The Acton Institute is, at heart, a cultural enterprise. We are not concerned so much with politics or economics or sociology or philosophy as we are with the whole package—the effect they have on our culture. Our concern is with the health of society as a whole—the free and virtuous society.

In this autumn issue of Religion & Liberty, that concern is made very clear as we examine a tremendous influence on our culture—the entertainment industry. In Hollywood, they speak about movie- making as “the Industry,” but movie studios have an enormous influence on our culture, independent of their balance sheets.

Ralph Winter, a successful producer of several blockbuster films, speaks about that influence in our feature interview. His experience, reflected through his religious faith, offers a perspective on Hollywood that we rarely hear.

Cort...

The human worker is at his core an artist. Oftentimes, the term artist connotes a vocation of leisure, an esoteric profession of starving bohemians, set apart from the commercial world of utility. But this is a rather narrow view that discounts the essence of both art and business. In reality, art and business are subsets of the larger category entrepreneurship.

To gain a clearer view of art, business, and the similarities between the two, we can turn to the writings of Pope John Paul the Great. One of the late pontiff's favorite artists, Polish poet Cyprian Norwich, wrote that “beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up.” John Paul quoted this line not in Centesimus Annus or Laborem Exercens ,...

Every responsible parent knows not to permit their children indiscriminate access to movies, television, video games, and the Internet. The dangers to heart, mind, and soul may not be more prevalent in our times than previous times, but technology seems to have made them more accessible. And thus does the urgency of a parental response present itself. One need not be a puritan to insist on caution and even severity on the subject.

This is not the same as censorship, which is a political action that prevents citizens from having the freedom to choose what they read. Censorship is dangerous because it gives power to political elites to determine what is best for us, and their decisions are not based on morality and virtue but on political priority. Also, political controls on speech and media often backfire by inviting even more curious eyes to discover what it is they are not...

Long before he became Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla (b. 1920) had identified the center of his life's work: The Christian defense of the human person. His defense of human liberty, properly understood, led to the spread of that same liberty behind the Iron Curtain. And his defense of human dignity was part of the same Christian vision. Papal biographer George Weigel sums up Karol Wojtyla's defense of the person, that lies at the heart of the liberal tradition:

As he had written to Henri de Lubac in 1968, Wojtyla believed that the crisis of modernity involved a “degradation, indeed … a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of...

In 1993, Pope John Paul II met with Polish philosophers Józef Tischner and Krzysztof Michalski to discuss the events of the twentieth century, namely the rise of Nazism and communism. The Holy Father revisited the transcripts from these conversations and added to his earlier thoughts, expounding on democracy, freedom, and the future of Europe. The resulting work is Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium, published in March by Rizzoli. In what reads more like a father's letter to his children than a profoundly insightful work of philosophy, John Paul offers the church and the world a hopeful portrait of the human person and an astute evaluation of dangers past and present.

Although much time is spent condemning in detail Nazism, communism, and consumerism, John Paul traces the decline of...

Rabbi Daniel Lapin and Riccardo di Segni offer their thoughts on John Paul II.

A Rabbinic Eulogy for the Pope

by Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Rabbi Elio Toaff pictured above on the occasion of his visit to the Jewish Synagogue in 1986.

In this edition of Religion & Liberty, we look at the life and legacy of John Paul II. In his many travels abroad, some of his most stirring encounters were with leaders of the Jewish faith. In his historic address at the Great Synagogue of Rome in 1986, John Paul said: “In a society which is often lost in agnosticism and individualism and which is suffering the bitter consequences of...

The death and election of a pope are naturally global events, of interest far beyond the Catholic Church itself. But the death of Pope John Paul II was a global event also in the sense that the whole world was able to watch it unfold as it happened. Not only was the pope's death historic because of the stature of the man himself, but also because this first “media pope” was the first to die in our new 24/7 media environment of cable news and the Internet.

The sheer demand for news dominated the Roman skyline and streetscape for all of April, as makeshift studios were created to accommodate the thousands of journalists in town. And as one would expect in the marketplace of commentary, an equally vast supply of pundits appeared...