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Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee, has said that his cost-cutting federal budget was inspired by Catholic social teaching.
But this didn’t sit well with some Catholics.
Sixty Catholic theologians and activists issued a statement saying that Ryan’s budget is “morally indefensible and betrays Catholic principles of solidarity, just taxation and a commitment to the common good.” And nearly 90 Jesuit scholars and other faculty members and administrators at Georgetown University sent Ryan a letter saying that his budget “appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
In addition, a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee sent a letter to Congress critical of the Ryan budget.
But Ryan, 42, was relaxed, in shirtsleeves and in a good mood, when Register correspondent Charlotte Hays spoke with him in his office in Washington a few hours after he spoke April 26 at Georgetown.
Ryan earned a degree in economics and political science from Miami University in Ohio and is serving his seventh term in the House. He and his wife, Janna, live in Janesville, Wis., with their children.
You are being accused of “mangling” Catholic social teaching, or turning centuries of Catholic social teaching on its ear. I wonder if what’s going on here is a fight over who owns Catholic social teaching. Is there a monopoly on it?
Right! And there isn’t a monopoly. That’s my point. I can no more claim exclusive justification for my economic and political views than a liberal can for theirs within the Church’s social teaching. This is a matter for prudential judgment left to the laity to exercise their discretion. People of good will can disagree on these things. You have these hits come at you — like that letter — but we should raise the tone of the debate. We shouldn’t just try to shoot the messenger and try to nullify the notion that there are other ways in which to implement Church teaching. That just does a disservice to the kind of debate we need to have.
I don’t think liberals can claim exclusive jurisdiction to Church teaching the way they interpret it. Nor can conservatives. There is plenty of room for prudential judgment in between.
Which Catholic thinkers and documents have influenced you?
The magisterium, the Compendium [of the Social Doctrine of the Church], the encyclicals — you know, the social magisterium is basically the encyclicals and papal letters. People try to paste different epistemological views on me, but if you are going to try to tell me what my philosophy is or what my motivating philosopher is, it would be Thomas Aquinas.
I just finished one of George Weigel’s books that I really liked, but instead of saying a particular theologian or writer, I’d say the magisterium itself, the Compendium, my own prayers. And I believe that the founding principles, the Founders, the American idea, created a society that is well within the political expression of Catholic social teaching.
How do you interpret the “preferential option for the poor,” a key point in Catholic social teaching?
Government should not be all-encompassing; government should be focused, and, when you spend government money, it should be focused on spending it on the people who need help the most and not those who need it the least. That’s why we call for means testing. That’s why we call for getting rid of corporate welfare. That’s why we call for circumscribing government programs to the ones who need it the most, why we have in our Medicare reforms a full subsidy for the poor to cover 100% of the costs; that is why in all my Social Security reform bills I bring the minimum Social Security benefit up above the poverty level, which is not the case today, so that no elderly person is under the poverty line.
That means, to me: Target your money where it needs to go the most, which is the preferential option for the poor. But your poverty-fighting strategies should give focus to treating not symptoms, but root causes. That is where I think we have lost our way as a country, because, in treating symptoms, we have pursued solidarity but abused subsidiarity. And these are principles that are interconnected, and people of good will can debate within the sphere of where the balance between those two principles occurs.
But if you just have solidarity without subsidiarity, you end up with big government and rank materialism. And so we need to make sure we keep an eye on revitalizing those civil mediating institutions, those institutions in our society that exist between the person and their government, which are in their community and where we work through our good works as people to advance the common good. And that’s where I think we’ve seen atrophy.
We should not think there is a morally equivalent replacement of these institutions in government bureaucracy. There is an important role for government, and I think that government can help with financing, but it shouldn’t be down to the level of micromanaging our communities.
We want more involvement in people’s lives through our social-mediating institutions. That, to me, is a part of the poverty-fighting strategy that we have lost. The last point I want to make is that the preferential option for the poor means have an economy that is growing and have an economy that is wired, so that people who are in pockets of poverty that have never seen growth and economic opportunity before get it.
Economic growth is fundamentally central to all of this. And I really believe that the policies that our government is pursuing today are anti-growth policies. We need economic growth.
What is the role of government? Does government have a duty to take care of the poor and disadvantaged?
I do believe there is a duty. That is why I keep trying to say government has an important role to play here. But it shouldn’t be such a dominant role that it displaces civil society, that brings us closer to what Blessed John Paul said in Centesimus Annus, what he called the “social-assistance state.” There gets to a point where we can become a social-assistance state, and we have to be mindful of that.
So, to me, government has a very important role — the federal government — in fighting poverty; but we want to make sure that its role is not too overburdensome, so that it displaces all those good works that we do and moves towards what Pope John Paul II called the social-assistance state.
I want to ask you about what is just taxation. Sometimes it appears that the government treats the money of citizens as if it belongs to government, which will allow what the citizen is allowed to keep.
That’s a consciousness I don’t operate from. This is private property. People send their money to the government — it’s the people’s money, not the government’s money. There is a view up here in Washington — they call it the tax expenditure point of view or philosophy — that all the money is the government’s unless it benevolently sends it back to people.
I totally, obviously, don’t ascribe to that view. From a tax perspective, everybody believes in having a progressive tax system: The more you make, the more you pay. But there comes a point where you are actually stifling growth, putting hurdles and barriers to success and entrepreneurship and to reaping the rewards of your labor and to being competitive in the global economy. We have to be ever more mindful of that because we are in a global economy.
We want to have a tax system that is as efficient as possible and raises the proper amount of revenue to the government. And people like me don’t want to be sitting in Washington and pick winners and losers through the tax code, because what ends up happening when you do that is that the politically powerful calls the shots, the people with the muscle; with the lobbyists, they’re the ones who get to write the rules.
That, to me, is fundamentally unfair. So we need a system that is clean and efficient and lets people keep their own money in the first place and decide what they do with it instead of having more money come to Washington, or a higher tax be levied on the public, so that people with political muscle can decide how to spend it.
I think, at the end of the day, government can be corrupt in this, and you’ve got to watch that.
Is the so-called Buffett Rule (a tax plan proposed in 2011 by President Obama that would assess a minimum tax rate of 30% to people who make more than $1 million a year) a moral rule?
[Laughing] No; it’s a political tactic. The president is using it to divide the country along class lines.
Well, let’s talk about food stamps. Is there a moral element to what is going on with food stamps now?
Food stamps have risen 270% over the last decade. The rolls have quadrupled. We had a hearing on this issue in the budget committee. If we just kept food-stamp laws where they were before the stimulus was passed and the changes made by the Pelosi Congress, they would have increased by 40%, adjusting for the recession. This is [from] an economist from the University of Chicago who came and testified to this fact. But the 160% increase that he cited was because of eligibility changes. We have a system called “categorical eligibility,” where people are allowed to get food stamps even if they are not actually eligible.
The reforms we are talking about are pretty commonsense reforms, which is that you need to actually be eligible for this benefit in order to receive it. We have to watch the fact that these programs are growing at unsustainable rates, and we also want to be mindful of encouraging people to be independent and self-sufficient and moving on to lives of their own.
What we reviewed at this hearing is that, when people come off government support, they face a high marginal tax rate, meaning they are better off financially remaining government dependent than they are going to work. That is a huge disincentive to going to work and being independent. We have to be mindful of those disincentives to work.
I know you can’t get into the mind of the opponents of your tax bill. But why do they pursue the course they pursue? Do they think we have the resources to do everything? Do they believe there is always somebody you can tax? How do they think we can sustain the current system? What motivates them?
I try not to get into people’s motivations or question their motives. I just look at the practical results of their arguments: the fact that they are fiscally unsustainable, that the status quo is a debt crisis and that the end of that is Europe — and that is really ugly. We want to prevent that from happening.
I just think that there are people who may bring their political ideology to bear on these debates who prefer transformation from the American idea to more of a progressive welfare state. I disagree with that. I think that that is bad for people; plus I think it is government being dishonest to their people, making promises the government has no means of keeping. That, to me, is dishonest government.
Is there a moral element to the national debt we are facing?
Of course there is. Pope Benedict said it — we’re living in untruth. We’re living at the expense of future generations. We’re telling our children that because we can’t live within our means, they are going to pay our bills: You are going to have diminished futures; you’re going to have an extra burden on your backs that we didn’t have.
That, to me, has severe moral implications. When he was Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict wrote this great book, Without Roots, with Marcello Pera, an atheist, who was president of the Italian Senate. They both — an atheist politician in Italy and a cardinal — arrived at the same conclusion: that moral relativism is the undoing of Western civilization, to put it in a nutshell.
So I would argue that the biggest problem in America today — I wouldn’t say it is the debt or some economic GDP statistic — is more relativism, where truth is becoming some fungible thing. We’re gravitating away from absolute truths, and we’re not teaching our kids these things. My kids go to Catholic schools, so they learn this. The point I would say is that we are practicing fiscal relativism.
We are now translating this lack of fundamental truth into our fiscal policies, and we are living in untruth because we are borrowing against our children. We are making promises to our fellow citizens that we know the government can’t keep. And they are organizing their lives around these promises.
And so, the point I am trying to make is that we need to be honest about that — both parties messed this up. The sooner we face up to it, the better off everybody is. We don’t make changes [for people] 55 and above for Medicare because we think we can still borrow money to make good on those promises; but we are going to have to make changes for the future to make those promises and make these programs sustainable for the future and avoid a debt crisis.
If we don’t do that soon, then the bond markets turn on us, and we have a debt crisis; and then we are going to have to cut people who have already organized their lives around these promises and have retired. That is exactly what is going on in Europe. That, to me, is wrong, and there is a moral component to that.
How should a Catholic layman and politician who has put forward an economic plan that has been criticized by certain members of the hierarchy of his country respond?
You know, they did this to [Speaker of the House] John Boehner when he spoke at Catholic [University of America] last year. We had a bit of this last year, so I exchanged some letters with [New York Cardinal] Tim Dolan. Tim was the archbishop of Milwaukee, and I represent a lot of that diocese, so I’ve known Tim for a long time. And as his letter is pretty darn clear — it’s a matter of prudential judgment and focus on these issues.
I think we need to have a better poverty-fighting policy than the one we’ve got, and the only piece of evidence I feel I need to offer right now is that we have the highest poverty rates in a generation, and we have a debt crisis around the corner — and the poor are the ones who are going to get hurt first and the worst. You get used to [the criticism] in this kind of a job because, when you make difficult decisions, people who have different political opinions or believe in different things will attack you; and you get kind of used to that in this job.
When Obamacare was being debated, the argument always made was that uninsured people went to the emergency room and we all paid for it. I thought that was a good arrangement, and it didn’t take over one-sixth of our economy. But whatever we do, there just isn’t enough medical care to go around. Decisions have to be made.
This is where the preferential option applies pretty clearly, in my opinion, which is that, through better health-care policies, through more patient-centered and directed health care, government should subsidize people who need it more than those who don’t.
I had a bill with Tom Coburn, Devin Nunez and Richard Burr which had refundable tax credits. The lower income you had, the bigger tax credit you had — which is basically a voucher to go get health insurance. And then we had all these other insurance reforms so that it is affordable; and then we had risk pools to subsidize people who had pre-existing conditions. That, to me, makes sense.
A 45-year-old woman who gets breast cancer — you don’t want her to go to the poor house because she had breast cancer. Subsidize her health care. Everybody is better off if we do that, and do it on the front end, where you have disease management and preventative medicine.
Medicaid is really not working. It is subjugating people to second-class health care.
Bring them into the private system so they get the same kind of health insurance everybody else does — and just have a bigger subsidy so they can get it: Those are smarter strategies that bring choice and competition into the health-care system, which are now being repealed with Obamacare.
There is a great test case — we’ve got great principles; we’ve got a good idea of what works in health care. We should apply these. We spend two and a half times per person what any other industrialized country spends.
So we spend plenty of money. We’re just not spending it intelligently and on the right people. Let’s do that, and we can turn this part of our economy into an asset — and we can have a society where everybody gets affordable health care.
But the president’s health-care law is a disaster, and it won’t do that. It is a disaster in so many ways: It violates religious liberty, it violates choice, and it will explode costs; and it ultimately will put a government bureaucrat between a person and their doctor and what they think they need. That is just not a role we should give to government.
Register Correspondent Charlotte Hays writes from Washington, D.C.
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Doesn’t Mr. Ryan look like like the all American boy scout and altar boy? His spiritual mother the Jewish atheist Ayn Rand is so proud of her devil’s acolyte.
Pick your side. You are either Catholic or not. This idea of prudential judgement cannot be applied every time a matter that isn’t abortion comes up, especially when the bishops have spoken so strongly against it. The social teachings of the Church are doctrine. Defend the Church. Be consistent in saying you are Catholic.
It is pointless to argue over how to distribute wealth until someone creats wealth. Economics is not a zero sum game, new wealth can be created by entrepreneurs if economic conditions are favorable to incentivise investment. Look at Facebook IPO. The Federal Gov’t should be limited to those activities alloted by the Constitution, and those added by proper amendment. Then applying Subsidiarity many of these matters should be dealt with at the state and local level. Instead, inane regulations shut down private hospitals, social agencies, charities, and interfere and worsen the failing educational system. Remember, every individual has the duty to educate themselves and earn their own living. As St. Paul said: Let those who will not work not eat! (Tim)
Terrific article; subsidiarity for many of the big shots in the Clergy
is a term for an article not a preferred choice for Christ driven Charity
and Justice. Federal controlled Health Care, Federal control of Welfare,
and Federal Grants for humanitarian efforts solicited by the Church’s Bishop’s is a form of Atheism in that they have displaced Catholic and Christian charity with non-spiritual efforts. Who needs God they say when we have government Grants.
I will pray for them and assistance from the Holy spirit to imbue them with some wisdom
God Bless,
Ralph Benware
Leftist Catholics are really Utopians. Utopians are really communists. Communism has failed. We live on a fallen planet that will never be perfect. Paul Ryan sees that we have run out of other people’s money to use to make people continue to vote for the powers that be. We, the people, need to take care of the poor. The gov’t has had it’s chance and has failed.
This could be a real teaching moment for everyone. Back in the Middle Ages serious questions were debated dispassionately, following the “rules of evidence”. For example no Ad Hominem attacks etc. but with charity. The goal was simply the pursuit of the truth. This great gift of the Church has too long been neglected. What a service to America and to the Church it would be to have Congressman Ryan debate any one of these Georgetown Jesuits in this classical style. Let Bishop Blaire be the moderator. Let the debate go on for a full week if necessary and let the entire debate be posted to YouTube. The last time something like this was done here in America was the Lincoln - Douglas debate over slavery. The issues involved deserve this kind of Catholic approach.
Outstanding comments by Rep. Ryan. I have always thought that many so called Catholic activists were really just socialists in disguise who confuse Catholic social teaching with their political aganda. Rep. Ryan has grown immensely in my eyes.
60 ‘theologians & activists’ along with the fruit cakes of Georgetown and a those fine folks at USCCB, many of which are not pro-life, want to keep people at or below the poverty level instead of trying to help themselves as God wants them to be doing; and they call this ‘catholic’ teaching; not the way that St. Peter and the Apostles saw it as in Acts 6:1-7. Rep. Ryan has the right approach, which is completely different than the late ‘pope’ Ted Kennedy’s birdbrain ‘thoughts’. Maybe all of these experts should be giving at least 50% of their salaries to the poor and all of them should be working in the food kitchens, pantries, etc. instead of wasting time protesting. +JMJ+
Many people look up to the Jesuits as people of a lot of knowledge. Being a graduate of Notre Dame or George Washington University or one of the other Jesuit colleges means you must have your head on straight. Wrong! What Catholic college would invite Obama to speak at a graduation or now Sibelius at George Washington University. If I had paid to have a child to attend one of these schools I would have a terrible time attending the graduation. They are both promoting life styles that no Catholic should approve of. It seems all the Jesuits are liberals as are nuns and priests. This has caused great friction in my own family. I am against abortion and gay marriage and other things against Catholic teachings. They are quite the opposite. I don’t want one dime of mine going for abortion. I think we the people should be taking care of the poor with the governments help. This is exactly what Paul Ryan is saying. Give him a chance. It’s time for our church to get tough with the Jesuits and others that we should respect.
Excellent. Glad to see Paul Ryan gets it.
What a shame that the folks at America magazine, the “fishwrap,” and elsewhere don’t understand Catholic teaching.
For of course the way the Catholic left interpret Solidarity—something imposed forcibly in a top-down way by a centralized authority—is antithetical to Subsidiarity. The two really can’t coexist, under that interpretation. (Which goes to show you that the interpretation is wrong: Correctly-interpreted Catholic teaching never contradicts itself, because truth is never self-contradictory.) Just imagine if the labor movement “Solidarity” in Poland during the Soviet-domination era had been a government-operated organization, a creature of the Central Committee, with mandatory membership for everyone! That is the kind of Satanic caricature of Solidarity embraced by the Catholic left.
True Solidarity is formed spontaneously from the bottom up, as the “Solidarity” movement in Poland was. This is what allows it not only to coexist with Subsidiarity without crushing Subsidiarity out of existence, but in fact to be an expression of the choices of Subsidiary elements, from individuals to families to communities, and so on up to nation-states and the whole human family.
At any rate the other observation is equally important: It is simply a lie to suggest that we can go on as we currently are, without entitlement reform. That way lies Weimar Republic-style economic disaster. And for those who want to practice the preferential option for the poor, ask yourself: Who fares worst in an economic disaster?
People seem to be utterly unaware of the numbers. They are:
(a.) 19%: That’s the percentage of Gross Domestic Product the United States converts into federal tax revenue over any long-term period. You can have short-term spikes by radically changing the tax structure or in wartime, but then people start to change their behaviors and the short-term revenue spike never lasts; it reverts to the normal 19%. Likewise recessions (like the one we’re in now) tend to cause it to dip (it’s at about 15-16% currently) but that only lasts until the recovery returns it to 19%. That’s why 19% has been the consistent ten-year moving average for federal revenues as a percentage of GDP for THE LAST HUNDRED YEARS, despite all the different ways the tax code has been tweaked. There is thus no realistic argument that we can exceed 19% of GDP over any protracted period.
(b.) 30%+: That’s the estimated percentage of Gross Domestic Product that the entitlements portion of the federal budget is expected to grow to by 2035 or thereabouts. Read that last bit carefully. The ENTITLEMENT SPENDING ALONE, if uncut, is expected to grow to 30-plus percent. That’s not including military spending. It’s not including highways. It’s not including federal law enforcement. It’s not including the judiciary. Entitlements, alone. 30-plus percent of GDP.
And we don’t have any realistic expectation of being able to raise revenues, in a long-term way, above 19% of GDP.
Does everyone appreciate the world-shaking shortfall represented by those numbers? I wasn’t kidding when I referenced the Weimar Republic economic meltdown. That’s not implausible. The only folk who’re calling it implausible are those who (a.) don’t have a clue, or (b.) are assuming that eventually someone will wise up and the entitlements will be reformed. Which of course is what I hope for, too.
But it’s understandable why it’s so hard to get people to support a reform plan. Consider:
1. You can’t raise enough revenue through additional taxes to make any serious dent in that kind of shortfall…plus, raising taxes in a recession just makes the recession that much longer, which keeps the GDP depressed and keeps the % of GDP you can capture into federal revenues down below 19%!
So a lot of people, when they say, “The Democrats ought to agree to entitlement cuts, and the Republicans ought to agree to tax increases,” are (admirably) trying to be fair, but they’re just showing they don’t understand the situation. Tax increases could give us a brief revenue spike, as they always do, but only until behavior adjusts and we return to the usual 19%, as we always do. So tax increases are a useless exercise unless government spending gets back down to 19% or thereabouts. (We could live with, say, 22% by taking on modest debt.)
I have no doubt that tax increases will “play a role” in the eventual solution. But the role they will play will not be related to solving the problem. Their sole role will be to give political cover to Democrats, by allowing them to argue to their constituents that they didn’t cave, but succeeded in “sticking it to the rich.”
2. When you talk about cutting a 30%-of-GDP entitlement system down to 20%-of-GDP or less, a lot of people think, “Oh, okay, that’s a 10% reduction. That’s not so bad.” Not so fast: Going from 30%-of-GDP to 20%-of-GDP or less is only 10% of GDP, but it’s a ONE-THIRD cut in the entitlements. One. Third.
So, yeah, one can see why it hasn’t happened yet.
You may say, “Okay, I see why revenue increases aren’t likely to happen from tax increases, since no matter how we restructured the tax code over the last 100 years we never stayed above 23% or so for more than a couple of years at a time. Fair enough. But there MUST be some other way, than just DRACONIAN spending cuts.”
Well, sure there is! It’s called PRINTING MONEY. All the government has to do is “print” enough money to cover the shortfall; that is to say, grant themselves enough money through electronic ledger entries to pay off every Social Security recipient’s check without using any of the dollars that exist today (but which they don’t have, and can’t get).
Sounds great…except remember, the purpose of Social Security is to allow older folk to be able to afford to buy necessities and pay rent. And, remember, as you increase the number of dollars in circulation, the actual buying power of each dollar drops. (That’s called “inflation,” for those of you who didn’t live through the 1970’s.)
Right now, it only takes four dollars to buy a gallon of milk. If the government prints enough money to cover its projected shortfall, it may take eight. How well will Social Security recipients fare when they’re still getting their government check, but it’s measured in dollars that’ve been so devalued that it only pays for half as much rent and food as it used to?
And remember: The “printing money” solution only works for government entitlements of a “defined amount” type: Ones where they promise a check for so-and-so-many dollars.
The “printing money” solution DOESN’T HELP MUCH when the entitlement you’re providing is a product or service of some kind (e.g. medicine or medical care or housing). Why? Because every time you print money to pay for these things, the resulting inflation causes the cost of the items to go up, so you keep having to print more and more money to try to keep up.
ANYWAY, Paul Ryan’s plan frankly doesn’t cut entitlements enough to save our bacon. It’s a stop-gap solution. But it makes a dent in the problem that’ll last us until people begin to grasp how bad the problem is. Hopefully when THAT day comes they’ll be mature enough to allow deeper cuts.
So I’m glad to see the man “gets it,” both with respect to the relationship between (and non-contradictory nature of) Solidarity and Subsidiarity, and also the need to stop sticking our heads in the sand and start solving the problem.
Great idea Veritas!
Excellent. Ryan accurately cuts to the heart of each issue and raises moral concerns most Bishops are ignoring. The left chose to attack him - with the orchestrated critique from SOME Bishops - in order to neutralize the effect of the USCCB’s rightful protest of the HHS mandate.
The USCCB appears split just as America is. This should not be so! I hope they can find a true united voice in fighting our freedoms and stir Catholics do their part - which rightnnow is simply to vote Mr Obama out of office ( although I am skeptical - they couldn’t even find it on abortion, the greatest crime of the past century).
Where do “nearly 90 Jesuit scholars and other faculty members and administrators at Georgetown University” find the instruction “render the poor unto Caesar” in any teaching of the Catholic Church?
I see now why Georgetown has become known as the formerly Catholic Georgetown University. And why “Jesuit” is becoming a term of disgust among faithful Catholics.
What kind of Catholic votes Democratic? A Hispanic one.
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http://www.gallup.com/poll/154430/Catholics-Presidential-Pick-Differs-Ethnicity-Religiosity.aspx
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Overall, Catholics are split evenly between Obama and Romney, but that only tells part of the story. Non-Hispanic Catholics support Romney by a large margin, but Hispanic Catholics overwhelmingly support Obama.
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I suspect that Hispanic Catholics are voting Democratic not because they support abortion or leftist policies, but because they think that the Republicans don’t like them. Indeed, most polls of Hispanic political beliefs show that they are quite politically conservative. However, Republicans have become too cozy with anti-Hispanic (and frequently anti-Catholic) Know-Nothings and this is keeping their share of the Hispanic vote (and probably the overall Catholic vote) down.
Back in the early days of the Bush administration, I examined government funded charitable activity. And my conclusion was that it is rendering unto Caesar that which is God’s.
Quote:Doesn’t Mr. Ryan look like like the all American boy scout and altar boy? His spiritual mother the Jewish atheist Ayn Rand is so proud of her devil’s acolyte.Unquote I can tell when the Left have no real, logical, theological or reasonable arguements because they resort to baseless name-calling, insulting words, childishness and a general lack of good manners.
I found the first to posts to be particularly unhelpful. David Carlon and Joseph don’t take into account our unsustainable levels of debt. I’ve seen nothing in Catholic doctrine that mandates a government spend itself into bankruptcy to fund social programs. Passing off ever more debt to future generations is also a moral issue.
Not a word in here about the Universal Destination of Goods. It’s like Ryan gets his CST positions from the back of cereal boxes.
Adolfo:
I wrote about the Universal Destination of Goods implicitly in my post; but, to be more explicit:
The goal of property rights and free markets and capitalism and entrepreneurialism, in combination with purely voluntary almsgiving, is to get goods into everybody’s hands in a fashion that raises as many people as possible out of subsistence living and up to middle-class life.
In short, the combination of property rights and free markets and capitalism and entrepreneurialism, in combination with purely voluntary almsgiving, is to achieve the Universal Destination of Goods. And these things, in combination, achieve the Universal Destination of Goods more closely and fairly than any other system yet demonstrated in our fallen world.
There is, however, one final requirement. In addition to property rights and free markets and capitalism and entrepreneurialism and a culture of voluntary almsgiving, we need…wait for it…a stable currency and a financial system that isn’t collapsing!
Paul Ryan’s plan offers some hope of avoiding that collapse.
Nothing the leftists have proposed in the last 30 years will do anything but hasten it.
Therefore, one must support either the Ryan plan, or something similar. To do otherwise is to stab your poor neighbors in the back.
Because nobody does well in a collapsed economic system…but the poor do least well of all.
I find nothing “Catholic” about his budget cuts and unfair taxation of the Middle Class-while protecting the Rich at all costs! Nor is there anything Christian about his ideas! He is proposing Class Warfare against the Middle Class and Poor-while the Rich get EVERYTHING! He and his ideas represent “Godless”, greedy Capitalism!
God bless Paul Ryan. To me he has thought this through and prayed hard before he submitted his budget. He has a good grasp on the gospel. Unlike some “Catholics” in Congress, Menendez, Kennedy, Polosi, Biden, Kerry, etc., he is a least trying to LIVE his faith.
The only people attacking Paul Ryan’s budget (which attempts to SAVE those social structures that help the poor, not destroy them) are the liberal Marquette, Georgetown and NotreDumb “Theologians” who attack conservatives for instituting prudent spending restraint, while ignoring the Church’s teaching on abortion. How about you hypocrites pull the telephone pole out of your own eye before working on Ryan’s speck of dust in his?
Looks like the Jesuits are as poor at economics as they are at Theology.
Paul Ryan is nothing but a “Lackey” for the Republican Party! He is a man without charity or compassion for the poor! The Jesuits of Georgetown were ABSOLUTELY CORRECT in their criticism of him! There is NOTHING Catholic or remotely “Christian” about his budget program! He and the Republican Party want to destroy all entitlement programs because they are not POOR! AS one of them said recently, “Why do we need those programs?” Translation: Republicans are Rich, and favor the Rich! They could care less what happens to the Middle Class or Poor!
Rich Dykstra - you obviously didn’t read the article or his budget plan. You are making some insane judgements about the state of his soul as well- “without charity or compassion”? Really Rich? Your psychotic rant is a prime indication that you’re someone who knows absolutely nothing about reality.
“Waaaa Republicans want to destroy the poor bahhhhh!” you sound like a fool.
Which “one of them” said that quote Rich?
Rich, by your reasoning, When Nancy Pelosi said- “They can find out what’s in [Obamacare] after we pass it”
We should translate that as: “All democrats are wealthy busy-body elitists who want to rule and lord over you while you slave for them because you are a not a member of the democrat liberal elite, and you will just have to deal with what we intelligent elitists force upon you and you shouldn’t complain.”
Please Rich, come back to the real world, read the budget, learn to interpret Catholic Social doctrine properly, not just how your crazy liberal friends and a few pseudo-catholic theologians tell you to interpret it. These are the same theologians who support abortion, a women’s priesthood, and brag about being atheist while teaching a catholic theology class.
Rich - you obviously didn’t read the article or his budget plan. You are making some serious judgements about the state of his soul as well- “without charity or compassion”? Really Rich? Such a rant is a prime indication that you’re someone who knows very little about the reality of the situation America is in.
“Republicans want to destroy the poor bahhhhh!” is a very foolish statement. Republicans want to bring people out of poverty, not set up dependency systems where they are punished for raising themselves out of poverty.
Which “one of them” said that they didn’t see a need for these systems Rich?
Rich, by your reasoning, When Nancy Pelosi said- “They can find out what’s in [Obamacare] after we pass it”
We should translate that as: “All democrats are wealthy busy-body elitists who want to rule and lord over you while you slave for them and you will just have to deal with what we intelligent elitists force upon you and you shouldn’t complain.”
That is just as unfair, even though there is more evidence for my opinion on that than yours.
Please Rich- read the budget, learn to interpret Catholic Social doctrine properly, not just how some liberal friends and a few pseudo-catholic theologians tell you to interpret it. These are the same theologians who support abortion, a women’s priesthood, and brag about being atheist while teaching a catholic theology class. Let’s keep this in perspective.
Rich - you obviously didn’t read the article or his budget plan. You are making some serious judgements about the state of his soul- “without charity or compassion”? Really Rich? People against the budget plan understand very little about the reality of the situation America is in.
Republicans want to bring people out of poverty, not set up dependency systems where people are punished for raising themselves out of poverty.
Rich, by your reasoning, When Nancy Pelosi said- “They can find out what’s in (Obamacare) after we pass it”
We should translate that as: “All democrats are wealthy busy-body elitists who want to rule and lord over you while you slave for them and you will just have to deal with what we intelligent elitists force upon you and you shouldn’t complain.”
That is just as unfair, even though there is more evidence for my opinion on that than yours.
Please Rich- read the budget, learn to interpret Catholic Social doctrine properly, not just how some liberal friends and a few pseudo-catholic theologians tell you to interpret it. These are the same theologians who support abortion, a women’s priesthood, and brag about being atheist while teaching a catholic theology class. Let’s keep this in perspective.
ok… looks like the moderators don’t know what they’re doing…
I would just like to correct an earlier statement made on this forum by Ann: neither Notre Dame nor George Washington University are Jesuit. Having been educated at both the high school, college, (and possibly medical) level by Jesuits, I have a great deal of respect for many of their ideas concerning spirituality, virtue, and education. However, it is indeed clear to me after all this experience that they do tend to err on the side of the left. It is indeed the duty of society to care for its poor - that is not up for debate for any Catholic, and the Jesuits are right to emphasize this point. Debate and misapprehension arises when people mistake “society” for “government” and vice versa, which is a mistake many people make in my opinion.
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