Bishop To King
by digby
I wrote a post the other day about the Catholic scholars excoriating the Ryan budget for its treatment of the most vulnerable members of society. It was a truly refreshing statement of Christian principles from a religious hierarchy that has seemed to have cared far more about female sexuality and potential new life than the very real predicament of poor and sick humans already on this earth.
Today, the Catholic Bishops — the lobbying arm of the American Catholic church — fought back. Jonathan Cohn reports:
Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York and president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter on Wednesday to House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan. The subject of the letter was the House Republican Budget, which Ryan wrote, and it was part of an ongoing dialogue between the two men. Dolan’s letter did not endorse the Republican budget per se. But it praised Ryan for his attention to the Church’s values and, if you read the text, you can see why Ryan has (according to Politico) been brandishing it as a signal of support:
As you allude to in your letter, the budget is not just about numbers. It reflects the very values of our nation. As many religious leaders have commented, budgets are moral statements.
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.
[Emphasis mine]
Cohn then cites the many good works the Church does in communities all over the country and gives a short history of Catholic involvement in progressive causes going back a century. He says:
Given this history, how can Dolan say anything remotely charitable about either the Republican budget or the man who wrote it?
I’m sure everyone who reads this blog is aware of just what an un-Christian document Ryan’s budget really is, but if you want details, Cohn’s got them. Of course, if you read this blog you also know that Ryan’s real religion is crude Randism, a cruel and selfish philosophy that celebrates greed and avarice and considers people who aren’t wealthy to be parasites not God’s children.
But what about the Catholic Bishops? I can’t help but be reminded of their last foray into national politics, when they lied to their most ardent political followers in order to foil the health care reforms. I wrote at the time:
Nick Baumann at Mother Jones takes a look at the top lobbyist for the Catholic Bishops (they have lobbyists?) who advised Stupak on his bizarre quest to hold out for the Stupak Amendment over the Nelson Amendment for no apparent reason. It’s a fascinating story.
And now it seems there is serious trouble in paradise:
Perhaps the biggest question hanging over the bishops’ strategy is why they were prepared to see health care reform fail unless the Stupak amendment’s abortion provisions were adopted. After all, there was virtually no difference between the Stupak amendment in the House bill—which Doerflinger insisted was the only acceptable option—and the Nelson language in the Senate bill, which the bishops warned would “require people to pay for other people’s abortions.”
[…]
In the days since Stupak voted for the bill, relations between his bloc and the bishops have soured. “The church does have some work to do in dealing with frayed nerves and divisions on policy questions,” Doerflinger told Catholic News Service. Last week, Stupak attacked the bishops and other anti-abortion groups for “great hypocrisy” in opposing Obama’s executive order after having supported former President George W. Bush’s executive order banning stem cell research in 2007. He told the Daily Caller he believed the bishops and the groups they were allied with were “just using the life issue to try to bring down health-care reform.” In other words, he suspected he was wrong to trust that his former allies were acting in good faith.
Yah think?
Yes, it was difficult to understand why Catholic bishops who purport to care for the poor would do such a thing. Certainly the non-wingnut laity wondered. In fact, they were aghast. So were the nuns. So were the Catholic hospitals. Stupak and his bloc were apparently just fools.
It was always obvious that these Catholic Bishops were simply trying to tank health care reform for political purposes. They are aligned with the Republican Party. And they have shown that they are, shall we say, somewhat morally indifferent.Powerful leaders who will cover up for pedophiles aren’t likely to give a damn about the plight of the uninsured.
That’s harsh, but this group deserves it. They lied about the abortion provisions in the health care bill for political purposes. They are an arm of the GOP, not an unaligned religious group lobbying for their religious principles. Of course there are many members of the church, as demonstrated during the health care debate and now this one, who are not partisan, or at least not partisan to the extent that they will lie and cheat and completely abandon their religious principles for power within the Republican party. But the American Catholic Bishops are something else again. They are explicitly political animals. Like The Borgias. They even wear the same hats.
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