John Couretas

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

Posts by John Couretas

May 23, 2005

Sister Connie Driscoll — Fearless servant

The Acton Institute lost a dear friend with the passing last week of Sr. Connie Driscoll, president of the Chicago-based St. Martin de Porres House of Hope, and a frequent lecturer at the Towards a Free and Virtuous Society conferences. Continue Reading...
May 20, 2005

Museum of plastic cadavers

Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry is currently hosting the Body Worlds show, a display of plasticized cadavers and body parts. According to museum publicity, some 16 million people worldwide have seen the show, the creation of Gunther von Hagens, a German inventor who claims to have created the “plastination” technique. Continue Reading...
May 17, 2005

Who wants the EU?

Political leaders in Europe who have tied their fortunes to the creation of the new EU superstate are now dismissing the growing sentiment against the metastasizing, power-hungry bureaucracy in Brussels as “whims of changing opinion polls or referendums.” Continue Reading...
May 12, 2005

The moral imperative of our time?

In his “Bad Economics, Bad Public Policy and Bad Theology,” columnist Raymond Keating makes the case on OrthodoxyToday.org that the Religious Left offers “assorted biblical passages that speak of aiding the poor, the necessity for charity and justice, or other vague generalities, and then simply assert that these quotations support the particulars of their big government philosophy. Continue Reading...
May 05, 2005

Benedict XVI on markets and morality

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, in his former role as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was more focused on the theological implications of political heresies such as liberation theology than he was on questions of economics. Continue Reading...
April 26, 2005

Remembering the first genocide

Yesterday, people all over the world marked the 90th anniversary of the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks, a commemoration that has taken on added political frieght with Turkey’s candidacy for accession to the European Union. Continue Reading...
April 22, 2005

Catholics and Orthodox together?

Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, who is head of the Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions, has offered some very encouraging words on the prospect for improving relations between the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches — a relationship that must be revisited with a sense of urgency. Continue Reading...
April 21, 2005

The myth of the divine state

If you follow the current controversy surrounding the role of religion in American society, you might conclude that the country faces but two options: throwback theocracy or take-no-prisoners secularism. The following lines sum up an admirably clear and concise understanding of faith and politics: The state is not the whole of human existence and does not embrace the whole of human hope. Continue Reading...