AU 2025 Mobile Banner

Acton Institute Logo

text block float right top
button right top below
text block float right top

Religion & Liberty

Past Articles

Page 68 of 104

  • The Technological Bluff

    Thirty years later, Ellul still has plenty to say in The Technological Bluff, obviously because of the newer, high technologies of the computer chip and the laser beam. And he remains as negative as ever. The technological “bluff” is the implicit assumption in Western society the technological progress, if used rightly, is a good in itself, and the good will always outweigh less-welcome consequences. What has happened, Ellul contends, is that we have become slaves of “technique,” as he calls it, subservient to its survival at all costs.

    by Christian D. Kettler

  • Gary Cooper, Humane Existence, and Deep Ecology

    During 1990 my nation, Australia, was graced by the visits of two North American thinkers anxious to help us get our national house in order. The thinkers in question - Drs. Paul Ehrlich and David Suzuki - loom large among the stars in the radical environmentalist sky. Whilst in Australia they were asked by a television journalist anxious for a ten-second “spot” to state in twenty-five words or less the basic conviction they most would like to communicate to their “down-under” audience. Their answer was simple.

    by John K. Williams

  • The Myth of a Value-Free Education

    Americans love myths. By “myth,” I do not mean the old-fashioned myths that my generation read in grade school. Many Americans would find reading at that fifth-grade level too difficult these days. What I mean by “myth” is what older generations used to call a fiction. One of the more influential myths presently affecting the American family is the myth of a value-free education. A value-free education is described as one in which students are supposed to be free from any coerced exposure to the values of anyone.

    by Ronald H. Nash

  • A Preferential Option for Liberty

    This special issue of Religion and Liberty offers our readers a sampling of initial reactions to the encyclical letter of Pope John Paul II which commemorates the hundredth anniversary of the inauguration of modern Catholic social teaching.

    by Rev. Robert A. Sirico

  • Profits and Morals: A Non-Catholic Assessment of Centesimus Annus

    In 1986 America’s Catholic bishops issued a controversial pastoral letter on the subject of the nation’s economy. The cartoonist S. Kelley summed it up best in The San Diego Union. In his cartoon, two bishops were lecturing from upside-down economics textbooks and a blackboard full of obvious nonsense as a parishioner prayed by a pew: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they’re talking about.”

    by Lawrence W. Reed

  • Twilight of the Idols

    False gods exert a strong appeal, but they always fail – eventually. The false gods of tribalism, nationalism and race are ancient; we’ve had them with us always, in every part of the globe. The modern mentality has generated its own gods, more deadly than the old. The most potent of these new gods are the idols of political ideology and scientistic utopianism. Minions of these gods attempt to politicize every sector of life.

    by Edmund A. Opitz

  • Liberation Cinema: A Review of Romero

    (Editor’s note: Romero will be aired as the CBS “Movie of the Week” on April 16. The following review is revised and reprinted with permission from the January 1990 issue of Reason magazine, copyright 1990 by the Reason Foundation, 2716 Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 1062, Santa Monica, CA 90405.)

    by Rev. Robert A. Sirico