Fair enough in light of the comments you’ve linked (although I still don’t think a Catholic is required to agree with it). I remember a few years back Catholic liberals raising a fuss over “creeping infallibility”; seems that has a tendency to pop up in lots of places. One final nit-pick: while I understand the spirit of it, the analogy of “the Obama administration” to “the USCCB” is at all accurate for the simple reason that individual bishops retain full authority and jurisdiction independent of the USCCB, something which the Treasury secretary, for example, doesn’t enjoy in the Obama administration.

Finally, I have seen you challenge the prevailing view over at Commonweal; and have been treated similarly, especially by the moderators who can be a very snarky bunch.

Josh D.,

I think it is fair to say the USCCB (or somewhat equivalently, the Catholic Bishops) have criticized the Ryan Budget. See the following:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) sought to diminish the importance of letters criticizing his budget from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), saying the group doesn’t represent all bishops.

“These are not all the Catholic bishops, and we just respectfully disagree,” Ryan told Fox News on Thursday.

But USCCB spokesman Don Clemmer told The Hill that the letters do represent all Catholic bishops, as they were penned by members of the church that were elected to represent the bishops on policy matters at the national level.
“Bishops who chair USCCB committees are elected by their fellow bishops to represent all of the U.S. bishops on key issues at the national level,” Clemmer said. “The letters on the budget were written by bishops serving in this capacity.”

I have no doubt that if you took a poll of all the bishops, they would not unanimously endorse all the points in the USCCB letters to congress. I also have no doubt that if you took a poll on any particular issue among all the people who make up the Obama administration, they would not be in perfect accord with one another. However, it makes sense to talk about the positions of the Obama administration, and it makes sense to talk about positions of the USCCB.

I think you are reasonably correct that the attitude toward bishops’ statements on the Commonweal blog is the converse of what it is here on First Thoughts. I do try to be objective, but sympathizing more often with the liberal side than the conservative side, I am not as sensitive to liberal hypocrisies as to conservative ones. I also think there are more critics of the “party line” among the regular (dissenting) commenters at Commonweal than there are here on First Thoughts. But I can point out recent instances where I have taken a distinctly different view than the the most liberal commenters over on Commonweal, to the point where I got quite an unpleasant series of criticisms from the moderator. I an be just as annoying over there sometimes as I am here. :P

A few short responses to a few of your responses. First, you have asserted that “all the bishops” are against Ryan’s plan based on the letter from Bishop Blaine. As you know, Rick Garnett has questioned whether this characterization is accruate. It might be nit-picky, but I think an individual letter from a committee chairman carries less weight than a statement from the President or, even better, the entire conference itself. Moreover, and as I’m sure you know, the letter is not a matter of “doctrine,” it is a series of observations of Ryan’s budget based on seven principles (which you link to) which we all agree on.

Second, I found your opening comment curious: “When the Catholic Bishops criticize liberal politicians, they speak for the Church and God Almighty. When they criticize conservative politicians, they’re a bunch of naive amateurs who ought to keep their opinions to themselves.”

What I find curious about that comment is that it precisely mirrors what I think a lot of the time when I read comments over at dotCommonweal (where I know you are a frequent commenter). When the Bishops are critical of Ryan, those folks are all for it, but when they issued their recent statement on religious liberty, both the official line and the vast majority of the comments there are that the bishops are nothing but a bunch of partisan hacks mimicking the worst talking points of far right wing groups. And I don’t seem to recall you pointing out the hypocrisy in those reactions there.

Finally, you say that the deficit is a legitimate issue, but not the point of Catholic Social Teaching. I guess I agree with that, but would add that Ryan’s (and conservatives in general) concern about the deficit is not an end in itself, but concerns the effect of the deficit on the economy and future economic growth. Large, unfunded government liabilities will eat up every available discretionary dollar for things that liberals like to “invest” in, and will drag down job growth, innovation, etc. I would think that both Catholic liberals and conservatives would agree that the poor are better off with a growing, healthy, vibrant economy – and in that light, concerns over the deficit are a social justice concern.

Mike P.,

What you say may be true, but I don’t see how it is relevant to a discussion of the Ryan budget. Ryan doesn’t require that spending for the poor be cut so that abortion may be restricted. He requires that spending for the poor be cut so that there can be tax cuts for the wealthy.

By way of explaining why Gian is correct and your statement is wrong, go back and take a look at the Weimar Republic (Germany) after WWI, or modern Zimbabwe.

What you’re proposing destroys countries financially by causing hyperinflation. While we’ve been lucky to escape it thus far, when Obama has proposed measures similar to your proposition, China has gotten quite angry and threatened to curb their lending to us.

When a government repurchases its bonds with new currency, its total liabilities remain the same. All that happens is that one liability is substituted for another.

There is no duty to indemnify a creditor against loss. If I borrow 100 quarters of wheat, my obligation is to restore 100 quarters; the fact that the market price of wheat has fallen in the meantime does not entitle the lender to more. Had the price risen, the loss would have been mine. Every loan of money is, in effect, a currency future.

This is, I am afraid, sophistry. One has defaulted when one’s lender is not made whole.

It is well known that not all moral issues carry the same weight. The gap between the Democrats and Republicans on the issue of poverty, for example, is not as enormous as you suggest. On abortion, however, most Democrats do not even grant that the entity in the womb is a baby in a meaningful sense. The parties are miles apart.

You can read about the weight of moral issues in a CDF document from then-Cardinal Ratzinger here: http://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/cdfworthycom.htm

No government that has control of its currency will ever run out of money, for it can always monetise its debt. The only real difference between government bonds and currency notes is that the notes are issued in smaller denominations and do not bear interest, so one can be used to replace the other, as occasion requires.

The inflation produced by such a policy removes a burden of dead debt from the economy. Only imagine the parlous position the UK and the USA would be in today, if the pound and the dollar had their 1914 (or even their 1945) purchasing power.

The situation of Greece, Italy and Spain illustrate this perfectly.