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Rev. Robert Sirico

Rev. Robert A. Sirico received his Master of Divinity degree from the Catholic University of America, following undergraduate study at the University of Southern California and the University of London. During his studies and early ministry, he experienced a growing concern over the lack of training religious studies students receive in fundamental economic principles, leaving them poorly equipped to understand and address today's social problems. As a result of these concerns, Fr. Sirico co-founded the Acton Institute with Kris Alan Mauren in 1990. As president of the Acton Institute, Fr. Sirico lectures at colleges, universities, and business organizations throughout the U.S. and abroad. His writings on religious, political, economic, and social matters are published in a variety of journals, including: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the London Financial Times, the Washington Times, the Detroit News, and National Review. Fr. Sirico is often called upon by members of the broadcast media for statements regarding economics, civil rights, and issues of religious concern, and has provided commentary for CNN, ABC, the BBC, NPR, and CBS' 60 Minutes, among others. In April of 1999, Fr. Sirico was awarded an honorary doctorate in Christian Ethics from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and in May of 2001, Universidad Francisco Marroquin awarded him an honorary doctorate in Social Sciences. He is a member of the prestigious Mont Pèlerin Society, the American Academy of Religion, and the Philadelphia Society, and is on the Board of Advisors of the Civic Institute in Prague. Father Sirico also served on the Michigan Civil Rights Commission from 1994 to 1998. He is also currently pastor of St. Mary Catholic Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Fr. Sirico's pastoral ministry has included a chaplaincy to AIDS patients at the National Institute's of Health and the recent founding of a new community, St. Philip Neri House in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Posts by Rev. Robert Sirico:

The Fall of the Berlin Wall: Reminiscence and Reflection

Monday, November 9, 2009

Excerpts from remarks delivered at the Acton Institute annual dinner in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Oct. 29, 2009:

Twenty years ago today, a growing tide of men and women in Eastern Europe and northern Asia were shaking off the miasma that had led so many to imagine that central economic planning could work. The socialist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe—accepted as ontological realities whose existence could not be questioned—were, well, being questioned.

On November 4th, 1989, a million anti-Communist demonstrators took to the street in East Berlin. Three days later the entire East German Politburo resigned. In short order — the sort of event that television journalists live for — a hole appeared in the Berlin Wall, a hole big enough for hope to pour through. The East German borders opened and by Christmas, thousands were dancing atop the dead body of the Leviathan wall, that hideous symbol, tearing at it with bare hands, champagne bottles, hammer and sickles—anything that was available.

How could we in the West have tolerated that Wall in Germany for so long? From our perspective today it is obvious that the wall would eventually fall, but remember that in 1987 when Ronald Reagan called upon Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” the international media either ignored his words or criticized them as the simplistic bravado of a Hollywood cowboy. The President’s own advisors were divided, with his National Security Adviser, Colin Powell, objecting to what Reagan planned to say.

It was only after 1989 that President Reagan’s words became iconic. Reagan understood something that many of the Beltway experts had somehow forgotten or never learned — there is, in the human heart, an innate thirst for liberty. I suppose this is so because it is so closely tied to our very nature as creatures fashioned in the image of a free, rational and creative God: We thirst for freedom because we are created for, and called to, freedom and its complement, personal responsibility.

The fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of Soviet Communism, was a great triumph, but the danger has been and remains that this grand victory some 20 years ago will render complacent the free peoples of the West. The threat today is not a physical wall through the heart of Berlin but walls no mason ever dreamed about or touched.

The American founders understood this: They warned that freedom cannot long endure without virtue, without vigilance. Because our choices are those to be made by intelligent beings who were designed by Intelligence, these choices are not the result of mere instincts like those of animals. They are choices, furthermore, that should be appropriate to creatures whose beginning is purposeful and not random, oriented to the truth of all things.

And that is the scandal of the Berlin Wall — and every barrier like it against liberty. Some are great and others are small, some obvious and others discreet — yet all of them seek to wall us off from our own humanity, to alienate us from the very part of ourselves that cannot be slotted into some planner’s tidy equations, or reduced to the arithmetic of animal appetite.

We are blessed not to live behind walls that would force us to swim shark infested waters, or race through border guard crossings to the sound of bullets striking all around us. And yet the planners, those builders of walls, haven’t given up planning, haven’t given up laying brick upon brick upon brick.

I’m not talking about some secret conspiracy. I’m talking about more mundane things — mundane because they have so long been with us, mundane because—at least until recently — they grew so very gradually, the brick upon brick, the little and now not so little walls rising all around us, innocuously labeled “the mixed economy.”

These walls come in the guise of stimulus packages that distort our markets and our knowledge, that steal away a bit of your future and that of your children by inflationary polices and transgenerational tax liabilities; walls that discourage our charitable impulse and restrict entrepreneurial courage, that encourage fiscal irresponsibility and punish thrift; that encourage vice and envy, that sacrifice liberty for security and, in the devil’s bargain, lose them both.

Last year I noted the frustration and bewilderment that many were experiencing, especially those who believe in and have fought to build the free and virtuous society, a frustration and bewilderment at what we were seeing around us. That was a short time before a whole new political atmosphere took hold. Since then we have seen this breathtaking lurch toward greater centralized planning and redistribution turn into what to many of us feels like a runaway locomotive: Government banks, government mortgage companies, government automobile companies, government healthcare, government religious charities. And all of this is just a warm up for an appropriation of the entire energy sector—cap and trade. Cap and smother would come closer to the truth.

We are compelled to confront the danger of the political-economic scales tipping from productivity to dependency, from business to bureaucracy, from energy to envy, from trade to tariffs, and from creativity and courage to corporate-government collusion, collectivism and cowardice—where more people in society live, not off the noble work of their own hands, but out of the largess of the statist trough.

We might be weary of the struggle, fatigued and discouraged—amazed that people around us just don’t seem to “get it.”

And we would have cause for such pessimism.

Then I remember the years leading up to 1989. The people who brought that victory about were not defeatist or compliant.

A former Hollywood actor, undaunted by ridicule and the compromising lethargy of his own party; a Soviet prisoner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, reaching from the frozen tundra of the Gulags of the Soviet Empire and wounding the omnivorous bear with a simple pen; an iron lady in England, Margaret Thatcher, who didn’t get the memo about the demise of capitalism and the rise of the Marxist dialectic; a rough and crude Polish shipyard worker, Lech Walesa, who led a workers’ revolt against the Worker’s Paradise, encouraged by another Pole, John Paul II, who on his appearance on the world stage bade the world to throw open the doors to Christ and who, without tanks or military resources, stood face to face with Soviet puppets who literally trembled at his calm articulation of the Truth.

It is a remarkable testament to the human thirst for freedom under such hardship and against such odds—in the midst of deprivation and with guns pointed at them—all they were able to achieve, these mothers and fathers of freedom. Their example calls us not to acquiesce to the softer, more insidious and seductive tyranny of our own time, but to redouble our efforts.

Their example also calls us to remember what too many of us today have forgotten: We are beings with a destiny both in and beyond this world—a destiny which can only be worked out in human freedom.

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Philanthropy Cannot Serve Two Masters

Thursday, October 1, 2009

This week’s Acton commentary looks at the trend by many in the charitable sector to become increasingly reliant on government support. Sign up for the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary newsletter in the form here (right hand sidebar).
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The independence of American charities has steadily eroded in recent years as more philanthropic institutions have come to see their mission as one of partnership or collaboration with the government. That’s a nice way of saying, “seeking government dough.” Now, in the throes of a severe economic crisis and budget cutbacks at state and local levels, many charities are in a panic about reduced levels of funding. Anyone with eyes to see could have seen this coming.

A recent report in The Chronicle of Philanthropy spoke of a California budget crisis where “charities there are braced for steep cuts to social services and health care.” In Chicago, one manager of a children’s home said, “We’ve never seen the likes of this.”

The growing dependence of many charities on government support has been accelerated by the federal government’s funding, over several recent administrations, of charitable organizations for managing various social service programs. This funding, its supporters argue, gives private initiative the resources it needs to accomplish good works — with a little extra help from the government. But at what cost? (more…)

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NRO: Kennedy the Catholic

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Published today on National Review Online:

I only met Edward Kennedy once.

I had been invited to visit then-senator Phil Gramm, who was contemplating a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996. Having read some of my musings on the topic, Senator Gramm wanted to brainstorm about some innovative welfare-reform policies that would simultaneously make economic sense and really help the poor.

After we had chatted for some time in his office, a bell rang and Senator Gramm rose. “I need to take a vote. Walk with me and let’s continue this conversation,” he said.

As we walked down the corridor, I could spy familiar names on the various Senate office doors. We came to an elevator that would take us down to an underground subway connecting the Senate offices to the Senate chamber. It was a small elevator, no more than a large closet. Senator Gramm, an aide, and I tucked ourselves in and the door began to slide shut.

Just before closing, an arm came through to stop the door’s close. As it reopened, I found myself standing face-to-face with the Lion of the Senate, arguably the most prominent Catholic layman in the country, scion of the most prominent Catholic family, perhaps, in U.S. history. Kennedy immediately looked me up and down, and then quizzically glanced over to Senator Gramm trying to figure out why his colleague was hanging out with a priest.

As Senator Kennedy stepped into the elevator, Senator Gramm welcomed him with his Southern tones, “Come on in, Teddy. We’ve called you here to pray for you.”

Without missing a beat, Senator Kennedy tossed a mischievous wink in my direction, nudging me with his elbow in Catholic camaraderie and replied in his Bostonian accent, “Uhh [there was that familiar pause of his], uhh, no Phil, Father and I have called you here to pray for you.”

There was laughter as the elevator door slid closed. It was my turn to speak so I decided to enter the spirit of the moment.

I stood erect, place my hand on Senator Kennedy’s broad shoulder and said, “Actually, senator, this is an exorcism.”

The laughter in that elevator, which spilled out onto the train platform, was electric, causing the by-standing senators to look in our direction and wonder what in the world would have Senators Kennedy and Gramm in such uproarious laughter with a Catholic priest.

And so, I had mixed feelings on the news of Ted Kennedy’s passing. A memory of a pleasant encounter, but knowledge that despite our common baptism, Senator Kennedy and I differed in some very radical ways on issues of public policy, economics, heath care, marriage, and, most fundamentally, on matters related to life. (more…)

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The Parched Wilderness of Socialized Medicine

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Published today on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute:

Some numbers are highly significant in the Bible. The Israelites, for example, wandered in the desert for 40 years. Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai when he received the Law. Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days and nights. These are periods often associated with probation, trial, or even chastisement before the Lord.

Now we have “40 Days for Health Reform,” a massive effort by the Religious Left to muster support during the congressional summer recess for the Obama administration’s nationalization of America’s healthcare system. Liberal Christians and Jews even recruited the president on August 19 for a nationwide call-in, which was said to draw 140,000 listeners. If the ministers, rabbis, and lay “community organizers” in the churches and synagogues succeed, we’ll all be wandering in the parched wilderness of socialized medicine—and for a lot longer than 40 days.

What’s remarkable about this effort is that, as Americans have started to see the details of ObamaCare, they have revolted against the plan in ever-growing numbers. They’ve shown up at town halls and given their nonplussed members of Congress a healthy dressing down. A Rasmussen Reports survey finds that most voters (54 percent) now say they would prefer that Congress simply not pass a healthcare reform package.

Yet the tone-deaf Religious Left has mobilized for the rescue of socialized medicine, one of its most dearly sought objectives. In doing so, its leaders have labeled the honest dissent of ordinary Americans as the fruit of “mob rule,” the result of manipulation by “right wing” talk radio hosts, and evidence of outright misinformation and falsehoods. Not a very Christian thing to do, if you ask me.

Jim Wallis of Sojourners, who worked so feverishly for Obama’s election, has been leading the charge. He recently wrote that the “storm troopers of political demagoguery, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, have mobilized their followers to disrupt town meetings and defeat comprehensive reform by yelling louder than anybody else.” Like others, Wallis has cast the healthcare debate as a Manichaean battle between the forces of Light and Darkness, prooftexting the president’s and the Democratic congressional reform plan with handy bits of Holy Writ.

In the Washington Post, he cited Leviticus to show that the Bible lays out a “detailed public health policy in regards to contagious rashes and leprosy.” This, Wallis claimed, proves that “the laws governing the Hebrews ensured that participation in their healthcare system was not based upon economic status in the community.” I must have missed that lesson in seminary.

Amazingly, Wallis told Congressional Quarterly that opponents of socialized medicine “really want to shut down democracy and we can’t let that happen. The faith community is literally going to stand in the way of those who want to stop a conversation.” CQ also quoted John Hay Jr., an evangelical leader from Indianapolis, Indiana, who said that “40 Days for Health Reform” is “really an effort to refocus where the central moral issue is—it seems to have been derailed or taken off track by a lot of voices over the past couple of weeks.”

Along with Sojourners, some of the key collaborators on the Religious Left’s rally to the White House and congressional plan include PICO National Network, Faith in Public Life, Faithful America, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has argued that healthcare is a human right that should be available to all. “The Bishops’ Conference believes healthcare reform should be truly universal and it should be genuinely affordable,” wrote Bishop William F. Murphy, the chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, in a July 17 letter to Congress. Now, Catholics can agree or disagree with the bishops’ advocacy for universal healthcare—that’s a question of prudence not dogma. Tellingly, Bishop Murphy’s letter did not cite Scripture, the catechism, or any papal encyclical. It was argued from a basis in policy and motivated by the bishop’s honest desire for improvement in a system where one in six patients in the United States is cared for in Catholic hospitals.

But note also what the Catholic bishops did. They issued a clear and forceful call for a reformed health policy that “protects and respects the life and dignity of all people from conception until natural death.” That non-negotiable insistence on the respect for life is, by and large, missing from the Religious Left’s campaign. What we get instead are bland assurances, parroted from White House and congressional talking point memos, that “life and dignity” would be forever safe under ObamaCare. I am not persuaded.

What else is missing from the Religious Left’s campaign? Plenty.

There is no acknowledgement that expanding federal spending by $1 trillion or more to reengineer the American healthcare system, and further burdening future generations with groaning debt loads, might be a bad thing. Or would the Religious Left simply have the government declare a Jubilee and disavow these debts when they become totally unmanageable? Is this too somewhere in Leviticus or perhaps Deuteronomy?

There is little or no recognition that other key institutions—the family, the Church, local civic associations—might also have a role to play in shaping reform. Certainly, no recognition for those civic and social groups that have a healthy distrust of an invasive state. Instead, we get the constant demand from the Religious Left that Washington must act. It is a sort of idolatry—the worship of Big Government as the solution to all of our problems.

There is a near total blindness to the fact that nationalized health systems in other countries are deeply troubled, even deadly. Horror stories about these systems are plentiful in the mainstream media. What about the common good? A 2002 report by the Adam Smith Institute noted the following about Britain’s state-run healthcare monopoly:

The NHS has a severe shortage of capacity, directly costing the lives of tens of thousands of patients a year. We have fewer doctors per head of population than any European country apart from Albania. We import nurses and doctors from the world’s poorest countries, and export sick people to some of the richest. More than one million people—one in sixty of the population—are waiting for treatment.

Faith communities should recognize the Religious Left’s “40 Days” campaign for what it is: a politically driven “community organizing” effort that aims to expand a bloated state and make Americans evermore dependent on politicians and bureaucrats, not doctors, for healthcare. As people of faith, we need to speak up against this dishonest affair. After all, it’s our “prophetic” duty.

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Karen Laub-Novak, RIP

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The Acton Institute, and I personally, have lost one of our most enduring and earliest friends in the peaceful (and I am told, beautiful – if such a word can be used) death of Karen Laub-Novak, wife of our long-time collaborator and mentor Michael Novak.

During the time I lived in Washington, D.C., some 25 years ago, the Novak dinner table became a veritable salon of the free society. As Michael would be mixing up his magical Manhattans (where I learned to make them), Karen and I would be busy in the kitchen churning out Italian dishes: antipasti, pollo caccitore, broccolini in padella – all served into the midst of sparkling conversations and debates around that table. Here were the likes of Clare Booth Luce holding formidable court against Bill Bennett, Irving Kristol and his wife Gertrude Himmelfarb; Bob and Mary Ellen Bork would be conversing with the late Jack and Joan Kemp or Charles and Robyn Krauthammer.

Karen, an artist of note, had a natural ability in such an intellectually charged atmosphere to exude an infallible and gracious hospitality, making anyone who visited her domain feel fully at home.

A bit of beauty has gone out of the world in Karen’s passing. RIP.

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