Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Poverty

May 22, 2012

Small Scale Subsidiarity

Nowhere in his article for The Atlantic does Joshua Foust use the “s” word.  But it’s obvious from the examples he mentions that the key to providing aid to Pakistan is applying the principle of subsidiarity: . Continue Reading...
April 12, 2012

‘I’m Rich and You’re Not. So There.’

Scientific American has announced that rich people aren’t nice.  In fact, they are less compassionate, more unfair and greedier than poor people. These allegations are based on the findings of two Berkeley psychologists, Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner. Continue Reading...
April 10, 2012

‘A Budget is Not Just About Numbers’

Back in 2011, then-Bishop Timothy Dolan pointed out that our nation’s budget is not simply a matter of numbers and balanced books.  “It reflects the very values of our nation. As many religious leaders have commented, budgets are moral statements.” Continue Reading...
April 09, 2012

Rick Warren on Obama’s Economic Gospel

On Sunday Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren appeared on ABC’s This Week and was asked if he agreed with President Obama’s economic gospel. As Kathryn Jean Lopez says, “I’m thinking the president probably wishes he picked a different pastor for the inaugural prayer.” Continue Reading...
April 03, 2012

The Lottery as Aspirational Insurance

Whether the lottery is, as the old adage states, a tax on people who are bad at math, it is most certainly a tax on the poor. Those who have the least spend an inordinate percentage of their income every year on lottery tickets (estimates vary from 4-9%). Continue Reading...
March 27, 2012

Does the Vatican think water should be ‘free’?

Not surprisingly, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP)’s latest document on water has garnered scant media attention. Why, after all, would journalists, already notorious for their professional Attention Deficit Disorder and dislike of abstract disputation, report on something named “Water: An Essential Element of Life,” especially when it is nothing more than an update of a document originally released in 2003, and then updated in 2006 and 2009, with the exact same titles? Continue Reading...