A Catholic Governor Embraces Subsidiarity
Published July 12, 2010 | 
…Gov. Christie represents a pro-life, pro-family Catholic politician drawing upon the principle of subsidiarity to make budgetary and policy choices that look to the private sector, not the federal government, for solutions to pressing problems…..
Deal Hudson, Inside Catholic, July 11, 2010
The new governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, is distinguishing himself in two ways as a Catholic politician. Not only he is pro-life, but he is also aggressively pursuing a set of policies grounded in the principle of subsidiarity.
At a time when most prominent Catholic politicians — Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and John Kerry — have advocated federal government solutions to problems like health care, Gov. Christie is pushing in the opposite direction by releasing a New Jersey Privatization Task Force Report.
In the 57-page report, the Task Force proposes privatizing the state’s motor vehicle inspections, housing construction inspections, turnpike toll booths, state parks, psychiatric hospitals, as well as contracting for highway maintenance work, and outsourcing worker’s compensation claims and all pension, payroll, and benefit payments systems.
These recommendations, according to Christie, will save New Jersey taxpayers over $200 million a year.
If the humanity of unborn life is the tenet most ignored by Catholic politicians, the principle of subsidiarity comes in a close second. Of course, unlike the 6thsubsidiarity must be applied prudentially. The principle itself is simple: commandment — “thou shall not kill” –
A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1883)
The Catechism is unambiguous in its claim that Catholics should uphold subsidiarity to offset one of the dangers of socialization, i.e., an “excessive intervention by the state” threatening “personal freedom and initiative” (#1882-1883).
Christie also seeks to keep the burden of funding government from growing any further — he has proposed a constitutional amendment capping property tax increases at 2.5 percent above the prior year’s receipts. Christie explains, “That’s 2.5 percent growth in total for everything — municipal tax, county tax, and school tax. There is only one exception to this cap — to pay required debt service.”
The New Jersey governor’s further reliance on subsidiarity is seen in his recent speech supporting “parental choice” in education at American Federation of Children’s National Policy Summit Dinner in Washington, D.C. Legislation has already been introduced that would provide vouchers to students at “chronically failing schools,” like the ones in Newark that Christie described as “absolutely disgraceful.”
There were doubts raised during the campaign about Christie’s pro-life commitment, but those credentials were solidified by his eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood from the 2011 New Jersey budget. State Democrats are already pushing to restore the more than $7 million in funding despite an $11 billion dollar deficit next year (the state has been on the verge of bankruptcy).
It’s often said that some Catholic commentators focus too much on life and marriage issues, relegating prudential matters too far into the background. Thus far, Gov. Christie’s performance provides an opportunity to reflect on the longer view of a Catholic in politics.
Gov. Christie represents a pro-life, pro-family Catholic politician drawing upon the principle of subsidiarity to make budgetary and policy choices that look to the private sector, not the federal government, for solutions to pressing problems.
Deal W. Hudson is the director of InsideCatholic.com and the author of Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (Simon and Schuster).
http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8442&Itemid=48
Sunday Homily
Published July 12, 2010 | The audio podcast of my Sunday Homily
The Catholic Woman, the Imposter, and the Heresy of ‘Abortion Rights’
Published July 12, 2010 | By Jennifer Hartline, 7/12/2010, Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
Karen Santorum is the true reflection of feminism and motherhood that our anti-life culture desperately needs to see
A tale of two women…While Elfriede Harth preaches the heretical gospel of “Self first”, Karen Santorum humbly lives the Gospel of Life, even through the valley of death. So much like our Blessed Mother, who bore the agony of her Son’s death with tender love and humility, surrendered to God’s will. Karen also lives with a heart pierced by a sword, yet overflowing with love and grace, with a faith purified in sorrow. She is a true hero of the faith. Karen Santorum is the true reflection of feminism and motherhood that our anti-life culture desperately needs to see.
WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) – A tale of two women…and life, love and faith.One preaches the “obligation to self” The other preaches the call to give ourselves away in love to the other, out of love for the Lord who gave Himself away in love for each one of us. One preaches a false “gospel”, the other preaches the true Gospel which alone brings life and freedom.
Once again last week the Church was maligned by a false “feminist” who believes that a woman has the right to kill her unborn child if she chooses and such a “choice” is not contrary to Catholic teaching. Elfriede Harth is the Secretariat of European Parliament Study Group on Religion and Secularity, and a Spanish member of Catholics for the Right to Decide (their counterpart in the U.S. is Catholics for Choice). She made her insane remarks at the Women Deliver conference in Washington, D.C. this month.
She aims to promote what passes for “liberal” or “progressive” doctrines within the Church these days. They do not liberate and they do not promote true progress. However, they are being promoted by the media as somehow reflective of a “Catholic” position. They are anything but. They are heretical and anti-life.There are no ‘abortion rights’, only human persons have rights. In fact, every intentional abortion KILLS a human person. There is only the Right to Life and Harth fails to recognize this preeminent and fundamental right upon which all other rights rest. .
Harth says, “Religious feminists play a crucial role in organizing resistance to religious fundamentalism.” Her mission, in my opinion, is to redesign the Church to suit the pro-abortion, anti-male, anti-tradition, anti-calling-anything-sinful philosophy she preaches. In short, she is working to destroy the Church from within.She is an advocate of the “Dictatorship of Relativism” the Holy father warned of.
She knows the Church doesn’t approve of her endorsement of baby-killing while calling herself Catholic, but naturally, she says the problem isn’t her total misunderstanding of Church teaching or her errant definition of being Catholic – it’s the Magisterium that’s all screwed up.
“They’re always trying to say we’re not real Catholics, which is wrong, because the criterion to say you’re Catholic is that you’re baptized. That’s all.” she said. “And I don’t accept that other people pretend that they define what is Catholicism. You know? The way the Vatican presents Catholicism is incomplete.”
Thousands of years of Church leaders, starting with the Apostles, are simply “other people” to Ms. Harth, and since she doesn’t like what they say about abortion and her other favorite liberal “feminist” doctrines, well, it just means the faith is incomplete. All this time, we’ve been waiting for Ms. Harth to fill in the holes those “other people” left behind!
Harth insisted that a woman has the right to abort because she “has a right to have a good life” and she does not have “the right to ruin it.” “And if a pregnancy is going to ruin her life in any way, she has a right to get the abortion. She has the right. She has an obligation to protect her life from being ruined… Because you owe this respect to yourself because you’re a child of God. You should feel guilty if you don’t.” she said.
Read that again: Catholic women should feel guilty if they do not abort a child they feel might “ruin their lives.” To not do so would be disrespectful toward themselves as a child of God.
And what about the baby, Ms. Harth? Is the baby also a child of God? “If you have an abortion, there is a fetus that will be killed. This is true. But… for us, death is not the end of the story. And this unborn child or fetus or whatever you want to call it is… well, we don’t know what God is going to do with this creature. God has a lot of mercy, maybe… we don’t know.”
Incredibly, Harth is actually justifying the murder of the child in the womb by pointing to our belief in eternal life!?! Hey, death is not the end of the story! So, really, abortion’s not a bad thing. It’s just sending the baby on to Gloryland a little early – no harm done! This, according to pro-abort heretic Elfriede Harth is real, complete Catholic teaching. Wrong.
The tragedy only grows worse as Harth collects more confused, uncatechized souls and leads them astray. She’ll scowl at me for saying this, but Ms. Harth – you’re not really Catholic. Not even close.
The other lives the Gospel of life and love
The day after reading about Ms. Harth and her scandalous speech, I was graced to receive a copy of Letters to Gabriel, the book written by Karen Santorum to her baby boy, who was born prematurely and lived only two hours. In 1996, while the drama of the partial-birth abortion ban debate was playing out in the Senate – with her husband, Senator Rick Santorum leading the charge to ban the brutal procedure – Karen and Rick were told their son would die in the womb due to a rare and fatal defect. This was precisely the kind of crisis pregnancy the pro-aborts said necessitated the “option” of partial-birth infanticide. Continue reading
Six Months to Go Until The Largest Tax Hikes in History
Published July 12, 2010 | From Ryan Ellis, Americans for Tax Reform, July 7, 2010
In just six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:
(N.B. This version of the document contains even more tax hikes than the original version did)
First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief
In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011:
Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%
Higher taxes on marriage and family. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.
The return of the Death Tax. This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.
Higher tax rates on savers and investors. The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.
Second Wave: Obamacare
There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:
The Tanning Tax. This went into effect on July 1st of this year. It imposes a new, 10% excise tax on getting a tan at a tanning salon. There is no exemption for tanners making less than $250,000 per year.
The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).
The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.
Brand Name Drug Tax. Starting next year, there will be a multi-billion dollar tax assessment imposed on name-brand drug manufacturers. This tax, like all excise taxes, will raise the price of medicine, hurting everyone.
Economic Substance Doctrine. The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly-legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks “economic substance.” This is obviously an arbitrary empowerment of IRS agents.
Employer Reporting of Health Insurance Costs on a W-2. This will start for W-2s in the 2011 tax year. While not a tax increase in itself, it makes it very easy for Congress to tax employer-provided healthcare benefits later.
Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes
When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. These major items include:
The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.
Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear. Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000. This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be “depreciated.”
Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses. There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.
Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced. The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.
Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed. Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there.
Krauthammer: Terror — and Candor
Published July 12, 2010 | …The administration’s denial of “radical Islam” is dangerous, dishonest, and demoralizing . . .
Why is this important? Because the first rule of war is to know your enemy.
….
Charles Krauthammer, National Review, July 2, 2010
The Fort Hood shooter, the Christmas Day bomber, the Times Square attacker. On May 13, the following exchange occurred at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee:
Rep. Lamar Smith (R.,Texas): Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?
Attorney General Eric Holder: There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions. . . .
Smith: Okay, but radical Islam could have been one of the reasons?
Holder: There are a variety of reasons why people—
Smith: But was radical Islam one of them?
Holder: There are a variety of reasons why people do these things. Some of them are potentially religious-based.
Potentially, mind you. This went on until the questioner gave up in exasperation.
A similar question arose last week in U.S. District Court when Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square attacker, pleaded guilty. Explained Shahzad: “One has to understand where I’m coming from. . . . I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier.”
Well, that is clarifying. As was the self-printed business card of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, identifying himself as “SoA”: Soldier of Allah.
Holder’s avoidance of the obvious continues the absurd and embarrassing refusal of the Obama administration to acknowledge who out there is trying to kill Americans and why. In fact, it has banned from its official vocabulary the terms “jihadist,” “Islamist,” and “Islamic terrorism.”
Instead, President Obama’s National Security Strategy insists on calling the enemy — how else do you define those seeking your destruction? — “a loose network of violent extremists.” But this is utterly meaningless. This is not an anger-management therapy group gone rogue. These are people professing a powerful ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam, in whose name they propagandize, proselytize, terrorize, and kill.
Why is this important? Because the first rule of war is to know your enemy. If you don’t, you wander into intellectual cul-de-sacs and ignore the real causes that might allow you to prevent recurrences. Continue reading
Ella, Not Enchanted
Published July 12, 2010 | By Susan E. Wills, Catholic Exchange, July 12, 2010
The recent recommendation by a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel that the FDA approve the sale of Ella (ulipristal acetate) as an “emergency contraceptive” was practically a foregone conclusion. I can’t recall the last time the FDA rejected an application for any new “reproductive health” drug or device—no matter how risky it proved to be for mothers or unborn children?
The agency routinely approves drugs and devices to block reproduction that are later found unacceptably dangerous for women—the high-dose estrogen pill, the Dalkon Shield intra-uterine device, Norplant rods, Depo-Provera shots, nonoxynol-9, and the Ortho Evra patch, to name just a few. As evidence of the level of risk the FDA tolerates in the reproductive health pharmacopoeia, FDA has not recalled the patch, despite its link to the deaths of at least 29 apparently healthy young women due to blood clots. While some at the FDA may believe their deaths to be an acceptable trade-off so that others can avoid pregnancy, the victims’ families no doubt feel differently.
But the yet-unquantified risk to mothers is only part of the problem with Ella.
It is simply false and deceptive to promote Ella as an “emergency contraceptive” like Preven and Plan B. Depending when they are taken relative to ovulation and intercourse, Preven and Plan B may act primarily as contraceptives (by disrupting ovulation, for example), or sometimes as very early abortifacients (by modes of action that interfere with the embryo’s movement to the womb or ability to implant there).
The reason Ella is far more effective than Preven and Plan-B (complete failures at the population level!), and the reason Ella keeps working five days (or more) after “unprotected intercourse,” is that Ella—like its close chemical cousin RU-486—blocks progesterone receptors in the uterine lining. This destroys the capacity of the mother’s reproductive organs to produce the progesterone necessary to support the embryo through the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Continue reading
Tony Perkins, Family Research Council,
Published July 12, 2010 | Boston Massacre of Marriage
Four hundred twenty-seven. That’s how many members of Congress voted to pass the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. One. The number of activist judges it took to strike the law down.
Yesterday, a U.S. District Court did its best to preserve Massachusetts’s reputation as the most liberal state in America on marriage. In Boston, a federal judge used his gavel to shatter the one law preventing a complete capitulation to same-sex “marriage” at the federal level: DOMA. Claiming that “it is only irrational prejudice that motivates” the law (p. 38), he sided with the ultra-Left on two separate cases. Although the couples who sued are considered “married” in the eyes of their state, they complained that DOMA kept them from getting federal perks like Social Security survivor payments or joint tax filings. So what did Judge Joseph Tauro do? He ruled that the government doesn’t have the right to set its own benefit policies–suggesting that he knows better than a supermajority of Congress what’s best for American taxpayers.
Tauro’s rationale for toppling DOMA was so absurd that even liberal Yale law professors like Jack Balkin said, “No chance they’ll be held up on appeal.” The two opinions are so convoluted that they even contract themselves. As Balkin said, the judge’s rulings are “at war with each other.” Judge Tauro also claimed that there’s no precedent for a federal definition of marriage. The people of Utah might disagree–seeing as it wouldn’t be a state today if the Supreme Court hadn’t ruled that it must outlaw polygamy first. In 1878, the Supreme Court declared that polygamy wasn’t protected by the Constitution (Reynolds v. United States). In fact, that ruling was even stronger than DOMA, because it was a blanket rejection of polygamy. Unlike DOMA, it didn’t leave the question up to states.
Regardless of Tauro’s skewed views, the blame for this decision lies directly at the feet of Elena Kagan and her boss, President Obama. The President has called for overturning DOMA, but as Solicitor General, Ms. Kagan is responsible for defending existing federal laws in court. But instead of trying to win the case, she intentionally sabotaged it, dropping the strongest arguments in favor of DOMA. At the time, legal experts were shocked that she didn’t include procreation as the main reason for protecting man-woman marriage.
It was an omission so stunning that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) brought it up in her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last week. “Could you please explain why the Justice Department abandoned the argument that traditional marriage rationally serves the legitimate interest of promoting the raising of children by both parents, which Congress could reasonably conclude is the optimal environment for raising children?” he asked. She stammered through a response, claiming that she wasn’t the “decision-maker.” Now, Kagan may delegate some details to other Justice Department attorneys, but as the White House’s chief litigator, she has the final say. That bothered Sen. Grassley, along with Kagan’s open hostility for DOMA. “You took an oath to defend the laws of the United States, including DOMA. Would you agree that calling a law discriminatory and advocating for its repeal is no defense?” (Watch the exchange here.) Kagan tried to convince Sen. Grassley that her office “vigorously defended” DOMA before Judge Tauro. How? By renouncing the most powerful justification for DOMA used by Congress? The bottom line is that defending marriage was Elena Kagan’s responsibility as Solicitor General. But if she won’t fight for the law when she’s paid and appointed to, then she certainly won’t fight for it when she’s an unaccountable Supreme Court justice.
All eyes will now be on the Kagan, the Justice Department, and the Obama administration to see if they will appeal yesterday’s rulings to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. If the DOJ does respond, the federal Office of Personnel Management would be a defendant. (And, oh by the way, it’s headed by an activist homosexual.) For more information on the importance of DOMA, click here see the new pamphlet by FRC’s Chris Gacek. Also, follow this link to see a video interview with Chris about the ramifications of yesterday’s ruling.
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WU10G05&f=PG07J01
Founder’s Quote Daily
Published July 12, 2010 | 
“What is it that affectionate parents require of their Children; for all their care, anxiety, and toil on their accounts? Only that they would be wise and virtuous, Benevolent and kind.”
–Abigail Adams, letter to John Quincy Adams, 1783
GOSPEL & MEDITATION: Love is Demanding
Published July 12, 2010 | July 12, 2010
Monday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Father Shawn Aaron, LC
Matthew 10: 34-11:1
Jesus said to his Apostles: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man ´against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one´s enemies will be those of his household.´ Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet´s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is righteous will receive a righteous man´s reward. And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because he is a disciple– amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.” When Jesus finished giving these commands to his twelve disciples, he went away from that place to teach and to preach in their towns.
Introductory Prayer: Almighty and ever-living God, I seek new strength from the courage of Christ our shepherd. I believe in you, I hope in you, and I seek to love you with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength. I want to be led one day to join the saints in heaven, where your Son Jesus Christ lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever.
Petition: Jesus, I want to love as you have loved me.
1. Not Peace but the Sword Complacency can be defined as “self-satisfaction accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies”. This is a false peace, even a harmful peace. It is a self-satisfied peace that lulls us to sleep and can result in the loss of those things that are truly most valuable in life: God, faith, family, etc…. Jesus comes to interrupt that false peace by upending the tables of our lives (cf. John 2:15) in an effort to awaken us to the dangers that our false peace has blinded us to. As he drove out the sheep and oxen from the temple, so, too, he will use circumstances, trials and difficulties as his “sword” to drive out from our lives whatever is opposed to God´s goodness and our own dignity.
2. Nothing Before God With this phrase we start getting an inkling of the type of sword our Lord is wielding. He is giving us a criterion that starts from heaven downward because he is trying to lift us from the earth upward. What natural relationship is closer than the one between a parent and child, especially a mother and child? Yet even this bond must be subordinate to the love we have for God. Why? Well, no creature, not even our parents, can bring us to the fullness of life and happiness that comes only from God. God wants us to love him, not because he needs our love but because we need him. He is objective reality, and we must always move from the subjective to the objective if we are to possess the truth. Jesus invites us to adapt our standards from the merely natural and passing to the supernatural and everlasting.
3. Love of God Is Inclusive Not Exclusive Giving a cup of water to one of the least of our brothers and sisters will not go unrewarded, and therefore, unnoticed. In this way, Jesus shows that he is not calling us to a love of God that excludes others. The standard of placing God first does not exclude love for mother or father, sister or brother. Once we love God as he deserves, we will learn to love others as they truly deserve. In fact, we merit the vision of the God we cannot see by loving the neighbor we do see.
Conversation with Christ: Lord Jesus, following you demands my all, and at times it seems that I do not have the strength to give what you ask. Help me to stay close to you in prayer and in the sacraments so as to have the grace to live the standard of love and generosity that you ask. Mother Most Pure, make my heart only for Jesus.
Resolution: Today I will make three acts of self-denial and offer them for someone in need of prayers.
http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/articulo.phtml?se=363&ca=975&te=735&id=20302
TODAY’S SAINT: ST. IGNATIUS DELGADO
Published July 12, 2010 | CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY, JULY 12, 2010
St. Ignatius Delgado was a Spanish missionary and is now one of the martyrs of Vietnam.
He was born in Villafeliche, Spain, in 1761. He was raised in a pious family, became a Dominican priest and served as a missionary to Vietnam for almost 50 years.
He was named coadjutor vicar-apostolic at East Tonkin, Vietnam. However, government-sanctioned persecution of Christians began soon after. He was arrested, locked in a cage put on public display for ridicule and abuse, and left to die. He died of hunger and exposure in 1838.
The martyr was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988.
Catholic Social Doctrine Begins with Subsidiarity
…government is the very last resort for the working of social justice . . . welfarism as understood and presented by many socially minded politicians, many now of the Democratic Party, is not compatible with Catholic social understandings, since it is heedless of the principle of subsidiarity…..
By Frank Morriss, Catholic Culture
This, of course, implies that every proposal for welfare programs fits Catholic understanding in the area of human need.
This often amounts to a deception and even falsehood for the reason that Catholic social doctrine begins with the principle of subsidiarity — namely, that fulfillment of human needs begins at the lowest level possible, starting with the individual. Only when necessary should social welfare turn to higher levels of society, and that means that government is the very last resort for the working of social justice.
The Church has always recognized that the temptation for the state is to take complete control of a nation’s economy, thereby in effect making the people dependent on it, rather than on themselves.
Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum predicted his insistence on the state protecting public welfare with this statement:
He also condemned such taxation that amounts to public interference with “the productive activity of the multitude [which] can be stimulated by the hope of acquiring some property in land.”
And further:
Pope John XXIII at the outset of his Mater et Magister encyclical quotes from Pope Pius XI’s Quadraqesimo Anno:
Good Pope John XXIII, known as the people’s Pope, comments:
These he states as principles pertaining to subsidiarity. Only after presenting these does he turn to the need for “appropriate activity of the state to prevent exploitation of the weak” (emphasis added). Nowhere in papal teaching or other magisterial statements do you find endorsement or recommendation of the welfare state, or for forced distribution of income, or for ever-widening “entitlements.”
The Second Vatican Council, though speaking at length of social consciousness and duty of the individual to the needs of others, nevertheless also said this:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is emphatic concerning subsidiarity:
These numerous citations make clear that welfarism as understood and presented by many socially minded politicians, many now of the Democratic Party, is not compatible with Catholic social understandings, since it is heedless of the principle of subsidiarity. It holds out economic equality, distribution of wealth, without reference to the ability or willingness of most citizens to earn and take care of themselves and their families. It caters to those who think those of greater industry and wealth should take care of them.
A free market economy held sway in America from its beginning. It allowed for economic ups and downs, with the working of supply and demand to correct things, as was the case until 1929. Herbert Hoover, then president, instituted temporary relief programs, counting on a quick return of prosperity. But the gambling fever that helped bring the crash had deceived the whole culture into a spirit of abandon following World War I. The bubble that burst in Hoover’s second year in office was too immense to allow for a normal working of the economic cycle. Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected to replace Hoover, swept away free economics in favor of Keynesian economics, which inserted government regulation into every area of economic life. Hence the host of regulatory bodies established by Roosevelt — NRA (struck down by Supreme Court), PWA, TVA, and so on.
The Democratic Party has never recovered from the idea that governmental expertise is more reliable than natural free economics in providing opportunity to most Americans, despite the fact that the Great Depression was still ongoing when World War II brought on a burst of demand for labor and production, ending it.
Now, Keynesianism puts no stock in the principle of subsidiarity. To the contrary, it disputes the right and ability of most people to make their own economic way without undue interference. True, free economics is open to abuse when it is allowed to be laissez-faire governmental indifference to the general economic welfare. But only free economics by its very own premise allows for the existence of subsidiarity, which demands not governmental indifference, but proper governmental restraint — the greatest amount of noninterference in economics in keeping with the common good. Welfare programs heedless of need, applied generally and replacing the desire and ability of the vast majority to govern their own lives and families, financed by taxation imposed on the basis of economic success, clearly give no weight to subsidiarity.
Thus it is a major mistake to equate welfarism with compassion, and a worse one to consider it called for by one’s Catholic duty to love one’s neighbor. Often it is elitist contempt for those considered less capable than achievers. Sometimes that is mixed with guilt feelings by rich elitists, embarrassed that they have inherited wealth. All of this ignores that egalite was the cry of the French Revolutionary terrorists, who considered as revolutionary duty the work of making the mighty equal by removing their heads, thus reducing them to the height of the lowly. They considered fraternity a matter of class, not, as does the Church, a matter of sharing human nature. But the aim of the American Revolution was “one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.”
Welfarism prepares society for collectivism, expressed in various theories of socialism, wherein the wealth of the many is confiscated through taxation to finance a host of “entitlements.” The result, as planned, is a large number of votes in favor of keeping these “entitlements” in place, and enlarging them with each election wherein the givers of others’ money are kept in office by the receivers.
During the New Deal monies were doled out liberally at every level. It was called “priming the pump.” The catch was that as a war against wealth it meant that the pump would eventually run dry. Experience shows the less taxation, the greater the amount of wealth to be shared through employment and respect for enterprise and entrepreneurship.
To buy into welfarism as an excuse to vote for someone who supports exterminating the most helpless humans of all — those conceived but yet unborn — is an irony of ironies. Candidates who favor abortion, but speak of freedom as an antidote for fear, overlook the fact that it is a mockery of both freedom and bravery to reject human life at its beginning.
Every mother should consider that she once was in the womb, and remained there for the months needed before entry into society by birth. If a mother has a right to kill her child, then that mother was once subject to the right of her mother to end her life.
Cumulatively, abortion says that women have the right to put an end to the human race. That is an absurdity of logic and an insult to the instinct of women to love their children. That instinct has been attacked, blurred, and obliterated by one of those false “entitlements” that liberals constantly seek to widen. Whence did the “entitlement” of mothers to kill their babies come? Surely, not from the instinct that helped give them birth and nourishment. It came from the elitists on the Supreme Court who wanted to free women from the responsibilities of motherhood on the idea that choosing not to bear children — be whatever means — should be every woman’s “entitlement.”
Catholics should be aware that their faith does not embrace the idea that freedom means irresponsibility — a freeing of each human from the duty to fulfill the meaning of being human.
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=6155&CFID=9313175&CFTOKEN=68327086