Religion & Liberty Online Archives

International Affairs

Alfie Evans and the UK’s paternalistic subversion of parental rights

Alfie Evans’s father wanted his son to remain on life support and be allowed to go to the Bambino Gesù Hospital in Rome for additional treatment. Earlier today, though, the UK’s Court of Appeal—the highest court within the Senior Courts of England and Wales—denied that request and upheld a previous ruling removing life-support for the British infant. Continue Reading...

The trial of Alfie Evans

As this is being written, Alfie Evans is clinging to life, more than 18 hours after medical personnel disconnected life support and left the 23-month-old child to his fate. “For nine hours, Alfie’s been breathing,” wrote his father, Tom Evans, this morning, following an unbroken succession of “horrendous, scary, heartbreaking hours.” Continue Reading...

Why is Macron courting the Catholic Church?

French President Emmanuel Macron wants Catholics in his country to be more involved in public life. Samuel Gregg, Acton’s director of research, wonders if France’s secular settlement could be under threat: For a few days this month, France experienced a relapse into the type of anti-Catholic rhetoric that, 100 years ago, would have thrilled half the country and infuriated everyone else. Continue Reading...

Is big government a near occasion of sin?

It happens every day: The news tells us of some new government scandal. The executive branch uses dubious powers to circumvent the constitutional strictures of oversight. The judicial branch, in turn, creates law out of whole cloth and styles its invention the “law of the land.” Continue Reading...

Video: Dispelling myths about economic inequality

The lure of socialism lies in its promise of “equality,” a hazily defined concept that educational and political leaders transform into an even more ambiguous social goal. The word itself triggers the innate sense of fairness and equity cherished by everyone raised under the influence of Western culture. Continue Reading...