One of the key words at Bill de Blasio’s inauguration as New York City’s mayor was “inequality.” The politics of e inequality were pervasive in the remarks of former President Bill Clinton, who swore de Blasio into office, as well as the prayer of the Rev. Fred Lucas, a Sanitation Department chaplain, who prayed during the invocation for New Yorkers to be emancipated from ‘the plantation called New York City.’ e inequality as evidence of an unjust society may the...

I certainly like where Dr. Calder ends up, but I’m not quite so sure about the argumentation he uses to get there. This short video is worth checking out: “Breaking the Power of Money” (HT: ESN blog). Breaking the Power of Money – Dr. Lendol Calder from InterVarsity twentyonehundred on Vimeo. Is it because students have unconsciously divinized money that they can’t bring themselves to tear a dollar bill in half? Or is there an implicit bias against the seemingly...

As of Jan. 1, 2014, Obamacare – or the Affordable Health Care Act – is now law. Harking back to Nancy Pelosi’s now infamous remark, “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it away from the fog of the controversy,” we’ll now find out how it will work. Given the incredibly rocky start, things don’t look good for the Health Care Act. One sign: documentary filmmaker Michael Moore (who usually loves...

The decline of marriage and fertility is one factor in the global economic crisis, says sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox: The long-term fortunes of the modern economy depend in part on the strength and sustainability of the family, both in relation to fertility trends and to marriage trends. This basic, but often overlooked, principle is now at work in the current global economic crisis. That is, one reason that some of the world’s leading economies — from Japan to Italy to...

The chairman of the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration, Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, MSpS, a member of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit and auxiliary bishop of Seattle, has written on behalf of mittee regarding current immigration reform. In a blog post, Bishop Elizondo stated that a 1986 law, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), made life for immigrants better by lifting many out of poverty. He hopes new legislation will do even more good: Passage of immigration reform...

Notre Dame University announced yesterday that it ply with the HHS mandate requiring employers to include contraception, abortifacients and abortion coverage in health care packages for employees. The university made the announcement after a federal judge last week denied the university’s request for exemption of the Obama administration’s law. An emergency stay was also denied by the Seventh District Court of Appeals. Failure ply with the law means the university would now have to pay fines of $100 per day...

As 2013 ing to a close, federal courts issued rulings on three injunctions sought by religious non-profits challenging the Affordable Care Act contraceptive coverage mandate rules: • Preliminary injunctions had been awarded in 18 of the 20 similar cases, but the 10th Circuit denied relief to the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of Catholic nuns from Colorado. However, late in the evening on December 31, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor issued a temporary injunction blocking enforcement, and ordered a...

Writing in The Detroit News, Rev. Robert A. Sirico looks at Pope Francis’ recent Apostolic Exhortation, the “much talked about, but little-read” document titled “The Joy of the Gospel” with a special emphasis on how the pontiff understands the problem of poverty. The president and co-founder of the Acton Institute notes how Francis “speaks boldly through effective and moving gestures.” Excerpt: It is no surprise that the man who took as his model and name the model of il poverello...

In a recent piece for the Wall Street Journal, Emory economics professor Paul H. Rubin makes an interesting argument about the way economists tend to over-elevate and/or misconstrue the role petition in the flourishing of markets. “Competition plays a supporting role,” he argues, but “cooperation makes markets thrive”: The way we use the petition instead of cooperation fosters anti-market bias. “Competition” carries a negative connotation because it implies winners and losers, and our minds naturally feel sympathy for the losers....

Can we boil down the idea of mon good” to just 7 words? Andy Crouch is willing to try. As executive editor of Christianity Today, and author of Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power, Crouch is all about culture, human flourishing and mon good. Crouch told Acton’s Manager of Programs Mike Cook a bit of what he plans to discuss at this year’s ActonU: mon good’ provides a basis for personal choices, shared effort, and social policy deeply rooted...