Category: Vatican

Acton Institute President and Cofounder Rev. Robert A. Sirico joined host Josh Tolley on The Josh Tolley Show on the GCN Radio Network to discuss the recent meeting at the Vatican between Pope Francis and US President Barack Obama. Sirico speaks about the discrepancy between the White House and Vatican recaps of the meeting and how that reflects the different purposes that the leaders had for the meeting as well as their different approach to dealing with social problems.

You can listen to the interview using the audio player below.

Although religion and politics are not supposed to be discussed in polite company, they are nearly impossible to ignore. We try to do so in order to avoid heated, never-ending arguments, preferring to “agree to disagree” on the most contentious ones. It’s a mark of Lockean tolerance, but there are only so many conversations one can have about the weather and the latest hit movie before more interesting and more important subjects break through our attempts to suppress them.

This is evident even when there’s nothing contentious involved in a religious-political meeting. A case in point: U.S. President Barack Obama met Pope Francis for the first time on March 27 at the Vatican, a meeting that would be noteworthy in and of itself because of the offices involved. Yet secular and religious, conservative and liberal commentators immediately began telling us what to watch for well ahead of their meeting, as if there was something significant at stake – which there wasn’t. Obama supporters said the president and the pope are soul mates when it comes to poverty and inequality, while his detractors couldn’t wait to hear about Francis reminding Obama about the U.S. Catholic bishops’ unanimous opposition to the mandated coverage of contraception and abortifacents in Obama’s health care plan. The debate over who said what to whom in their 50-minute conversation continued when the Vatican press office and Obama himself presented different versions of its contents. (more…)

Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Istituto Acton in Rome, was tapped by BBC World News last week for his analysis of the meeting between Pope Francis and President Obama at the Vatican. We’ve got the video, and you can watch it below.

In this short talk, Rev. Robert A. Sirico, co-founder and president of the Acton Institute, offers some general observations about this week’s meeting between President Obama and Pope Francis at the Vatican, and reflects on the differences in philosophy that make a Presidential/Papal alliance such as what occurred during the time of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II unlikely.

Acton Institute Director of Research Samuel Gregg joins hosts John Hall and Kathy Emmons on It’s The Ride Home on Pittsburgh’s 101.5 FM WORD to discuss President Obama’s scheduled visit this week in Rome with Pope Francis. Gregg notes the differences in worldview between Francis and Obama, and contrasts the likely relationship between the current pope and president with the more well-known relationship between an earlier pope and president, John Paul II and Reagan. You can listen to the interview using the audio player below.

I spent last week in London attending a couple of stimulating conferences at the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Transformational Business Network (TBN), and catching up with some friends and acquaintances. All of the discussions were either officially off-the-record or of a personal nature, so I can’t be too specific about who said what but my general impression, obvious to anyone who’s visited, is that London remains an extremely vibrant, forward-looking, prosperous global capital in stark contrast to much of Europe and even other parts of Britain. But the reasons why are varied and may upset some seemingly-settled orthodoxies about religion and wealth.

London’s wealth is certainly tied to the City and international finance, even if giants such as the Royal Bank of Scotland are posting record losses (£9 billion in 2013). There’s much distress about such losses, especially subsequent to the massive bailouts RBS and other banks received in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. We often forget that making bad investments and taking losses is part of the normal, necessary functioning of the market economy; Milton Friedman went so far to say that losses are even more important the profits. Wealth can’t be created if we don’t allow losses to get rid of badly-managed or mistaken enterprises.

No one wants to fail, of course, but without failure, we can’t have success, even at the individual level. I’m reminded of a Teddy Roosevelt image we used to have at the office of my college newspaper emblazoned with the words, “The only man who never makes mistakes is the one who never does anything.” Certainly true, even if the vice of sloth and complacency often tells us otherwise; what’s more important is to learn from one’s mistakes and try again.

Critics of capitalism have often cited the constant striving and relentless competition as negative aspects; what’s the point of hard work, after all, if we can never enjoy its fruits? The austerity and disciple required by the market are sometime called “Protestant” because they supposedly imply a pessimistic, individualistic view of human nature, as opposed to Catholicism’s more positive, “relaxed,” social view. Made famous by the German sociologist Max Weber, this thesis has always seemed to contain some elements of truth but never completely accurate to me, and my time in London confirmed my doubts. (more…)

Pope Francis recently installed 19 new cardinals in a ceremony at the Vatican, the first that he has chosen in his pontificate. Most of the new Cardinals hail from outside Europe and North America, and the group includes the first Cardinal from the long-impoverished nation of Haiti. Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Istituto Acton in Rome, spoke with the BBC about what this new group of Cardinals means for the Roman Catholic Church, and how they reflect the changing face of the church in the 21st century. This interview originally aired on February 22, 2013.

On Monday afternoon, Acton Institute President Rev. Robert A. Sirico was a guest on “Faith, Culture, Politics: In That Order” on the Guadalupe Radio Network, which broadcasts primarily in Texas. Rev. Sirico engaged in an extended discussion of Catholic Social Teaching, with a great deal of time dedicated to Pope Francis’ particular style and emphasis in dealing with some of the more controversial matters of our time. You can listen to the interview via the audio player below.

Update: The embedded audio appears to be having problems; you can go to the Soundcloud page for the interview by clicking this link.

We’re approaching the first anniversary of the election of Pope Francis as supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico joined host Warren Pierce on The Warren Pierce Show on WJR Radio in Detroit Sunday Morning to discuss the style, substance, and impact of Pope Francis on the Vatican as he continues to lead the church. You can listen to the interview via the audio player below.

Writing in The Detroit News, Rev. Robert A. Sirico looks at Pope Francis’ recent Apostolic Exhortation, the “much talked about, but little-read” document titled “The Joy of the Gospel” with a special emphasis on how the pontiff understands the problem of poverty. The president and co-founder of the Acton Institute notes how Francis “speaks boldly through effective and moving gestures.” Excerpt:

It is no surprise that the man who took as his model and name the model of il poverello of Assisi would place the poor as a central concern of his pontificate: their dignity, their rights and their sustenance. Yet, the spontaneous gestures and the impromptu manner in which they are displayed ought not to beguile us into thinking this pope is offering a superficial dichotomy between left and right; between capitalism and socialism. To think that any pope, but especially this pope, is animated in his concern for the poor and vulnerable by a particular political ideology is to miss him completely.

While renouncing the notion that the market alone is sufficient to meet all human needs, Francis is also prepared to denounce a “welfare mentality” that creates a dependency on the part of the poor and reduces the Church to the role of being just another bureaucratic NGO. The complexity of his thought surprises some, on both the Right (some of whom worry, needlessly, that he is a liberation theologian) and the Left (who are already using his words to foment a political “Francis Revolution” in his name). Such tendencies reveal a rather anemic understanding of this man but also of Catholicism, which has historically been comfortable balancing the tensions of apparent paradoxes (Divine/human; Virgin/Mother; etc.). It is too facile a temptation to collapse 2,000 years of tradition, commentary and lived experience into four or five politically-correct hot button sound bites that are the priority, not of the Church, but of propagandists with an agenda.

Read “Pope Francis, without the politics” by Rev. Robert A. Sirico in The Detroit News.