Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Effective Compassion

June 20, 2012

Good Intentions Are Insufficient

From Reason.com’s blog comes this story about the company Capital Bikeshare, a business which rents bikes to people throughout the D.C. metropolitan area. Sounds like a cool idea, but why is it getting taxpayer support? Continue Reading...
May 22, 2012

Small Scale Subsidiarity

Nowhere in his article for The Atlantic does Joshua Foust use the “s” word.  But it’s obvious from the examples he mentions that the key to providing aid to Pakistan is applying the principle of subsidiarity: . Continue Reading...
May 10, 2012

Charity Begins at Home

In a paper at the symposium I noted in yesterday’s post, Richard Helmholtz described the application of natural law in a particular case in which the judges observed that “charity begins at home,” since “it is a natural impulse to do good to one’s own family.” Continue Reading...
May 09, 2012

Natural Law and Winter’s Bone

I was privileged to participate this week in a conference at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, hosted by the Division for Roman Law and Legal History, “Law and Religion: The Legal Teachings of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations.” Continue Reading...
May 03, 2012

The Tragedy of Dutch Compassion

In yesterday’s post I highlighted a pair of articles that cover the transition over the last 120 years or so in the Netherlands from an emphasis on private charitable giving to reliance upon the welfare state. Continue Reading...
April 16, 2012

Continuing to Remember the Poor

All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along. Galatians 2:10 NIV This video is part of an extended interview with Rev. Continue Reading...
April 12, 2012

‘I’m Rich and You’re Not. So There.’

Scientific American has announced that rich people aren’t nice.  In fact, they are less compassionate, more unfair and greedier than poor people. These allegations are based on the findings of two Berkeley psychologists, Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner. Continue Reading...
April 10, 2012

‘A Budget is Not Just About Numbers’

Back in 2011, then-Bishop Timothy Dolan pointed out that our nation’s budget is not simply a matter of numbers and balanced books.  “It reflects the very values of our nation. As many religious leaders have commented, budgets are moral statements.” Continue Reading...