On the Observer, the blog of the American Orthodox Institute, Rev. Johannes L. Jacobse looks back on the life and the legacy of Chuck Colson:

I heard him explain his experience in prison during one of his talks. It was the lowest point in his life where he had lost everything and began to question purpose, decisions, and direction. He was visited by a friend (former Minnesota Governor Al Quie) who shared with him how Jesus Christ came into the world to redeem man. Colson listened, cried out to God for help and, as his life would later prove, God heard him. His repentance was deep and lasting.

Read more on Orthodox Priest: Chuck Colson’s repentance ‘deep and lasting’…

Napp Nazworth, a reporter for Christian Post, interviewed Rev. Robert A. Sirico about House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s budget plan, “The Path to Prosperity: A Blueprint for American Renewal.” Nazworth asked Rev. Sirico, Acton’s president and co-founder, to talk about how closely Ryan’s plan lines up with Catholic social teaching, as the Republican budget chair has claimed, and to speak to criticisms of the plan. “A group of about 60 politically liberal Christian leaders wrote a letter taking exception to Ryan’s comments, calling it ‘morally indefensible,’” the reporter wrote. “In an interview with The Christian Post, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) also said the Ryan budget is in opposition to Catholic teaching.”

Read more on Interview: Rev. Sirico on the Ryan Budget Plan…

The pope turns 85 today. On the website of Crisis Magazine, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg looks at this most prominent of “status-quo challengers.”

While regularly derided by his critics as “decrepit” and “out-of-touch,” Benedict XVI continues to do what he’s done since his election as pope seven years ago: which is to shake up not just the Catholic Church but also the world it’s called upon to evangelize. His means of doing so doesn’t involve “occupying” anything. Instead, it is Benedict’s calm, consistent, and, above all, coherent engagement with the world of ideas that marks him out as very different from most other contemporary world leaders – religious or otherwise.

Read more on Samuel Gregg — Benedict XVI: God’s Revolutionary…

Reporter Carol Glatz of the Catholic News Service has a story on the new Vatican document titled “Vocation of the Business Leader: A Reflection” aimed at educators, entrepreneurs and business people.

Read more on Jayabalan: Vatican Statement Shows Business and Faith Compatible…

On National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg reviews a new document from the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace titled, “The Vocation of the Christian Business Leader.” This follows the PCJP’s controversial “note” on the global financial system issued in October. Gregg says the “Business Leader” document:

Read more on Samuel Gregg: In Praise of Business — A New ‘Note’ from Justice and Peace…

Would dissolving the European common currency, as proposed by the French free-market economist and entrepreneur Charles Gave in his book Libéral mais non coupable (“Liberal But Not Guilty”) free the Old Continent to stand upright on its financial feet again? Or would dissolving the currency drastically end the European project altogether, as some pro-Euro technocrats in Brussels fear?

Read more on Europe: A Turtle on its Back?…

Kishore Jayabalan, the Acton Institute’s Rome office director, was interviewed by the Zenit news agency in an article titled, “Is Taxing the Church a Real Solution for Italy?” In the article, Jayabalan discusses the history of the Italian state and its imposition of property taxes on the Roman Catholic Church’s land holdings, residences and non-profit businesses.

Read more on Italy’s Tax Man Takes Aim at the Vatican…

In his homily on Lent Cardinal George warned that if the HHS Mandate is not changed Catholic schools, hospitals, and other social services will have to be shut down. Take a look at this post at by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, What if the Catholic Bishops aren’t Bluffing? to see what closing down schools and hospitals would mean.

Read more on Is the HHS Mandate A Game of Chicken?…

(HT: Catholic Culture) Note: One in six patients receives care in a Catholic hospital in the United States.

February 26, 2012

What are you going to give up this Lent?

By Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.

Read more on Cardinal George: No Catholic hospitals in two years unless HHS mandate rescinded…

“If there was ever any doubt about one of the Obama Administration’s key philosophical commitments,” writes Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg in a new article in the American Spectator, “it was dispelled on Jan. 20 when the Department of Health and Human Services informed the Catholic Church that most of its agencies will be required to provide employees with insurance-coverage for contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs: i.e., products, procedures, and chemicals used to facilitate acts which the Church and plenty of others consider intrinsically evil.”

Read more on Samuel Gregg: Obama and the Dictatorship of Relativism…