What Should a Pope Say About Capitalism?

Pope Francis’ recent comments about economics has raised concerns among conservatives and libertarians. But at National Review, James Pethokoukis says free marketeers shouldn’t take the critique so personally: If you are a free marketeer offended by Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium (“The Joy of the Gospel”) — in which he critiqued “deified” market capitalism and attacked income inequality — ask yourself: What should the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church say about economics in 2013? Continue Reading...

Video: Samuel Gregg on Tea Party Catholic at the Acton Lecture Series

Samuel Gregg, Director of Research at the Acton Institute and author of Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America can Avoid a European Future, and more recently Tea Party Catholic:The Catholic Case for Limited Government, a Free Economy, and Human Flourishing, delivered a lecture on November 7th in the Acton Building’s Mark Murray Auditorium focusing on the subject of his latest book as part of the 2013 Acton Lecture Series. Continue Reading...

The Mysterious Case Of The Disappearing Doctors

No, it’s not a Sherlock Holmes book. It’s reality: American is losing doctors. When most of us have a medical concern, our first “line of defense” is the family physician: that person who checks our blood pressure, keeps on eye on our weight, looks in our ears and our throat for infections, and does our annual physicals. Continue Reading...

How to Think About Money Like the Working Poor

After reading a comment thread in which her online friends were complaining about poor people’s self-defeating behavior, Linda Walther Tirado wrote an articled titled “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, Poverty Thoughts,” which chronicled her struggles with near abject poverty. Continue Reading...

Samuel Gregg: Free Market Economics And The Pope

Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium continues to stimulate conversation, especially in the arena of economics. According to Francis X. Rocca at the Catholic News Service, many are heralding the pope’s call for doing away with “an ‘economy of exclusion and inequality’ based on the ‘idolatry of money.'” Continue Reading...