Orthodox or Presbyterian. As Andy Crouch says in his review, “this series is marvelously catholic, in the small-c sense,” appealing across political and theological divides while still proclaiming a specific vision of creativity, beauty, and service in the Christian life. But while the series is highly enjoyable for any viewer, it is particularly...