Christian Social Thought

February 13, 2019

The Reverend Edmund A. Opitz, a precursor in the defense of religion and liberty

Today marks 13 years since the passing of the Reverend Edmund A. Opitz, pastor, author, and great supporter of the Acton Institute’s mission. On February 1, 1999, Rev. Opitz sent a letter to Leonard P. Continue Reading...

February 12, 2019

Democrats support Green New Deal while Thomas Piketty finds it problematic

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey’s proposed Green New Deal is getting a lot of attention these days. Democratic Presidential hopefuls Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren are all supporters, as is Senator Bernie Sanders. Continue Reading...

February 11, 2019

The false promise of an ‘ultramillionaire’ tax

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is running for president in 2020, and she has gained attention for proposing an “ultramillionaire” tax: a 2 percent tax on households with a net worth over $50 million and an additional 1 percent on households worth over $1 billion. Continue Reading...

February 11, 2019

Socialism, by any other name

At the end of January I had the pleasure to speak with my friend of many years Ricardo Ball about the ongoing crisis in Venezuela. The conversation was livestreamed from the Acton Institute allowing an international audience to listen in as we discussed recent developments from the streets of Caracas. Continue Reading...

February 06, 2019

The gospel of humanitarianism

In The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity (Encounter Books, 2018), Daniel J. Mahoney confronts a central heresy of our age, the “remarkably truncated view of human beings” that fails to “acknowledge the hierarchy of goods and values that characterize the moral order and the life of the soul.” Continue Reading...

January 25, 2019

St. Philip Neri on the Covington Catholic boys

The sinister and irreparable nature of gossip is memorably illustrated in the penance St. Philip Neri once gave to a woman who had confessed it to him. He told her to walk through the streets of Rome plucking a chicken. Continue Reading...

January 16, 2019

Homeschooling a parent’s choice, not the state’s

Decades ago, when I was first ordained a priest, I shared a prejudice that many people hold: I thought homeschooling families were odd. I believed schooling children at home deprived such children of opportunities to be with other children causing them to be less able to communicate with others, socially awkward and reclusive and narrow in their experience and understanding of the world that they would one day have to grow up in and navigate. Continue Reading...

January 11, 2019