Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good has weighed in to support the USCCB's concerns about the Ryan budget. First, in their "Common Good Forum," this week, they published an essay by Nick Cafardi that is well worth the read.
Today, they issued a press release on the subject. The text follows:
Fred Rotondaro, Chair of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, an organization of lay Catholics committed to traditional Catholic social teaching, issued the following statement on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ letters to members of Congress regarding the budget, and on Speaker John Boehner’s and Cong. Paul Ryan’s responses:
“As Catholics deeply committed to the Church’s social teachings, we at CACG were thrilled to read the letters from our bishops to members of Congress calling for budgetary decisions that protect human dignity, protect the poor and most vulnerable and advance the common good. Instead, the GOP passed a budget that is mean spirited at best and, at worst, rooted in the kind of social Darwinism the Catholic Church has always opposed. As the bishops clearly and unambiguously stated, ‘The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.’”
“Consequently, we were somehat surprised to hear Speaker Boehner dismiss the bishops’ concerns, commenting that the bishops need to take a ‘bigger look’ at the budgetary issues. Of course, you can take a big look or a little look at the Gospels, and no where will you find an endorsement of the GOP’s Ayn Rand-inspired commitment to laissez-faire, trickle down economics. The bishops are taking they big look at the GOP budget, and they don’t like what they see.”
“Even more disturbing were comments made yesterday by Congressman Ryan, who said that the letters from the bishops’ conference were ‘not from all the bishops.’ Since 1919, what was then known as the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and is now known as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, for all those years, the bishops’ conference has been at the forefront of the fight for social justice. More disturbingly, Mr. Ryan seems to be trying to pit some bishops against other bishops, which is emphatically not what political leadership in this country is about.”
