Good Catholics support government-run health care, or at least the expansion of SCHIP, say some activists in Detroitâ€â€and it sure sounds like the archdiocese office is egging them on:
Some Catholics in Metro Detroit are organizing a media and Internet blitz against three local members of Congress, saying the representatives’ stand against a Democratic proposal to finance the State Children’s Health Insurance Program  known as MIChild in Michigan  is inconsistent with their vow to oppose abortion rights.
“The important thing to communicate to them is that Catholics regard this as an issue of social justice and basic human rights  this is a life issue,” said Michael Hovey, the director of the Office for Catholic Social Teaching for the Archdiocese of Detroit.
A campaign of radio advertisements and e-mails to the offices of Reps. Joseph Knollenberg, R-Bloomfield Township; Thaddeus McCotter, R-Livonia; and Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, is to begin Monday. The advertisements will be broadcast on local Christian radio stations.
So, start rendering unto Caesar. Of course, if this were about abortion, leftists would be screaming bloody murder over the intrusion of church on State.
I admire most of the clergy. I do. But let’s just say that’s not the first place I’d go for fiscal advice. Meanwhile, I’ll just get used to the idea of being a Bad Catholic.
h/t Reynolds
Anyway, perhaps they ought to read some of that Polish Pope’s treatises on economics.
Comment by Donald on 10/13 @ 8:54 am #
I like the picture. It’s…
Comment by Alec Leamas on 10/13 @ 9:09 am #
That’s funny, because I sort of remember Pope Leo’s XIII Rerum Novarum pretty squarely dismissing socialism of this type.
Here’s an idea consistent with Rerum Novarum – lets not launder the working class’ money through Washington and let them, I don’t know, keep their own money and purchase their own health insurance. How ’bout that?
Comment by Esclepius on 10/13 @ 9:57 am #
Detroit has been a hotbed for this sort of thought for years now. The bishops that’ve come out of the city have been some of the worst in the country, so it’s no wonder that we see this kind of nuttiness alive and well there.
Comment by syn on 10/13 @ 9:57 am #
This is my beef with institutional religions, on the one hand they’re are against abortion yet on the other hand they are voting into office pro-abortion politicans who offer golden coins of entitlement goodies.
I beleive in God (as soon as man began considering himself the source of all meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it. Vaclav Havel) yet with so many mixed massages coming out of the Church these days I can tell if they’re preaching God’s words or Marx’s words.
I thank God there are ‘Bad Catholics’ who follow God rather than Marx….I know that at least they’re honest with their beliefs and I hold much respect for those who will not be emotionally blackmailed into redefining God’s words in order to get the worldly goodies.
Comment by syn on 10/13 @ 9:59 am #
pardon me: that’s “I can’t tell if they’re preaching God’s words or Marx’s words”
Comment by happyfeet on 10/13 @ 9:59 am #
The article says… “Some $35 million in new revenue for the program would be generated from taxing tobacco use”, which, that’s wrong, not that people from Detroit would necessarily recognize the distinction.
I loved this…
This sow wouldn’t know preventative if it showed up at her door with a box of chocolates and a 6-pack of Yoo-Hoo, true dat.
Comment by Darleen on 10/13 @ 10:04 am #
The whole point of charity work is that one performs it voluntarily … one does it out of the a sense of duty (virtue) to help one’s fellow human beings.
If it’s not voluntary, then the action is Amoral because choice has been removed.
Ironic that Catholic bishops are demanding amoral policies to “help the poor.”
Comment by mac on 10/13 @ 10:15 am #
Let’s remember: Leftist Theocracy ala Jimmy Carter and Jim Wallis is OK per the media.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/13 @ 10:33 am #
Churches need to start paying property taxes. You got to ante up if you want to deal Jesus into the game, ask me.
Comment by Donald on 10/13 @ 10:43 am #
This ain’t about the pitcher? Did I miss sumpin? Marxist priests…you don’t say?
Comment by happyfeet on 10/13 @ 10:53 am #
Cardinal Adam Maida might as well just walk up to a waitress having a smoke on her break, bash her in the head and steal her tips for little Graeme.
That would be honest.
Comment by Dan Collins on 10/13 @ 10:57 am #
hf, I agree with you in most things, but that would certainly constitute voiding the separation of church and state, and make it possible for unscrupulous state actors to punish churches for preaching thoughts and behaviors that are anathema to the state.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/13 @ 10:58 am #
I was just trying to be provocative.
Comment by Dan Collins on 10/13 @ 11:01 am #
Oh. Well, maybe I need another beer.
I get your point.
Comment by psychologizer on 10/13 @ 11:26 am #
Not that I think anything or anybody should be taxed at all, but–
…preaching thoughts and behaviors that are anathema to the state
If any of them ever did that, you’d have a point.
Extragovernmental institutions that are rivalrous with or subversive of the modern state are destroyed or altered to suit the purposes of the state. There are no exceptions.
If your church is legally recognized as such, and not torched with you inside it, it’s not “separate”; it’s subordinate or (illusorily) in collusion.
If you think your church is differing meaningfully with the state, yet you don’t find yourself killed, it’s your perception of difference that’s mistaken.
Obligatory: You may recall the story of this Jewish dude back in the day who…
Comment by SDN on 10/13 @ 11:31 am #
Actually, psychologizer, it simply means that Western governments realize that giving people enough space to blow off verbally is enough to stop 99% of them from doing anything but talk. That 1% gets the Waco treatment.
Comment by Dan Collins on 10/13 @ 11:33 am #
Hmmmm. Well, my church posits that this world is illusory. Dante’s cosmological fiction is more real. The state is accomodative, because it does not understand. The state would like to acquire the position, but it cannot speak to one the way the church does. My attachment to the church is also greater because the church is not, in and of itself, punitive.
My sacrifice would not be for all of mankind. I am certainly not without sin.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/13 @ 11:33 am #
That sets me off a lot really. Invoking Jesus to suggest that the brutal tyranny of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is of lesser consequence to the welfare of children than the expansion of a U.S. entitlement program to encompass the American middle class is really and truly a corruption of any religious ideal of what is compassionate and charitable.
In the name of the Catholic Church, she would countenance the rape and molestation of Iraqi children that the indolent Halsey Frost might be of serene and unfurrowed brow.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/13 @ 11:35 am #
That was me trying to be provocative again, but like with more subtlety.
Comment by Dan Collins on 10/13 @ 11:37 am #
Yeah, but after you see Madonna simulating sex on the altar with a (black!) priest, it’s hard to count anything as edgy.
Comment by Dan Collins on 10/13 @ 11:38 am #
I don’t know. Maybe with Britney as a nun.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/13 @ 11:40 am #
Lutherans mostly ignore the politics of the church and when we go we pretend the hippie Lutherans are just like us and bring them cakes and casseroles and stuff when people in their family get sick or die. I think mostly we’re ok with the world being illusory as long as it gives the casserole dish back.
Comment by Dan Collins on 10/13 @ 11:44 am #
Yeah, but would you make a casserole for someone from a different Synod?
Comment by happyfeet on 10/13 @ 11:56 am #
We don’t really talk about that.
Comment by BobM. on 10/13 @ 11:58 am #
“I think mostly we’re ok with the world being illusory as long as it gives the casserole dish back.”
LOL!
Thanks for giving me a good laugh, happyfeet!
Comment by PCachu on 10/13 @ 12:04 pm #
Sorry, Dan, but at this point “Britney as a nun” would just make me point and laugh.
Well, laugh harder, since “Madonna trying to be ‘edgy’” is laughable on its own.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/13 @ 12:20 pm #
Deriding Madonna’s edginess in a blog comment is like saying no one reads Andrew Sullivan anymore.
Comment by happyfeet on 10/13 @ 2:08 pm #
It’s a quintessential as long as they spell my name right thing, meaning.
Comment by geoffb on 10/13 @ 5:35 pm #
Tim Walberg is my Congressman and I live on the other side of the State from Detroit. Way over 100 miles away. I think the eastern part of his district is near Ann Arbor but even that isn’t exactly Detroit.
I’m going to have to write and call him to tell him I support his position.
Comment by Sean M. on 10/13 @ 6:21 pm #
Uh, I don’t get the picture. Can somebody ’splain it to me?
Comment by rickinstl on 10/13 @ 8:22 pm #
“Meanwhile, I’ll just get used to the idea of being a Bad Catholic.”
Welcome to the club. The flaming, arm-waving choir directors, the hand holding and the loony, flower child nuns ran me off.
When my ex-nun aunt showed up at her brothers (a staunch conservative) wake on election eve 2004 with a nun/friend of hers who was wearing a Kerry button, I nearly ran her out of the funeral home. When you’ve got nuns supporting the pro infanticide candidate, you can stop calling yourself a church and start calling yourself an agency.
Sure, bingo and soccer are fun, but the rest of it went swishy a long time ago.
Comment by Sean M. on 10/14 @ 4:13 am #
Still not getting the photo. Is the dog a bad Catholic?
Comment by McGehee on 10/14 @ 7:46 am #
Bad Catholic, maybe. Good dog, definitely.
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