Acton Institute Powerblog

Promoting free societies characterized by liberty & religious principles

Ecumenical-Industrial Complex at Work?

I assert the existence of the “ecumenical-industrial complex” in my book Ecumenical Babel. On that point, this bears watching: “Ecumenical news agency suspended, editors removed.” From the piece: Earlier this year the WCC, which has been ENI’s main funder and in whose headquarters the agency was based, said it was reducing its financial support for 2011 by over 50 percent. Continue Reading...

Cape Town 2010, China, and Cybersecurity

The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, also known as Cape Town 2010, was reportedly the target of an cyber attack. The official statement from the congress says, “The sophisticated computer network developed for sharing Congress content with the world was compromised for the first two days of the Congress.” Continue Reading...

Youth: Problem or Solution for New Jobs?

The front page of a recent issue of the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano read like an Italian “Help Wanted” listing: “Lavori per Giovani Cercasi” (cf. Aug. 13 2010). Unfortunately, this eye-catching headline was not a classified ad targeting young professionals for job openings at the Holy See’s many curial and administrative offices – the prized “stable” positions that would have Roman youth queuing in lines much longer those to enter Sunday Mass at St. Continue Reading...

Walk, Pedal, Drive

Some of the assumptions built into the mainstream international aid and development movement are puzzling. Among them is the faulty assumption that the comparison that matters most is how the developing world is doing in relation to the developed. Continue Reading...

Re: Embracing the Tormentors

Time to set the record straight. Some of the comments on my original posting of Faith McDonnell’s article Embracing the Tormentors are representative of the sort of egregious moral relativism, spin doctoring, and outright falsification, that have for so long characterized the “social justice” programs of lefty ecumenical groups like the WCC and NCC. Continue Reading...

Hans Küng’s Malthusian Moment

In another Acton Commentary this week, Research Director Samuel Gregg looked at Catholic dissenter Fr. Hans Küng, who recently published an “open letter” broadside directed at the Vatican. Küng’s letter includes the now discredited Malthusian warning about global overpopulation (see video above). Continue Reading...