Religion & Liberty Article Listing

Papal Economics 101: Freedom and Truth

Where did Pope John Paul II stand on economic issues? The same place he stood on all other issues involving the well-being of the human person. He favored the rights and dignity of all people, freedom to work and to create, an environment of security that permits the flourishing of faith. He had faith in freedom and no love for the grand secular state. Thus did this pope understand that human dignity implies non-socialist political and economic structures, which are commonly known as the business economy.

He was a fierce critic of socialism and worked to bring about its end in Eastern Europe. He saw the merit of the institutional arrangements commonly called capitalistic: protection of private property, the freedom of trade, the enforcement of contract, the right of economic initiative, and the social merit of a growing economy essential to...

Is the Acton Institute a Catholic organization?

With this issue dedicated to John Paul II, it is timely to address a common misunderstanding that Acton is affiliated somehow with the Roman Catholic Church. Sometimes we are also asked whether Acton is linked to the Christian Reformed Church in North America because of the strong Dutch Calvinist presence in Grand Rapids, Mich., where the CRC and the Acton Institute are both based. In either case, the answer is no.

Acton has no ties with any particular church or religious community. That's not by accident—it's by design. The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, ecumenical research and educational institute that conducts its affairs independently of any religious or political organization. In fact, as a nonprofit, Acton is legally barred by tax and election laws from engaging in political...

Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born in February 1818, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When he was eight-years-old, Douglass was sent to Baltimore to live as a houseboy with some relatives of his master. Shortly after his arrival his new mistress taught him the alphabet. Her husband forbade her to continue this instruction, but Douglass was undeterred. He gave away his food in exchange for lessons in reading and writing from the neighborhood boys. At about the age of twelve or thirteen, Douglass purchased a copy of a popular schoolbook and gained an understanding of the power of the spoken and the written word. He saw their potential to bring about permanent...

Moral Entrepreneurship and the Real Common Good

R&L: Since obtaining your doctorate in economics from Yale, you have held positions as a research economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as a professor at Bates College, and now as a professor at Pepperdine University. Based on all of your study and these varied experiences, what would you say is the single greatest economic challenge facing the world today?

Yuengert: Over the last decade or so, most of the countries in the world have officially embraced the idea of free markets, at least to some degree. This is a remarkable turnabout, but what we have found is that free markets do not exist in a vacuum. They require a set of political and cultural pre-conditions: the impartial rule of law, a culture of impartiality in government, honesty, justice, and public spiritedness in business. We have found that it is not...

Calling, Vocation, and Business

Tom and James are long-time friends who are in their late 20's. They went to college together and settled in the same city after graduation. They have both been working in the same part of the city for the past few years. Their wives are good friends and they get together as couples periodically. Tom works for one of the major international accounting firms, in their consulting division, helping companies set up and maintain internal financial control systems. He is on a partnership track and his work has been well received by the office's partners. He enjoys his work generally, finds it challenging and stimulating, though the long hours do get to him sometimes. He often wonders how he will handle the hours now that he and his wife have a young family. He sometimes thinks about starting his own business, thinking that might give him more flexibility with his hours....

Practical Virtue: Finance and Administration in the Spirit of Church Organizations

Is it possible to begin the work week saying, “Thank God, it's Monday”?

A number of books with some variation of that title claim to demonstrate how we can integrate our faith into our professional lives. But even we whose lives are spent serving the church or church-related apostolates often approach the week ahead with less than enthusiasm. We face the same traffic, the same daily routine, the same brown-bag lunch as employees in the corporate world.

And many of us—especially those who toil in the hidden realm of operational and support services—can feel as removed from the human impact of our organizations as any government bureaucrat. Even when we remind ourselves that we're “working for the Lord,” it's often hard to see how faith translates into practical, day-to-day function.

But...

The Church Must Remember Its Mission

There has been a revival in interest in the role that private charity can play in the revitalization of civil society. This renewed interest is partly driven by an overwhelming sense that most of us have, regardless of political and ideological interests, that the modern welfare state has produced less-than-impressive results. But if we are really entering the post-statist age in which the welfare state is going to continue to disintegrate bit by bit, where do we go from here? A good start would be to build on and extend the sense of responsibility that individuals and families still have to create a viable civic culture.

This is obviously easier said than done. Some concrete steps that could take us very far in the right direction, though, relate directly to the mission of churches in the practice of authentic social work. I am not suggesting...

St. Bernardino of Siena

St. Bernardino of Siena, the “Apostle of Italy,” was a missionary, reformer, and scholastic economist. He was born of the noble family of Albizeschi in the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima. After taking care of the sick during a great plague in Siena in 1400, he entered the Franciscan order. He became a well-known and popular preacher, traveling throughout Italy on foot. He was offered bishoprics three times during his ministry, which he refused because he would have had to give up what he felt was his primary calling, that of a missionary.

Bernardino was the great systematizer of Scholastic economics after Aquinas, and the first theologian since Jean Peierre de Jean Olivi to write an entire work devoted to economics. This book, titled On Contracts and Usury, dealt with the justification of private property, the ethics of...

Exit Truth, Enter Tyranny

Os Guinness, speaker of international renown, was born in China, educated in England, graduated from Oxford University, and authored several books, one of the most recent being a brief but lucid and powerful meditation on the crisis of truth in our contemporary Western world. The book is entitled Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, & Spin (Baker Books, 2000). Guinness' central thesis is that “truth matters supremely because in the end, without truth there is no freedom . . . not only for individuals who would live a good life but for free societies that would remain free.” Indeed, “truth . . . is freedom,” Guinness adds, “and the only way to a free life lies in becoming a person of truth and learning to live in truth.” Nowadays the belief in objective truth is dead, argues Guinness. Truth is historically, culturally, or individually...

Responsible Individual Liberty and the Moral Maximization of Wealth

R&L: Why was Black Enterprise magazine started? How has it grown?

Edmond: The first issue of Black Enterprise magazine came out in August of 1970. It was started by our chairman and publisher Earl G. Graves, Sr. who was a former aide to Senator Robert Kennedy. In the early seventies, Nixon was president, and he introduced this whole Black Capitalism initiative. This resulted in the creation of the Office of Minority Business Development, which we now know as the Minority Business Development Agency, and a whole bunch of other programs that we take for granted now. Mr. Graves' original idea was to create this newsletter that was going to be a kind of resource to African American business people around the country, most of whom wouldn't necessarily know how to negotiate the bureaucracies and the red tape...

Is it on the Test? Teaching Christianity and the Humanities in a Secular Environment

Recently, I asked the following on a quiz in introductory American History: “What did Winthrop mean when he said that the Puritans would build a ”city on a hill“ in New England?” One student replied: “They would build a better city up away from floods and problems.” This remarkably literal answer demonstrates the continuing cultural and spiritual decline so many have eloquently cri-tiqued in the United States. The supposedly “value-free” education offered by the state is anything but morally neutral;² it excludes values, faith, even figures of speech. The following argues for a counterattack at a point that may surprise many conservatives: the standardized tests increasingly pushed by both state and federal government as measurements (and guarantors) of “accountability” for both teachers and students.

The mess we are in has been...

The Culture of Life, The Culture of the Market

What devalues human life? Our times are undoubtedly characterized by a lack of respect for the dignity of the human person. Many who proclaim the culture of life fault the free market for devaluing human life. It is thought that the market reduces people to mere economic actors, valued only for their earning potential or their productive capacity. However, this misunderstanding of the market economy hinders our allies against the forces that degrade the human person. Let us reflect on the interaction, tension, and ultimate reconciliation of the culture of the market and the culture of life more deeply.

I want to be clear about definitions. The culture of life is the recognition that this life is a temporary stage of our eternal existence and that life itself is a gift entrusted to us by our Maker that should be preserved with the utmost...

The Economics and Morality of Caring for the Poor

Today, social programs account for about 50 percent of the federal budget—including Social Security and Medicare, which comprise the lion's share of social programs (public housing, public schools, unemployment benefits, job training programs, food stamps, etc.). Total spending on social programs in the United States exceeds $1 trillion annually.

That massive social spending has done fabulous things. Americans provide some aid and assistance to people who are poor, but living above the poverty line. Social spending then kicks into full gear for those who are at or below the poverty line. Further, what is defined as “poverty” in the United States is a standard of living that is more than 40 percent higher than the average standard of living of the rest of the world.¹ Social...

Ferdinando Galiani

Born in Chieti, Italy, Ferdinando Galiani was raised in Naples. Galiani was the nephew of the famous archbishop Coelestino Galiani. The archbishop made sure his nephew received a top quality education. The intention was for Galiani to serve the church as a member of the clergy someday. However, Galiani showed early promise as an economist who would fit into the academic elite of that time. He was an instrumental figure in the “Neapolitan Enlightenment” and one of the initiators of the Italian utilitarian tradition. Even so, he did not stray from the fundamental principles of truth and justice that his uncle had engrained into his mind as a...

Freedom Undone in the Court

There I sat, blinking under the fluorescent lights in the auditorium style classroom during my constitutional law class. I had gone to law school because I wanted to learn how to be a lawyer. I wanted to learn how to “think like a lawyer.” That's what all the marketing brochures from the admissions offices in law schools all over the country promise incoming students. I didn't know exactly what it meant to think like a lawyer. I assumed I would be asked to use reason and logic to apply the facts of a particular occurrence to the law that governed such an occurrence. Nothing overly complicated. I discovered my assumption could not be further from the truth.

The subject was the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. At least, that was the subject stated in the textbook and repeated by the professor. The real subject...