Catholic Christian social teaching strongly opposes tea party views

http://ncronline.org/news/justice/after-debt-ceiling-crisis-real-work-us-social-policy-lies-ahead

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If lay Catholic allegiance to the church’s social teaching on economic issues comes to play a major role in the next election cycle, it could spell the death of the tea party movement and a resurgence of the Democratic Party unseen since FDR’s New Deal era, when Roosevelt oversaw policies of a minimum wage, a Social Security system for the elderly, and an end to child labor -- all elements of Catholic social teaching that became an integral part of the U.S. social and political culture.

In the current economic/ social/political upheaval, Catholic leaders have insisted that, if anything, the shared sacrifice demanded in recent months in the name of fiscal responsibility by both parties must include a substantive, equitable sharing of sacrifice by the well-to-do in coming years.

They also insist that upcoming federal policies must alleviate the burden of the nation’s middle class and poor -- the 80 to 90 percent of Americans who continue to be hit much harder by current and projected economic sacrifices than the economically elite who are sheltered from such vicissitudes by their wealth and their extraordinary tax breaks.

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Perhaps a key argument -- not yet effectively utilized by church leaders, despite its potential populist and political appeal -- is that Republican insistence on continuing the Bush-era tax cuts for the very rich undermines not only the nation’s economic recovery but the very democracy on which the United States has been built for more than 200 years.

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...won't listen, even if the Church makes it an issue.

Although they'll piss and moan about 'cafeteria Catholics', as if they were purely a left-wing phenomenon, the truth is, their 'seamless garment' is just as holey-with-an-e as anything on the other side.

They've made their choice -- the R after a name is what matters, and the rest is negotiable. If the GOP continued to oppose abortion, and -- assuming arguendo -- the bishops followed the lead of a number of mainline denominations and plumped for basically the tripartite division of Roe, they'd follow the party, and not the bishops. They did it on the death penalty, they did it on the war in Iraq, they did it on any number of economic and social-justice issues.

NCR is talking about a world that ceased to exist 50 years ago, as far as American politics is concerned.

...the institutional Catholic church has become, and I say this as a sad child of Dom Pedro Arrupe, the Republican Party at prayer, just as in Disraeli's time the Church of England had become the Tory Party at prayer.

Any specifically Catholic appeal, on social justice grounds, to Catholic swing voters will have to come from outside groups like Pax Christi, or from the Orders. The episcopate is hopeless.

The bishops couldn't be bothered. The secular clergy as well. They're so close they can practically smell the repeal of Row, and Griswold, and nothing is going to get in their way.

From the article at the OP:

“Our nation must be fiscally responsible in morally responsible ways,” said the heads of Catholic Relief Services (Kenneth Hackett) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace (Bishop Howard J. Hubbard of Albany, N.Y.) in a July 29 letter to Congress protesting dramatic budget cuts in foreign aid for humanitarian projects assisting the poor in some of the world’s neediest nations.

“A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons,” two bishops’ conference committee chairs, Hubbard and Stockton, Calif., Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of the bishops’ domestic policy committee, said July 29. “It requires shared sacrifice by all, including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary military and other spending, and addressing the long-term costs of health insurance and retirement programs fairly.”

“While a national economic crisis has been avoided, the mandated cuts to domestic programs have the potential to cause an even greater economic crisis for the nation’s most vulnerable citizens,” Catholic Charities USA head Fr. Larry Snyder said Aug. 4. “We remain deeply concerned that with an approach that focuses solely on cutting spending, efforts to balance the nation’s budget will continue to result in dramatic negative impact on the nearly 48 million Americans living in poverty, neglecting the moral imperative to adequately address the needs of those most vulnerable among us.”

...CRS of course rolls that way, as does the odd bishop seconded to the USCCB committees on the relevant issues. I would expect the head of Catholic Charities USA to care about such things. I would also never expect to see any of them in any position of power.

We had a generation ago Bernardin and Weakland and a few more out there fighting the good fight, highly visible, and highly irrelevant, while the rest were cheerleading for Reagan, and Michael Novak was telling the bishops who cared about such things that they just didn't understand economics, or Catholicism.

Look at the archbishops, where the big megaphones, the big bums-in-seats are. Fossils, the lot of them.

of the Committee on International Justice and Peace, of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The difference between an Archbishop and a Bishop is that an Archbishop heads a larger diocese -- an Archdiocese. Just because he lives in a bigger city doesn't give him a bigger "megaphone."

...he'd head the USCCB itself. But no, the odious Dolan of New York is the president.

Sorry, I don't believe that anymore than I believe that the Pope's is the only Catholic voice that matters.

Saying that only the President of the USCCB "matters" is like saying Ted Kennedy didn't matter, because he was only a U.S. Senator, and not President of the U.S.

clergy, or not solely the clergy and the clergy are supposed to SERVE the people, not the other way around.

The root of the word church is about community, i.e. the people.

too late. Also, the bishops have lost tons of credibility given the pedophile scandals.

Bottom line: The bishops want to sound reasonable and are forever eager to deflect from the pedophile issues and all that entails to this day, and thus are attempting to sound like they actually care about social justice issues.

Their main issues remain untouched and those are gay marriage, abortion and contraception. The power and control trips they still enjoy will not be trumped by social injustice issues and thus, just as when GWB was running, they will intimidate their 'flocks' into voting republican via voting guides, etc.

The bishops begin and end with abortion, contraception and gay marriage issues. Don't be fooled by the so-called impassioned tones emitted by this group to sway American voters via social injustice only to aggressively tell them how to vote (and that will again be for republicans) in 2012.

This is mere history and will repeat itself again and again. Mark my words.

The tightly closed in-curious ranks of authoritarian power needed to enforce anti-Choice were also the perfect environment to protect & defend pedophiles.

in order to maintain their authority. But an authority based on false perfection is no authority at all.

Meanwhile, there a a billion Catholics who believe what they will believe.

that the church used to teach that mature responsible Catholics must decide things for themselves and stake their own souls on those CHOICES. Those older Catholics remember the church teaching that moral authority is the individual's risk and responsibility, not the church's, because that IS the model we see in the life of Lord Jesus.

...when I was a boy I admired Dom Helder just this side idolatry.

reproductive choice and GLBT rights. Those two issues align the church, if not its members, with the right. It's a bad bargain.

went to war. They were also dealing with the model of Civil Disobedience set by Black Americans in their struggle for Civil Rights.

Their response to these questions was to tell young adult Catholics that their moral authority was their own responsibility, that we were to heed the teachings of our church and do our best to figure out our own problems and then stake our own souls on our behaviors. That's the sort of stuff that Catholic people USED to talk about in Confession.

Their position on these issues is unequivocal.

was a recent example. People happened to tell me stuff about that vote that was going on in their parishes. PRESSURE for W.

I don't need them anymore, haven't for a very long long time.

The individual conscience is paramount.

but nothing ex-cathedra.

was the ban on women as priests. Which is quite telling, IMHO. What makes some of them so afraid of women?

Probably because we know them too well. And they know that.

because there have been no women priests.

That's it.

Nothing about how the whole life and experiences of Lord Jesus depended upon women doing the things that women do.

The Church's position on those issues is set in stone. I don't see any endorsement for a candidate or platform that is not pro-life or one that supports gay marriage nor do I see any room for compromise on those issues.

and a "Godless Theology". Clips of Perry's close friends (if he is the nominee) saying those things about the largest single religious denomination in the United States might prove interesting in an election.

Fundies like Perry are willing to pretend that they think Catholics are "real Christians", but that is not what they actually believe.

They try to hide this fact, but it is a real wedge.

The left should embrace Catholics, and call out the Fundies on their hate of Catholics .... would be awesome.

For the sake of clarity, I'm talking about the type of person who might claim, for example, that all 1 billion Catholics are "enablers" of child abuse just by being members of the Church -- which just happened again yesterday.

It happens on DU every day in numerous threads and you're looking for the Church to back us over the Fundies? The Jews have a word for that - chutzpah.

Why? They're largely progressives and liberals who give a damn about this world and the next.

Thank you for an outstanding article, pnwmom.

I don't think you can say that "They're largely progressives and liberals."

There is a very, very strong radical-right Catholic faction.

The Supreme Court's five radical-right Catholics are a moderate version of how radical-right it gets in U.S. Catholicism.

Listen to EWTN sometime (especially "The World Over"), or read "First Things" for a representative viewpoint. Blackwater's Erik Prince is the type of Catholic I'm referring to.

If there's a ratio of liberal Catholics to radical-right Catholics, I'd bet it's closer to 50/50.

there's no way that the ratio of liberals to "radical-right" is 50/50 -- unless you think some radical right people voted for Obama!

My personal guess would be 20% hard right. The rest divided between centrists and liberals.

Concerning the SCOTUS, I don't see Kennedy as a radical-right Catholic, though I agree about Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts.

You might perceive that because there are some very high profile people who are Catholic fundamentalists like Mel Gibson, Newt Gingrich and that asshole that owns Domino Pizza.

However, the majority are no high profile. The people in the parish churches are not in general hardliners as they live in this world and generally are in the habit of doing works like making sandwiches for a homeless center, collecting food for the pantry, parish ministry work etc. Some are anti-abortion of course but the church, i makes it clear that pro-life also means anti-death penalty.

I say this as an agnostic. I grew up in the Catholic Church and my models were my grandparents who were devout and also generously volunteered their time, energy and money for social causes and they were never grandstandy about it. Social Catholic Thought is often overlooked because of the religiousity. The concept of living in community is often discredited as being communist, Anti-American when it is one the earliest stable sustainable community form in practice.

He's more Catholic than the pope and takes the social teachings very seriously. He's also something of a natural follower and wants to do what the hierarchy tells him to do. He seems to have fallen on the side of the social teachings because I know he hated Chimpy with a passion because of the Iraq war, voted for Kerry and for Obama. But the guy absolutely tortures himself over these issues.

At least he's falling on the right side. And the protestant fundies absolutely freak the shit out of him.

I really appreciate your efforts in getting the word out that there is much, MUCH more to Catholicism than the regressive Ratzofarian Magisterium regime.

to remind more of us.

But we do have Joe Biden!

I too take comfort in the Rosary. I hope Joe stays for 2012 campaign....