No wonder Boehner cries a lot: Conservative Catholics say he cut too little. Libs say too much.

Speaker of the House Republican John Boehner may have grown up in a Roman Catholic family, but a large groups of Catholic academics don’t feel his politics are in keeping with his faith…

More than 75 professors at Catholic University and other prominent Catholic colleges have written a pointed letter to Mr. Boehner saying that the Republican-supported budget he shepherded through the House will hurt the poor, the elderly and the vulnerable, and that he therefore has failed to uphold basic Catholic moral teachings.

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Editor’s note: I’m betting none of these guys ever actually read all of Rerum Novarum … or any of the subsequent follow ups and additions, by later popes. You can read them all by clicking the link, below.

Social Teachings of the Catholic Church

Writer doesn’t like Father Corapi. Says Corapi is too liberal.

I find it rather unseemly that a priest would take such an arrogant and aggressive tone of machismo in all of his deliberations. I understand that, in a culture that worships the military and sees violence as therapeutic, many people applaud this nonsense. I understand that, in a Calvinist culture, the desire to demonize the enemy is always seductive. But on so many issues, Fr. Corapi’s tone and teachings are leading people astray. For a priest that loves to attack “dissent”, he comes dangerously close to encouraging it – by emphasizing the values of American liberalism over the values of Catholic social teaching.

The best example of this is his attack on “socialism” – see the You Tube video linked here (no, I am not putting this on the front page of Vox Nova, go click on it yourself if interested!) I admit, I didn’t get through the 27 minutes. I couldn’t stomach it. But here’s the gist of it – Corapi is attacking the great evil of socialism, with the implicit implication that this is an issue in American political discourse right now. He spends a lot of time quoting Rerum Novarum – out of context. I never hear him explaining that Leo XIII, and all popes after him, condemned American-style laissez-faire liberalism equally with socialism (Pius XI’s “twin rocks of shipwreck”). Of course, Corapi is really winking at the extreme right, which believes that Obama is some kind of socialist. This is the point of his video. I’m sorry, but anyone who thinks that Obama, who is more to the right that the average European social democrat, is somehow a radical socialist simply does not deserve to be taken seriously, and definitely does not understand Catholic social teaching.

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Editor’s note: ??????????!

Catholic writer Lisa Graas takes Archbishop Listecki to task for his stance on the Wisconsin Cheese (Union) Revolution

St. John Chrysostom once said, “The road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.” The reasoning for this quote can be found in the Book of Luke which, paraphrased, means “to whom much is given, much is required.” Bishops are responsible for the souls of their flock. So it is that they will have much to answer for when they meet God. These are the things I considered when I learned that Milwaukee’s Archbishop Listecki decided to back Wisconsin’s Government Cheese Revolution and, in justifying it, took both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI completely out of context. Catholics in Wisconsin, and in states across America, especially those who don’t want to see their state go bankrupt, deserve to know the truth.

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Confused about world-wide economic problems? Here’s the Catholic answer!

Catholic Social Teaching and the Market Economy

23 May 2007

Edited by Philip Booth

A new perspective on how Christians should approach issues of public policy

Read the book (PDF format)

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Memo To President-Elect Obama and His Team – From the Pope

        
Memo To President-Elect Obama and His Team from the Pope 

“Human law is law only by virtue of its accordance with right reason; and thus it is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in such case it is no law at all, but rather a species of violence.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia-Ilae, q. xciii, art. 3, ad 2m.

Source: RERUM NOVARUM ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII. May 15, 1891