Church and State

April 16, 2019

How Rod Dreher’s ‘Benedict Option’ misunderstands Christian liberalism

Rod Dreher is once again exasperated. He is frustrated by a rumor that George Weigel hasn’t bought the tireless promotion of his ‘Benedict Option’: A few months ago, Weigel appeared at an event in Providence, RI, to discuss the Benedict Option. Continue Reading...

April 02, 2019

Grace in our life together: Community beyond markets, states, and ‘social capital’

When discussing the role of economics in our life and world I am always careful to make a distinction: life is economic but economics is not all of life. I’ve suggested this broader understanding of personal and social interests has been common among major free-market theorists since Adam Smith. Continue Reading...

March 21, 2019

The ‘true politics’ of the gospel: An imprisoned Chinese pastor’s sermon on peace and freedom

In response to the explosive growth of Christianity in China, the country’s communist authorities have ramped up efforts to curb the trend—imprisoning Christians, shutting down churches and schools, and moving to release their own state-sanitized revision of the Bible. Continue Reading...

February 22, 2019

Nicaraguan Jesuit, ex-Sadinista gets last chance at exercising priestly ministry

In a recent move that garnered little public attention amidst the tense media coverage enveloping this week’s Vatican summit on clerical sexual abuse and the protection of minors, Pope Francis restored priestly faculties to a Nicaraguan Jesuit and poet, Ernesto Cardenal, a liberation theologian and former militant Marxist. Continue Reading...

February 21, 2019

Pope Francis pardons Marxist priest in Nicaragua: Has the Sandinista priest changed his stripes?

Having visited Nicaragua just prior to and immediately following the elections which initially ousted the Sandinistas from power in 1990, I was struck by the news this week from Rome. Evidently sometime in the last few weeks, when exactly remains unclear, Pope Francis lifted the canonical penalties imposed by Pope St. Continue Reading...

January 11, 2019

A call for harmony — and a demand for truth

Pope Francis’ recent Christmas message, ‘Urbi et Orbi’, was a meditation on the roots of fraternity in the incarnation: What does that Child, born for us of the Virgin Mary, have to tell us? Continue Reading...

December 18, 2018

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The writer who destroyed an empire

In December, the PowerBlog is marking the centenary of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s birth (Dec. 11, 1918) At the NewYork Times, Solzhenitsyn biographer Michael Scammell says the Russian novelist and historian “did more than anyone else to bring the Soviet Union to its knees.” Continue Reading...

December 06, 2018

Great Dominicans, Good Society: Successful Acton Rome conference

On Tuesday, the Acton Institute and its Rome office concluded another very successful international conference, Freedom, Virtue and the Good Society: The Dominican Contribution. The 380-person overflow attendance at the Pontifical University of St. Continue Reading...

December 03, 2018

Lacordaire: penitent religious, unrepentant classical liberal

As our Acton Institute prepares for its Rome conference tomorrow, December 4, on the Dominican contribution to “Freedom, Virtue, and the Good Society”, extraordinary men and women from the Order of Preachers come to mind: Albert the Great, Catherine of Siena, and perhaps the most famous of all, the Angelic Doctor, Thomas Aquinas. Continue Reading...

November 13, 2018

4 ways Protestants approach the government (video)

Is participating in government a duty or a sin? When Christians have asked how they should engage the public square, Protestant leaders’ responses have run the gamut from complete separation (because “this world is not my home”) to the belief that government service is “the most sacred, and by far the most honorable, of all stations in mortal life.” Continue Reading...

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