John Couretas

is a writer and editor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Posts by John Couretas

March 14, 2008

Acton Lecture Series: Rise of Religious Left

A large crowd packed into St. Cecilia Music Center in Grand Rapids yesterday to hear Rev. Robert A. Sirico’s presentation on “The Rise and Eventual Downfall of the Religious Left.” This is a political movement, he said, that “exalts social transformation over personal charity, and social activism above the need for evangelization of the human soul.” Continue Reading...
March 14, 2008

Homeschooling under fire in California

In this week’s Acton commentary, Chris Banescu looks at a ruling by the Second District Court of Appeals for the state of California which declared that “parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children.” Continue Reading...
March 05, 2008

Solovyov on economic morality

Vladimir Solovyov Towards the end of his life, the 19th century Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov published his “On the Justification of the Good: An Essay on Moral Philosophy” (1897). In this book, wrote historian Paul Valliere, Solovyov abandonded his vision of a “worldwide theocratic order” in favor of the more concrete demands of building a just society. Continue Reading...
February 19, 2008

Kosovo: Pandora’s Box

Nearly two years ago, in “Who Will Protect Kosovo’s Christians?” I wrote: Dozens of churches, monasteries and shrines have been destroyed or damaged since 1999 in Kosovo, the cradle of Orthodox Christianity in Serbia. Continue Reading...
February 19, 2008

Orthodoxy and economic globalization

AGAIN Magazine has published my “Conflicted Hearts: Orthodox Christians and Social Justice in an Age of Globalization.” The magazine is produced by Conciliar Press Ministries, Inc., a department of the self-ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church of North America. Continue Reading...
February 15, 2008

‘A Patriarch in dire straits’

Bartholomew I My commentary this week looked at “Encountering the Mystery,” the new book from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of the Orthodox Church. In 1971, the Turkish government shut down Halki, the partriarchal seminary on Heybeliada Island in the Sea of Marmara. Continue Reading...
January 31, 2008

Acton on religious liberty and Huckabee’s economics

Two new Acton commentaries this week: In “Religious Liberty and Anti-Discrimination Laws,” Joseph Kosten looks at recent controversies in Colorado and Missouri involving Roman Catholic institutions. Without the liberty to decide who represents its views and who disperses its message to the public, a religious institution or organization lays bare its most vulnerable aspect and welcomes destruction from within. Continue Reading...
January 25, 2008

Gregg on NRO: End of the Jesuits?

On National Review Online, Sam Gregg, Acton’s director of research, takes a look at the new Father-General of the Society of Jesus and what’s ahead for “one of Catholicism’s most influential — and controversial — religious orders.” Continue Reading...
January 22, 2008

Natural capitalism

Over at the OrthodoxNet.org blog, editor Chris Banescu had an entertaining exchange in the comment boxes with a writer who asserted that “capitalism can be just as infected with materialism and the concomitant need to tyrannize as communism.” Continue Reading...
January 21, 2008

‘Harp of the Spirit’

St. Maximos the Confessor Today the Orthodox Church remembers St. Maximos the Confessor, the great saint who — virtually alone — stood against the Monothelite heresy and its powerful allies in the Church and in the Byzantine Empire. Continue Reading...