Someone from the international aid and development industry has some explaining to do. In an analysis of financial data from the decade ending in 2010, The Economist lists the world’s most populous nation, and six African nations whose total fertility rate is among the highest in the world, as being among the ten fastest growing economies. By 2015, according to IMF data, this elite list will include the two most populous nations and seven from Africa. Continue Reading »
Recently I was invited to give a lecture on libertarianism at a prestigious Christian college. The large lecture hall was packed with bright-eyed, wholesome-looking Christian students, a number of whom lingered afterward to press their case for . . . libertarianism.Only ten years ago, this scene . . . . Continue Reading »
See, judge, act.” Such has been the method by which modern Catholic social teaching has urged Catholics to approach the political and economic challenges of our time. First and foremost, the “seeing” involves looking with the eyes of Christ rather than through the prism of our own ideology. . . . . Continue Reading »
Conservatives have a chance to make the country more productive and work-friendly. But they can also throw this chance away by marinating in a politics of high-earner self-interest that ignores or openly resents the rest of the population—which wouldn’t be anything new for them. Continue Reading »
On April 3–4, the Lumen Christi Institute at the University of Chicago held its sixth annual conference on economics and Catholic social thought. These conferences bring together high-powered economists with bishops and archbishops and theologians for a day-and-a-half of presentations and . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m trying to understand why God’s word to the woman in Genesis 3:16 connects “your desire shall be for your husband” with “he shall rule over you.” The meaning of the connection becomes clearer as we look ahead to the narrative continuation of Genesis and its patriarchal households. . . . . Continue Reading »
Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy by Robert A. Sirico Regnery, 256 pages, $27.95 The Catholic Church, at its best, has preserved a rare freedom from political fashion. It has allied itself now with the left, now with the right, as its own doctrine and interests have . . . . Continue Reading »
Behold, the fruit of class warfare rhetoric. This is what happens when you teach that “rich people” became rich at your expense and they owe you their property. The end of respect for private property and a person’s right to have what he’s earned is the end of . . . . Continue Reading »
Jim Wallis and a number of other Christians involved in politics are trying to gain attention for the question, “What would Jesus cut?” The answer to this question is supposed to be as obvious as it is in other moral contexts. For example, would Jesus lie about the useful life of a . . . . Continue Reading »
Alasdair MacIntyre, who is probably the greatest living philosopher, concludes his 1981 masterwork After Virtue by saying, “We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.” In that book MacIntyre argues that a correct understanding of morality is based . . . . Continue Reading »
