Last April 16, Acton’s Rome office co-sponsored a seminar in London on “The Morality of Work, Commerce and Finance: Lessons from Catholic Social Teaching” with St. Mary Moorfields, the only Roman Catholic parish in the Square Mile and located in the very heart of London’s investment banking district.

With several astute financiers, bankers, and business executives in attendance, the seminar’s expert speakers helped them articulate and ponder the moral and vocational aspects of the financial world in which they work. The seminar’s speakers also addressed the political and legal frameworks that regulate their sectors in light of traditional free market economic philosophy and the particular Catholic social teachings that both challenge and sustain modern practices in the sector.

Participants listen attentively to Philip Booth’s technical and moral-theological assessments.

Msgr. Martin Schlag, a moral theology professor at Rome’s Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, led off discussion with his talk “Personal Virtues in the Workplace”. Schlag spoke about the interplay of the classical virtues before raising a discussion on the uniquely Christian “theological” or supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
Read more on London’s Financial Leaders Challenged, Inspired at Acton Seminar…

On October 5, 2011, Acton welcomed John Blundell, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, to deliver a lecture as part of the 2011 Acton Lecture Series. His address was entitled “Lessons from Margaret Thatcher,” and provided insight into the Iron Lady from a man who had known Thatcher well before she became the Prime Minister of Great Britain. You can watch his lecture below.

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The Catholic Church has long been one of the most insistent voices concerning the obligation of wealthy nations to assist less developed nations. Philip Booth, author of the new Acton monograph International Aid and Integral Human Development, looks at this tradition and finds that the Church’s endorsement of aid is highly qualified — a positive sign of increasing awareness that old methods of development assistance may not be as helpful as previously thought. Indeed, there is good evidence to believe that aid might even harm the citizens of the countries that receive it. Get Acton News & Commentary in your email inbox every Wednesday. Sign up here.

Read more on Philip Booth: Solidarity, Charity and Government Aid…

International aid has come in for a lot of criticism recently and with the debate on the federal budget just beginning, U.S. funding for aid is on the chopping block.  With a rising deficit, and a struggling economy, many are asking why the United States chooses to continue funding international, or foreign, aid. People of faith are often caught in the middle of the debate on whether international aid should or shouldn’t be cut, along with the role the state should play.

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Much of the blame for the current financial crisis has been aimed at Wall Street and the bankers who, the story goes, created toxic debt instruments and then lined their own pockets with the proceeds. In “Verdict on the Crash: Causes and Policy Implications,” a new analysis from economists and scholars — including Acton Institute Research Director Samuel Gregg — the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs comes to the opposite conclusion: It was governments and regulators who erred. Moreover, the IEA report says, the people most often berated for their part in the crisis – the hedge fund managers and those who run tax havens – are among the least guilty. The report also spells out the need for a “radical overhaul” of the financial system to guard against a repeat of the errors that led to the crisis.

Read more on New report: Verdict on the Crash…