THE CASE AGAINST THE COMMONWEAL CATHOLIC

 THE CASE AGAINST THE COMMONWEAL CATHOLIC

In pursuit of the truth - http://www.cinopsbegoneblogspot.com - Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014

Reference: Commonweal, October 24, 2014 issue, Celebrating 90 Years of Debate

1. St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Dominic: 

2. Pope Emeritus Benedict XV's book, "Co-Workers of the Truth."

3. St. John Paul II, "The Gospel of Life", and "The Catechism of the Catholic Church".

4. The letters on my blog: http://www.cinopsbegoneblogspot.com: They deal directly and indirectly with Catholic-in-name only politicians and their supporters. (1800 LETTERS)

5. Reference" "First Things," December, 2014 issue, R.R. Reno, "The Future of Catholicism".

  
  "The typical American today finds the idea of obedience to authority troubling. Liberal Catholics respond by downplaying the Church's authority, putting an accent on freedom of conscience and emphasizing that there's room for questioning and doubt.... This liberalism ... is sincere strategy of evangelization, a genuine belief that if we make the Church more flexible and modern," more people will join. The evidence shows however that it doesn't work.

   Over the last few decades a cohort of Catholics have emerged who counsel the opposite approach, I myself (R.R. Reno) count myself among them. We believe that evangelization is best served by boldness and clarity about the difference faith makes. Hard, demanding truths clearly stated win hearts and minds. The Church is most relevant when she stiffens her spine and refuses to listen to all the voices that tell her she must change to remain relevant....

  
We're divided on what it means to serve the poor in an affluent society. Liberal Catholicism fixes on the economic well-being of the most vulnerable. A FIRST THINGS Catholic like me focuses on their moral welfare. The liberal Catholic tends to think that the greatest crimes of our era are to be found in under-funded welfare programs and failures to raise the minimum wage. I point to the callous way in which upper-middle-class deconstructions of traditional morality have made marriage into a luxury good. To serve the poor, we must rebuild social capital.

   Moreover, I fear that, while necessary, many welfare programs have contributed to the decline in social capital. These programs were developed to blunt the negative consequences of problems like illegitimacy and lack of economic opportunity. In so doing , however, they often create perverse incentives. It's a law of human behavior that we tend to get more of what we subsidize.

 
 For decades our welfare programs have subsidized choices and behaviors that have hurt poor communities over the long haul. As a result, I just don't just disagree with liberal Catholics about the problem of poverty in twenty-first-century America: I think they contribute to the problem of supporting programs that are ill-designed and have many negative consequences.

   
 The feeling is mutual, I'm afraid. Liberal Catholics were apoplectic about welfare reform in the 1990's and denounced those of us who supported it as enemies of the poor and unfaithful to basic Catholic social teaching. Congressman Paul Ryan suffers the same denunciation with every effort to make our entitlements sustainable over the long haul.

  We've all felt the lash of denunciation when we've suggested that the Democratic party's economic policies were not delivered by God on the Mount Sinai. These experiences indicate that, when it comes to how we serve the poor, liberal Catholics are very committed to polarization.

George H. Kubeck,

    In the next letter we will present the Commonweal Catholic position. They believe that righteousness and goodness surface more regularly among Democrats than Republicans and only the intervention of big government can create social justice. 

This is a false premise for their editorial pages to promote. It creates a destructive bias throughout the magazine with this bias towards the Democratic party and a false approach to Catholic social justice.