Dialogue On the Economy and the Budget Between Rep. Paul Ryan and Archbishop Dolan

I just received this article in an email highlighting a worthwhile exchange between Paul Ryan and Archbishop Dolan on the budget  and the state of our economy.

Here is an article from Catholic Advocate by Deal Hudson and Matt Smith:

Since offering his recommendations to cut the federal budget, Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, has been accused by the Catholic Left of destroying Medicare and ending funding of programs to help those in poverty. That none of this is true was explained clearly by Quin Hillyer in “The Catholicity of Paul Ryan’s Budget” published at Catholic Advocate.

Speaker John Boehner, also a Catholic, was on the receiving end of a letter signed by over 70 Catholic academics claiming he, too, was abandoning the poor and destroying the “safety net” of programs mandated by Catholic social teaching. The total lack of regard by these same academics for the settled issues of abortion and marriage has been noted.

But, Congressman Ryan did something that most Catholic members of Congress before him have not done. He took seriously the public debate among Catholics and wrote a letter, dated April 26, to the president of the USCCB, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York.  His letter conveys his respect for the social Magisterium of the Catholic Church and how it can “contribute to the ongoing healthy dialogue about the nation’s budget and the economic foundations that make possible the exceptional generosity of Americans of every faith.”

Ryan’s letter puts his budget recommendations in the context of the world’s economy, underscoring the consequences of ignoring the economic downturn and the growing deficit. The nations of Europe, Ryan explains, by ignoring the problem too long, were forced to make “drastic cuts in benefits to the retired, the sick, the poor, and millions of public employees. Unsurprisingly, this austerity has generated widespread protests, riots, and violence. The social concerns of the Church cannot be addressed under these conditions.”

Ryan warns that the “U.S. has been traveling on a similar path for years,” and that if our nation continues to ignore the need for fiscal responsibility “the weakest will be hit three times over: by rising costs, by drastic cuts to programs they rely on, and by the collapse of individual support for charities that help the hungry, the homeless, the sick, refugees, and others in need.”

On May 18, Archbishop Dolan responded with a letter to Congressman Ryan that begins by stating his appreciation for Ryan’s “continued attention to the guidance of Catholic social justice in the current delicate budget considerations in Congress.” The Archbishop notes his agreement with religious leaders who claim “budgets are moral statements.”

But, where some religious leaders focus entirely on concern for the poor, Archbishop Dolan makes a broader statement:

“Thus I commend your letter’s attention to the important values of fiscal responsibility; sensitivity to the foundational role of the family; the primacy of the dignity of the human person and the protection of all human life; a concrete solicitude for the poor and the vulnerable, especially those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty; and putting into practice the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, here at home and internationally within the context of a commitment to the common good shared by government and other mediating institutions alike.”

Dolan’s inclusion of fiscal responsibility is clear recognition of Congressman Ryan’s basic point that without a sound economy the safety net of programs for the poor, both governmental and private, are put at risk. The Archbishop also points out the importance of human life, a point completely ignored by the Catholic academics who wrote Boehner, and which led all the bishops to urge Catholics in Congress not to pass the health care legislation, now the law of the land.

It’s also significant that Archbishop Dolan writes that Ryan, “rightly pointed out Pope John Paul’s comments on the limits of what he termed the ‘Social Assistance State.’” Dolan explains this by stressing the interrelation of subsidiarity to solidarity, quoting the Blessed John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus (48):

“… the principle of subsidiarity must be respected: a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good. (Centesimus Annus, 48).”

Archbishop Dolan concludes by telling Congressman Ryan that he, along with Bishops Blaire and Hubbard, who wrote a public letter on budget issues, “would be pleased to make ourselves available.”  We at Catholic Advocate hope that Congressman Ryan accepts this invitation, because both the Church and our nation will be the beneficiary of a continued discussion of these foundational issues.

A copy of Chairman Ryan’s letter is available here.

A copy of Archbishop Dolan’s letter is available here.

Upon receipt of Archbishop Dolan’s letter, Chairman Ryan issued the following statement:

“I thank Archbishop Dolan for his leadership and guidance on how policymakers can best serve the common good of our nation.  The perilous fiscal and economic challenges facing our country require solutions that reflect our shared values and are rooted in timeless principles.  The House-passed budget – The Path to Prosperity – seeks to strengthen the economic security of seniors, workers, and families, and averts the debt-fueled economic crisis before us.  Our budget upholds the dignity of the human person and is especially attentive to the long-term concerns of the poor.  I hope Americans of every faith and political background will continue in constructive dialogue to address these great challenges in their economic and moral dimensions.  I am deeply grateful to Archbishop Dolan for his inspired engagement in this dialogue.”

Speaker John Boehner (R, OH-08) followed with this statement:

“I welcome Archbishop Dolan’s letter and am encouraged by the dialogue taking place between House Republicans and the Catholic Bishops regarding our budget, the Path to Prosperity. Our nation’s current fiscal path is a threat to human dignity in America, offering empty promises to the most vulnerable among us and condemning our children to a future limited by debt. We have a moral obligation as a nation to change course and adopt policies that reflect the truth about our nation’s fiscal condition and our obligation to future generations, and to offer hope for a better future. Our duty to serve others compels us to strive for nothing less. As Chairman Ryan notes in his letter to the Archbishop, Americans are blessed to have the teachings of the Church available to us as guidance as we confront our challenges together as a nation.”

Social Justice: Catholic Doctrine Versus Progressive Perversion

Kyle, a blogger friend who has drifted over to the Dark Side and has pledged allegiance to Leftists has posted a couple paragraphs of a column written by Rev. James Martin S.J. on social justice and helping the poor. Here is yet another instance of Kyle in his usual naiveté refusing to face reality and come to grips with the fact that social justice is being perverted. He gives the entire social justice crowd the benefit of the doubt without question, while on the other hand he questions the motives of others who disagree with him on other moral issues. Kyle ignored everything past my first question and acted dumb when he responded to my first question. Since he didn't address the totality of my questions it seems like he may okay with the perverted form of "social justice".  For a postmodernist Kyle sure has a lot of faith in the words of that phrase. Didn't Ricoeur encourage a hermeneutic of suspicion?



If Rev. James Martin S. J. ("social justice") really did mean for his title to be taken literally then that title was a scurrilous lie. I am inclined to believe that he didn’t want people to take the title of his post literally and assume that Beck literally told Jesus to drop dead. But even then that title was an irresponsibly scandalous, and gratuitously blasphemous rhetorical stunt as well as a cheap shot. Father is way off base. Glenn Beck was not advocating for people to abandon the poor. If Rev. Martin actually posted the entire transcript of Glenn Beck’s radio program in which Beck discussed social justice you will see that Beck differentiates between the perverted, morphed, leftist, good feeling version of social justice from the gospel of social justice that promotes charity and speaking up for the poor, which Beck advocates. I am posting the full transcript of what Glenn Beck verbalized on his radio program:



Here is Glenn Beck responding to progressives like Rev. James Martin S.J. ("social justice") who took his words out of context:











If an individual believes in the form of social justice which refers to charity and helping the poor according to Catholic social teaching or Thomistic metaphysics that is fine. But, if you believe in the type of social justice that has been perverted by the likes of Father Coughlin who ascribed to this definition of social justice as given by Wikipedia:


Social justice is also a concept that some use to describe the movement towards a socially just world. In this context, social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality and involves a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution. These policies aim to achieve what developmental economists refer to as more equality of opportunity than may currently exist in some societies, and to manufacture equality of outcome in cases where incidental inequalities appear in a procedurally just system-- then I agree with Beck. Run for the hills, away from your Church, as far away as you can get from that Church. So, yes, if a particular parish Catholic Church is teaching this type of social justice, either try and change their perverted notions as to what constitutes the real meaning of social justice which the Catholic church and others’ in our society have followed for over 2000 years or leave that Church and find a Catholic Church that espouses the principles of how the Bible teaches social justice. Even John Rawl’s theory on social justice, which states -- "Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others." -- is too conservative in my opinion.

While Father Martin was right in pointing out the Church teaching below, many progressives today take this particular teaching to the extreme, isolating it as the sole teaching on social justice by the Catholic Church while excluding other teachings on social justice.

"Catholic social teaching, like much philosophical reflection, distinguishes three dimensions of basic justice: commutative justice, distributive justice, and social justice. Commutative justice calls for fundamental fairness in all agreements and exchanges between individuals or private social groups Distributive justice requires that the allocation of income, wealth, and power in society be evaluated in light of its effects on persons whose basic material needs are unmet... Social justice implies that persons have an obligation to be active and productive participants in the life of society and that society has a duty to enable them to participate in this way." U.S. Bishops. Economic Justice for All (1986) 68-71.

"What the Catholic Church teaches and declares regarding the social life and relationships of men is beyond question for all time valid. The cardinal point of this teaching is that individual men are necessarily the foundation, cause, and end of all social institutions." Pope John XXIII, On Christianity and Social Progress (1961) 218-19.
"The norm of human activity is this: that in accord with the divine plan and will, it should harmonize with the genuine good of the human race, and allow men as individuals and as members of society to pursue their total vocation and fulfill it." Vatican II, Church in the Modern World (1965) 35.

Here is the Church’s teaching on subsidiarity:

"It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry .So, too, it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and a disturbance of right order, to transfer to the larger and higher collectivity functions which can be performed and provided for by lesser and subordinate bodies. Inasmuch as every social activity should, by its very nature, prove a help to members of the body social, it should never destroy or absorb them." Pope Pius XI. On Reconstructing the Social Order (1931) 79.

Christopher Kaczor, Ph.D. points out that one of the seven social teachings of Catholic social teaching is to promote the family. He points out that “Social conditions either contribute to the stabilization or the destabilization of family structures. Social conditions that destabilize include mandatory and unreasonably long work hours, a toxic "social culture" that denigrates fidelity, legal dissolution of the definition of marriage between one man and one woman, and excessive taxation.” Kaczor also points out how Pope John Paul II promotes a healthy balance of States responsibility to help the securing of the common good and avoiding becoming a welfare or a “nanny-state” which offers cradle to grave security.

Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum even takes on the issue of socialists promoting a class warfare. Pope Leo XIII states, “To remedy these wrongs the socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that were they carried into effect the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community.”


"It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a working man's little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life."


"What is of far greater moment, however, is the fact that the remedy they propose is manifestly against justice. For, every man has by nature the right to possess property as his own."


"The fact that God has given the earth for the use and enjoyment of the whole human race can in no way be a bar to the owning of private property. For God has granted the earth to mankind in general, not in the sense that all without distinction can deal with it as they like, but rather that no part of it was assigned to any one in particular, and that the limits of private possession have been left to be fixed by man's own industry, and by the laws of individual races... private ownership is in accordance with the law of nature. … and it cannot but be just that he should possess that portion as his very own, and have a right to hold it without any one being justified in violating that right."


"And in addition to injustice, it is only too evident what an upset and disturbance there would be in all classes, and to how intolerable and hateful a slavery citizens would be subjected. The door would be thrown open to envy, to mutual invective, and to discord; the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the levelling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation. Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property. This being established, we proceed to show where the remedy sought for must be found."


"These three important benefits, however, can be reckoned on only provided that a man's means be not drained and exhausted by excessive taxation. The right to possess private property is derived from nature, not from man; and the State has the right to control its use in the interests of the public good alone, but by no means to absorb it altogether. The State would therefore be unjust and cruel if under the name of taxation it were to deprive the private owner of more than is fair."

Glenn Beck Exposes Cap & Trade/America Power Act Which Equals Removal of Wealth

Are President Obama, Joe Liebermann, and John Kerry going to transform the United States into Greece?  Are Libs going to cause the downfall of America?

Kerry's Faithful Churches & Global
Warming Alarmists= Enviro-Nazis

Democracy in Action=Social Justice and Ecological Justice

Any liberal that wants to distribute their wealth by all means please go ahead and do so, but leave us patriotic conservatives the hell alone!!

The New York Times is a crock of sh*t!! The New York Times needs to be renamed The Liberal Activist Anti-Truth Times.

WASHINGTON D.C. POLITICIANS ARE THE PROBLEM.  CITIZENS WHO BELIEVE IN BIG GOVERNMENT ARE THE PROBLEM.  Could we please just put all these people on a rocket and launch them into outer space so we don't have to deal with these dumbocrats anymore?

Cardinal George (Catholic Church) Honors Propagator of Anti-White Hate Speech -- Fr. Pfleger WTH????

I guess the Catholic Church is now giving awards to priests who propagate anti-white hate speech all in the name of "social justice". I am ticked- SOOOO TICKED!!! - at this shocking revelation. This is beyond ludicrous. Father Pfleger is receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award for "dismantling racism". This is such a farce. I think Cardinal George and the rest of the Catholic Lefties have had some demonic delusional curse casted upon them for them to give this particular type of award to a race baiting priest. Father Pfleger has been seen in church standing side-by-side Rev. Jeremiah Wright not only listening but in fact celebrating, and spewing both anti-American and anti-white hate speech. The leftist loons within the Catholic Church have distorted the meaning of social justice to mean anything that benefits minorities at any cost- regardless of the cost to anyone else or theft of money of hard working Americans (spread the wealth) if it benefits minorities then its okay because whitey deserves this maniacal twisted version of retribution. Father Pfleger is propagating this perversion of social justice even though none of the African Americans living in America today ( or other minorities) have been slaves or, been subject to increased hardships due to the actions of others any moreso than whites today, nor has there been an increased amount of prejudice against minorities anymore than whites today. These people are trying to wrongly justify propagating white racism from minorities to get even for the past. Is that really exemplifying what Jesus Christ would have wanted? Jesus did not promote hate. He promoted love. He promoted turning the other cheek and not revenge. Does this man have any business being a priest? Should he be given an ultamatum to stop spewing vitriolic racist hatre speech, misleading Catholics, and to stop causing scandal or be defrocked?

Here is Father Pfleger spewing hate:

Practical Schism & The Catholic Church