A number of academic studies find that various types of state level pro-life legislation reduce the incidence of abortion. However, in these states, it is possible that changes in values and mores, and not the legislation itself, might be responsible for these abortion declines. Indeed, since the enactment of pro-life legislation is not a random occurrence, the analysis of these laws might be biased by what social scientists call “endogeneity problems.” In this study, I address these endogeneity problems through a series of natural experiments. I compare abortion trends in states that enacted pro-life legislation to abortion trends in states where pro-life laws were passed, but later nullified by a judge. All states passing pro-life laws should have experienced similar changes in values, however, the policy changed only in those states where the law took effect. Overall, the results contribute to the body of academic literature which finds that pro-life legislation reduces state abortion rates.

Critics of Pope Pius XII usually fail to account for the dangerous role he took as mediator in a conspiracy against Hitler at the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Peace negotiations between German military rebels and the British government flowed through the Vatican as a secret conduit. First-hand testimonies by German conspirators, and secondary studies by historians of the German Resistance and British-Vatican relations, all give evidence of the Pope’s heroic courage in the face of grave threats to himself and the Catholic Church.

This article presents some of Pope Benedict XVI’s thoughts on economic matters, drawing from his writings and speeches before and after his election to the Papacy. He has spoken on numerous occasions about Marxism, capitalism, and, more recently, globalization, which can be thought of as an extension of capitalism. While he is harshly critical of Marxism, his criticisms of capitalism are more moderate, though he maintains a number of reservations about it, and draws parallels between the two systems. In both Marxism and capitalism he sees an attempt to construct a social order on reason alone, and he contrasts thiswith a Catholic vision of the social order in which reason is united to virtue in the service of moral values. He is generally supportive of globalization, though he has expressed concern about its effects on families and on the poor, as well as its effects on inequality and monopoly power. (Ed. Note: It should be noted that this article was completed, and the current volume of the Review in production before Pope Benedict’s encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, was released.)

This is a summary and brief explanation of many of the key principles of the economic system called solidarism, developed by Fr. Heinrich Pesch, S.J. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which was explicitly grounded on Christian and traditional natural law principles.

Punishment as a response to deviant and criminal behavior is ubiquitous and multi-dimensional in nature. Retribution as a dominant philosophical rationale governs the imposition of criminal punishment in contemporary American society. There is a need to understand punishment in terms of what it symbolizes. This article proposes an approach that integrates critical insights of social theory and the principles of Catholic social thought to understand the meaning of punishment. Themes of power relations, person, and order reveal not only deeper dimensions of meaning, but contradictions inherent in current systemic penal practices and insight into changing trends as bases for policy initiatives.

The 2008 presidential election witnessed a struggle among Catholics with regard to their civic responsibilities. The U.S. bishops published documents and made numerous public statements for the purpose of clarifying a Catholic’s role in politics. Yet the presidential candidate with the most extreme positions against the fundamental issues of Catholic Social Teaching won a majority of the Catholic vote. This paper will examine the role of religion in politics and the importance of civic responsibility among Catholics. It will further lay the foundation for a detailed discussion of how Catholics should act in the public square and apply it to explaining the problematic outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

Although Catholic teaching opposes same-sex “marriage,” in America Catholics support SSM more strongly than do Protestants, and states with Catholic majorities are much more likely to regularize homosexual relations. Younger persons support SSM more strongly than do their elders, suggesting that support will continue to grow. The trends in American Catholic thought on this issue exemplify American exceptionalism, moralism, and growing secularism, and reflectcatechetical ambiguity, equivocation among the U.S. bishops, elite dissent, and the lingering effects of the clergy sex abuse scandals and the birth control controversy.

This paper proposes a Catholic narrative structure for the story of Western civilization, a general outline that eschews secularism and historicism as much as biblical literalism and Catholic triumphalism. In brief, St. Augustine is more correct than Leonardo Bruni: There is only one age of man. We, God’s wondrous creatures, do not change over recorded time. Everywhere in the world, best documented and demonstrated in the West, we see mankind struggle against himself more than merely respond passively to impersonal and improbable social, economic, political, or gender-based “forces.” God, the author of history, writes straight across crooked lines. He shows us that the path of history points toward unity in diversity.

Much of liberal theory tacitly presupposes a secularized and radicalized form of the religious view called fideism, according to which reason and faith, Athens and Jerusalem, have nothing to say to each other. John Paul II defended the contrasting view that only rightly ordered faith allows reason to become fully itself. If he was right, however, then to purge civic discourse of expressions of faith would make it not more rational, but less. Carson Holloway convincingly demonstrates this point through a sustained examination of thinkers who shaped the present age.

Students of law and business administration are perplexed by the solidarity and resilience of the modern corporation. This is because knowledge of the defining elements of the corporation—of individual interests and the nexus of contracts—cannot account for the integrity and vitality of the whole. Beginning with the seminal ideas of Mary Parker Follett about organizations, specifically her ideas about functional relating and self-creating coherence, this essay draws upon Catholic Social Theory to explain how the life of the corporation is rooted in the life of the nuptial pair. Despite its often vast complexity, the modern corporation is literally an incorporation: a joining of male and female in one body. Implications of this idea about the corporation for our understanding of corporate law and business administration are discussed. Also briefly considered are implications of this idea for a theology of the corporation.

Data on the location of abortion clinics and crisis pregnancy centers in California are used to estimate Poisson models of the number of both kinds of clinic, to compare their location decisions, and to better understand the factors which limit clinic availability in some counties. The locations of the two types of clinic are determined in significantly different ways. Market size is the most important factor explaining the lack of clinics in certain counties; labor force participation rates,Catholic population, and cultural/political environment also play significant roles. Ethnicity plays only a modest role in clinic location. Instrumental variables generalized methods of moments estimates suggest that the number of abortion clinics has no independent effect on the number of crisis pregnancy centers.

By reviewing the notion of the human person found in the modern liberal tradition, this essay seeks to give an account of the possible tensions between modern liberal political life and human fulfillment as understood in Catholic tradition. Resolving any such tensions would require showing that the philosophical underpinnings of modern liberalism are compatible with man’s “transcendent dignity” to pursue and live the Truth. By way of conclusion, the Church’s rapprochement with modern liberalism is discussed in light of Benedict XVI’s comments on and praise of American civil life made during his recent visit to the U.S.

Human Dignity is the preeminent goal and principle of Catholic Social Teaching. However, there does not appear to be any systematic way of evaluating the effectiveness of proposed social actions or policies for their effectiveness in upholding Human Dignity. Social Doctrine identifies three additional permanent principles: the Common Good, Solidarity, and Subsidiarity; and, Human Dignity is upheld best when these other three are each fully and equally met. The resulting “triad stool” model proposed here which upholds Human Dignity offers the faithful a powerful means of understanding and evaluating social actions for their advancement of Human Dignity.