Rev. Ben Johnson is Executive Editor of the Acton Institute's flagship journal Religion & Liberty and edits its transatlantic website.
Posts by Rev. Ben Johnson
May 21, 2018
This Friday, May 25, Irish voters will decide in a national referendum whether to repeal Article 8 of the Constitution, which “acknowledges” the rights of all living human beings in Ireland, including unborn children, and encourages lawmakers to enact “laws to defend and vindicate that right.”
Continue Reading...
May 18, 2018
What are the details of the royal wedding, and where can I watch?
The royal wedding of Prince Harry, 33, to actress Meghan Markle, 36, will take place inside St. George’s Chapel, Westminster, on Saturday, May 19 at 12 noon London time (7 a.m.
Continue Reading...
May 17, 2018
Violations of religious liberty, including physical assaults against church buildings, increased in 2017, according to a report from a watchdog based in Spain.
Socialists perpetrated many of these attacks – which ranged from vandalism to attempted fire-bombings with Molotov cocktails – to protest both the Roman Catholic Church’s stance on social issues and its impact on economics.
Continue Reading...
May 16, 2018
First, the chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences said, “Right now, those who are best implementing the social doctrine of the Church are the Chinese.” Now, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Germany has credited Karl Marx with helping craft Catholic social teaching.
Continue Reading...
May 10, 2018
Many people acclaim Adam Smith as the father of economics. Others trace the origins of economics to the eighteenth century Physiocrats, while others look back far as Aristotle. “The real founders of economic science actually wrote hundreds of years before Smith,” wrote Lew Rockwell at Mises.org.
Continue Reading...
May 08, 2018
Everyone “knows” that big businesses collude in order to raise consumer prices – and the larger the business, the more it can demand. In that case, what is everyone to do with the merger of two UK supermarket titans, Sainsbury’s and Asda, which is forecast to lower food prices for British families?
Continue Reading...
May 07, 2018
On the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, his hometown unveiled a new statue donated by the Chinese government. The event drew praise from EU and German politicians, as well as outrage from pro-liberty thought leaders across Europe and around the world – especially those who had lived under Communist regimes.
Continue Reading...
May 03, 2018
John Elliott and his friends at Diogenes Games created Socialism: The Game as a free-market lampoon of the board game Monopoly. The rules of the interminable Parker Brothers/Hasbro favorite teach children a distorted version of the free market (and its length gives adults a foretaste of Purgatory).
Continue Reading...
April 26, 2018
For one fleeting moment in Emmanuel Macron’s speech to Congress, it seemed as though he would connect the transatlantic alliance on the firm basis of its common values.
“The strength of our bonds is the source of our shared ideals,” he told lawmakers.
Continue Reading...
April 24, 2018
As this is being written, Alfie Evans is clinging to life, more than 18 hours after medical personnel disconnected life support and left the 23-month-old child to his fate.
“For nine hours, Alfie’s been breathing,” wrote his father, Tom Evans, this morning, following an unbroken succession of “horrendous, scary, heartbreaking hours.”
Continue Reading...