Seems to me that the bishops, having squandered their moral authority with their own flocks, have redirected their demands for charity to a manifestly non-charitable entity.

In making such evaluations, and their usual demands, they seem to overlook the hugely immoral situation facing each of my grandchildren as they are born. Nowadays each one of them comes into the world saddled by a debt of over $ 40,000–and that is only the Federal piece. Our good bishops are pleased to increase this injustice by ever more spending and ever more borrowing against my grandchildren’s future.

Blind guides!

Pope Benedict XVI in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est [God is love] reiterated the Church’s fundamental identity-mission as Word-Worship-Service [This is precisely why the Bishops in America are protesting the Government's infringement on religious freedom and not merely 'freedom of worship'] He also clearly stated that the Church’s fundamental duty was ‘Charity’ while the “State’s” was “Justice”. There is a great deal here already to ponder.

However, in terms of such issues as the Federal Budget, the Church’s mission, responsibility and ‘expertise’ is to proclaim the dignity of the poor and the need to care for them. Beyond that the bishops can comment on such and such a policy but lack the ‘expertise’ to claim that their ‘position’ on such a such a policy is more than a prudential decision-a prudential decision with which Catholics may or may not agree.

The bishops are in a tough spot. If they simply put forward a general social justice principle, people could ‘ignore’ it viewing it as a pious platitude (unfortunately), however to ‘put some flesh on it’ or to give the statement some ‘traction’ coming down on a specific policy as an example of a good or poor application of the principle in question, can open up a can of worms for them and us.

Catholics are called to believe the teachings of the Church. There is and cannot be a ‘culture of dissent’ against the Church’s teachings in matters of faith and morals [In this case, no Catholic could (nor would) come out and say we don't care about the poor 'let them eat cake'] However a prudential decision on a policy [for example a specific program for the poor] by the bishops may or may not be well informed and can be agreed with or disagreed with by Catholics making their own prudential decision on the same policy issue.

I am not backing Congressman Paul Ryan’s specific budget-I do not have the EXPERTISE to comment either way. I do know however that previously in formulating his budget proposals, he not only took the Catholic Social Teachings-princples and attempted to apply them but also was in active conversation, along with Speaker of the House Boehner with the Bishops.

The economic issues facing our country are not unrelated to even more fundamental problems with what are commonly called ‘social issues’. Together they form a gordeon knot of sorts. There most likely is no Arthur to pull Excalibur from the rock. Instead each of us and all of us are being called upon to begin to ‘see’ a more comprehensive view of the issues at hand and basing our decisions and votes on sound moral principles begin, one strand at a time to take apart the knot.

At the current rate of spending, it will be about 6-20 years, & the US will be the new Greece, bankrupt.

So far Ryan is the only one to address parts of the Bowles-Simpson recommendations.

If we want to curtail welfare spending, are we ready for a repetition of les journées de juin 1848, following the closure of les Ateliers Nationaux? Then, the Liberals secured a victory over the Radical Republicans, but at the cost of 1,500 dead in combat and thousands of summary executions of prisoners. The Assembly, one recalls, welcomed the surrender of the last barricade with cries of “Long Live the Republic!” What they got, inevitably, was Napoleon III; as Marx observed, history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

As Talleyrand observed, “Governing has never been anything other than postponing by a thousand subterfuges the moment when the mob will hang you from the lamp-post, and every act of government is nothing but a way of not losing control of the people.”

Nowadays, when governments depend for their legitimacy on media coverage and the cult of personality, it is pretty generally recognised that welfare cheques, drug-dealing and cheap alcohol are indispensible guarantees of the political order.

Re-read Pius XI’s Quadragesimo Anno. While condemning unbridled, unregulated capitalism, he also declares that:

If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.

So, for Catholics, capitalism can be Christianized, socialism cannot.

And do these remarks of Pius XI sound to anyone else like they could be a description of the contemporary situation?

108. This accumulation of might and of power generates in turn three kinds of conflict. First, there is the struggle for economic supremacy itself; then there is the bitter fight to gain supremacy over the State in order to use in economic struggles its resources and authority; finally there is conflict between States themselves, not only because countries employ their power and shape their policies to promote every economic advantage of their citizens, but also because they seek to decide political controversies that arise among nations through the use of their economic supremacy and strength.
109. The ultimate consequences of the individualist spirit in economic life are those which you yourselves, Venerable Brethren and Beloved Children, see and deplore: Free competition has destroyed itself; economic dictatorship has supplanted the free market; unbridled ambition for power has likewise succeeded greed for gain; all economic life has become tragically hard, inexorable, and cruel. To these are to be added the grave evils that have resulted from an intermingling and shameful confusion of the functions and duties of public authority with those of the economic sphere – such as, one of the worst, the virtual degradation of the majesty of the State, which although it ought to sit on high like a queen and supreme arbitress, free from all partiality and intent upon the one common good and justice, is become a slave, surrendered and delivered to the passions and greed of men. And as to international relations, two different streams have issued from the one fountain-head: On the one hand, economic nationalism or even economic imperialism; on the other, a no less deadly and accursed internationalism of finance or international imperialism whose country is where profit is.

Except that too many people don’t seem to understand that killing the goose that lays the golden egg is itself a threat to human life and dignity.

In order for any social safety net to be sustainable, it has to include reciprocity. Any plan that encourages citizens to take without giving back must be viewed as the real threat to human life and dignity.