Rev. Robert A. Sirico appeared on the Frank Pastore Show Oct. 15 to discuss Vice President Joe Biden’s claim that the HHS mandate was not a threat to religious liberty and the quick rebuke he received from the Catholic bishops. Rev. Sirico also discussed broad faith and policy themes, including how best to reduce poverty, in this hour-long program.
Read more on Audio: Rev. Sirico on Faith, Politics and Joe Biden…
With two presidential debates and one vice presidential debate already behind us, fact-checkers across the nation must be pulling their hair out. A brief survey of factcheck.org sheds some important light on the many claims and figures that have been tossed around in the last two weeks, revealing little concern from either ticket for the facts of the matter. Why is this the case? And must we simply resign ourselves to this dismal state of affairs? Read more on The Market Outlook for the Facts of the Matter…
For many on the Catholic left, the confusion of “non-negotiables” in Church teaching with matters of prudential judgment has become all too common. In this week’s Acton Commentary (published October 17), Dr. Don Condit looks at how Vice President Joseph Biden’s “facts” about Obamacare were received by the Catholic bishops. The full text of his essay follows. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.
Read more on Acton Commentary: Politics, Social Justice and the Non-Negotiables…
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released a statement regarding remarks made by Vice-President Biden during last night’s debate.
According to the debate transcript from the Washington Post, Biden stated,
Read more on U.S. Catholic Bishops Correct Biden’s Debate Inaccuracies…
From a purely political standpoint last night’s Vice Presidential Debate was probably a victory for both candidates. Vice President Joe Biden fired up his base with his aggressive and somewhat dismissive behavior towards Congressman Paul Ryan. Ryan of course did nothing to hurt Romney and showed he is prepared to be president in an emergency.
Ahead of tonight’s vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, Hunter Baker (a Baptist political scholar) and I (a Reformed moral theologian), offer up some thoughts as “Protestants in Praise of Catholic Social Teaching” in a special edition of Acton Commentary.
Read more on Up for Debate: Catholic Social Teaching and Political Discourse…
Acton Institute President and Co-Founder Rev. Robert A. Sirico was invited on America’s Morning News, a syndicated radio show, earlier this week to talk about tonight’s vice-presidential debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan. Rev. Sirico talks about how the candidates’ Catholic faith will play into the exchange. Click on the player below to listen in.
Read more on Audio: Rev. Sirico on the Biden vs Ryan Debate…
As I leafed through this week’s Wall Street Journal Europe political commentary, I finally felt a little redemption. Hats off to WSJ writers Peter Nicholas and Mark Peter whose brief, but poignant August 20 article “Ryan’s Catholic Roots Reach Deep” shed light on vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s value system. This was done by elucidating how Paul Ryan views the relationship of the individual with the state and how the local, small-town forces in America can produce great change for a nation gravely concerned about its weak and vulnerable.
The article references a standard Catholic but still-very-unknown-teaching on “subsidiarity.” Go figure, not even my word processing program recognizes the term in its standard U.S. English lexicon. Alas, subsidiarity is not a word you read about in the secular Wall Street Journal, either, whose op-eds debate many critical intuitions of the free market and democratic society yet seldom examine the intersection of theology and economics, like the Acton Institute does so well.
Indeed the WSJ Europe article was not that erudite (for other more elaborated pieces on subsidiarity go here and here and be sure to watch Fr. Robert Sirico’s enlightening video (below). Neither do the WSJ writers spell out the details of Ryan’s various economic and welfare reform proposals inspired by the principle of subsidiarity, which include a repeal of nationalized medicine and drastically reducing spending on various excessive national welfare and other expansive public agencies. Nonetheless, last Monday this secular media outlet gave its readers a very Catholic glimpse into Ryan’s political world view which is a product of a hardworking, Irish Catholic family from “small-town” America (Janesville, Wis.) trying to solve its own problems by the teachings of the Catholic Church. Read more on Small-town Paul Ryan: Defender of Subsidiarity…
