Rev. Ben Johnson is Senior Editor at the Acton Institute.
Posts by Rev. Ben Johnson
March 02, 2017
As a setback in the House of Lords leaves the UK debating how best to accomplish its departure from the European Union, perhaps the most neglected question is the moral one.
Continue Reading...
February 28, 2017
One of the aspects that I left out of my article yesterday on the fifth European Catholic-Orthodox Forum statement worth noting is its declaration on the origins of religious liberty. Freedom of conscience and the right to choose one’s own religion – two human rights extolled by the modern, secular EU – grew out of the Christian conception of human dignity.
Continue Reading...
February 27, 2017
Leaders from the world’s two largest churches say that Christians in the West are facing “unprecedented” hurdles to living out their vocation according to their conscience. A statement from Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians says that as traditional Western culture – liberally influenced by Christianity – is replaced with relativistic secularism and radicalized Islam, Christians are facing new barriers to entering whole sectors of the workplace, as well as other forms of hard and soft persecution.
Continue Reading...
February 27, 2017
Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty made a mistake of historic proportions at the 2017 Academy Awards, when they mistakenly awarded the Oscar for “Best Picture” to
La La Land. They should have awarded it to
The Founder, the new biopic about McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc which, alas, did not garner any Oscar nominations.
Continue Reading...
February 22, 2017
Ask any economist what the greatest force undermining prosperity is, and he will answer with one word: uncertainty. But since economics is just human action, uncertainty hurts every aspect of peoples’ lives, upending their plans and delaying – or destroying – their dreams.
Continue Reading...
February 20, 2017
On Wednesday, February 15, the European Parliament approved the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), a free trade agreement abolishing most trade restrictions between the European Union and Canada. Negotiators hammered out the 1,600-page agreement over the course of seven years before Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and European Council President Donald Tusk signed CETA last October 30.
Continue Reading...
February 17, 2017
Like all of Europe, Poland is suffering from a steep demographic crisis. Despite a relatively large (European) population and an expansive land mass that serves as a bridge between Europe and Asia, Poland has a fertility rate lower than that of China – a nation that only recently relaxed its One-Child Policy.
Continue Reading...
February 16, 2017
Despite persistent caricature, corporate titans do not always view government regulators as enemies; they often see them as unwitting collaborators. Big business and the regulatory state go hand-in-hand, according to Michael Gove, a Conservative Party Member of the UK’s Parliament.
Continue Reading...
February 15, 2017
St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg is one of the tens of thousands of churches seized, shuttered, or destroyed following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Instead of leveling it – the fate of so many other houses of worship – the communists turned the architectural wonder into a Museum of Atheism, then a museum in its own right.
Continue Reading...
February 10, 2017
Retired soccer legend David Beckham was denied knighthood in 2013 after British authorities flagged him for “tax avoidance,” according to a new story in the
Telegraph. Beckham had invested in Ingenious Media, a company that supported the British film industry – and also allowed investors to write off their losses.
Continue Reading...
