It’s wealth not poverty that’s on the rise

The Census Bureau today released a report citing that 37 million Americans lived under the poverty line, a jump of 1.1 million from 2003. “I was surprised,” said Sheldon Danziger, co-director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. Continue Reading...

For our freedom and yours: Remembering solidarity

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the formation of Poland’s Solidarity movement. Samuel Gregg says that Solidary gives us a view of a labor union whose “stand for the truth about the human person and against the lie of Marxism contributed immeasurably to the collapse of one of the two great totalitarian evils that disfigured the twentieth-century.” Continue Reading...

Robertson’s fatwa

Rev. Robert Sirico responds to Pat Robertson’s highly-publicized call for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. “What is needed here, I believe, is a time of reflection. Christianity is not a national religion. Continue Reading...

‘No Higher Calling’

Courtesy of Rev. Eric Andrae, Lutheran pastor Bo Giertz offers us a great exposition of the “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) and sums up the importance of the pastoral ministry. Continue Reading...

The voice of a secular prophet

The Americans brought this on themselves. That’s one reaction coming from around the world as it surveys the devastation following Hurricane Katrina. In what can only be described as callously political maneuvering, Germany’s environmental minister Jürgen Trittin said today, “The increasing frequency of these natural events can only be explained through global warming which is caused by people.” Continue Reading...

Has Europe gone completely insane?

Outsiders looking from the outside into Europe will probably answer that question in the affirmative, and with good reason. The churches are emptying, the economies are tanking, and the politicians continue to fiddle along. Continue Reading...

Fair trade goes bananas

You may have heard of “fair trade,” one of the more recent economically-myopic efforts to act as “guarantees that farmers and farmworkers receive a fair price for their labor.” I’ve written before about the fair trade coffee movement (especially in the Church), which has perhaps gained the most public attention. Continue Reading...

Must reading: SteynOnline

Is there a columnist anywhere in the world more in line with Pope John Paul II’s social teachings than Mark Steyn? All the more amazing as he regularly writes for the extremely secularist British press! Continue Reading...

The ethics of ‘price gouging’

Hurricane Katrina passed over New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf coast earlier today, and reports of “price gouging” are already coming in. In Alabama, when the governor declares a state of emergency, it triggers a legal barrier to “unconscionable pricing.” Continue Reading...

Remembering the Cold War

This day in 1949, the Soviets tested their first nuclear device, codenamed “First Lightning.” The 20 kiloton bomb was dropped in a remote region of Kazakhstan and detonated over a model town filled with empty buildings and animals, placed to measure the effects of the bomb on a city populated by mammals. Continue Reading...