Ryan as VP will lose the Catholic Vote

[berni_mccoy]

From the wiki article on Ryan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ryan#Ryan.27s_second_budget_plan

The 2012 Ryan budget also received criticism from elements of the Catholic Church, specifically from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and from faculty and administrators of Georgetown University. In its letter to Rep. Ryan, the group of Georgetown faculty and administrators criticized the Ryan budget as trying to "to dismantle government programs and abandon the poor to their own devices," going on to say that Catholic teaching "demands that higher levels of government provide help—"subsidium"—when communities and local governments face problems beyond their means to address such as economic crises, high unemployment, endemic poverty and hunger." The letter also criticizes Ryan for his attempts at "gutting government programs" and states that Ryan is "profoundly misreading Church teaching." A statement issued by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized the Ryan budget in similar terms. Ryan rejected the bishops' criticism that his budget plans would disproportionately cut programs that "serve poor and vulnerable people."

[Ilsa]

1. Good post and documentation. nt

[safeinOhio]

2. Ayn Rand is his moral compass?

They will love this guy when they read about her atheist teachings.

[Motown_Johnny]

11. Some Rand quotes

http://atheism.about.com/library/quotes/bl_q_ARand.htm

^snip^

14. The alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short circuit destroying the mind.

15. Faith is the worse curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought.

20. To rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies- that one has no rational arguments to offer.










http://listverse.com/2007/12/13/top-25-ayn-rand-quotes/

^snip^

11. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue.

9. It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

8. Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities.

[berni_mccoy]

13. Wow, I wonder if this could impact evangelical support for the ticket.

If Ryan can be tied to Rand successfully, I can imagine the evangelical right being sorely conflicted to vote for the ticket.

[Ikonoklast]

32. Ryan is running from Objectivism, and embracing his Roman Catholicism.

Either way, it's a Lose/Lose with the Evangelical crowd.

[nanabugg]

23. Still could be part of my "dream ad." See earlier post. Do we want people who idolize

people like Ayn Rand? Then follow with a bunch of her quotes. You know, this is how they did Obama with his Rev. Wright issue. Fight fire with fire!

[Hells Liberal]

12. He has since backtracked majorly on that

I'll see if I can find the link, but when Rand's hardcore atheism became an issue with some of Ryan's supporters, he was saying that he had nothing to do with her or her teachings.

It was hilarious.

[Chiyo-chichi]

3. Ryan as VP should lose the "human being" vote.

[berni_mccoy]

6. Heh, true that

[McCamy Taylor]

4. I should hope so. However, Pope Prada will support the man who hates gays and bans abortion.

[Joe Bacon]

5. You're right

Because the sad truth is that abortion trumps everything else for them. I have VERY sad memories of Western Pennsylvania in 1984 when the Catholic Churches told people to vote for Reagan because he was "pro-life". The mills had closed, people were unemployed en masse, yet they STILL voted for Reagan.

[Patiod]

14. Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

Abortion and gay-hating trumps ALL.

It's sort of like the death penalty. The Bishops are supposedly against that too, but you don't see them supporting politicians who are against it.

Ryan essentially wants to hand our retirements over to the banksters and say "good luck!".

[SickOfTheOnePct]

20. That's because there is no outright ban on the death penalty in Catholic teaching

There is on abortion.

Not saying that's right, just the way it is. In our diocese, the election time voting literature emphasizes that abortion and euthanasia issues trump all.

[Patiod]

21. Is euthanasia really a political issue at this point?

In our area, the secular hospital where my mom died was going to merge with a Catholic hospital. The doctors at the secular hospital fought the merger tooth-and-nail, because their hospital had offered to stop doing abortions after the merger, and it's the only hospital in the area still doing abortions. They claim that they do "medically necessary" abortions, about 100/year, and it's a needed service.

The other issue was that the Catholic hospital had a much stricter "euthanasia" policy than the the Church as a whole, but I was never able to figure out what that meant exactly. I used to be a hospice volunteer and we established pretty clearly that no extra-ordinary intervention is ever required by the Church - so if someone is relying on a vent to breathe, removing the vent isn't euthanasia.

But the secular hospital said that, post-merger, it was going to review its end-of-life policies to ensure that they were in compliance with that of the Catholic hospital. Well, screw that. The secular hospital's current policies worked just fine for my Catholic parents, their priest, and our bishop who discussed and helped my dad decide to remove my mom's vent.

Fortunately, the merger was stopped. Good. Let the secular hospital be secular, and the Catholic hospital be Catholic.

And just as a note, my work in hospice has me in the anti-euthanasia camp. My attitude toward euthanasia is that once everyone has access to really top-notch pain management, psychiatry, and great supportive end of life care then MAYBE I'd vote to make euthanasia legal. But we're not even close to that.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

22. No, euthanasia is not a hot button issue right now

But the Catholic church always throws that in with abortion, i.e., "supporting human life from conception to natural death"

[Freddie]

28. Do we care about human beings or zygotes?

Unfortunately in today's Church, the zygotes always win.

[berni_mccoy]

9. When the American Bishops have already spoken out

against Ryan's budget plans, the Pope would risk further alienating American Bishops and Nuns. The American Bishops won't tolerate someone who is willing to leave the elderly and poor to fend for themselves. Ryan is heartless.

[Joe Bacon]

36. Wrong.

They have made it clear that stopping all abortions trumps everything else, which is why the Bishops will continue to push for Romney/Ryan.

[malaise]

7. Don't forget he also was an absolute devotee of Ayn Rand

the atheist and he tried to distance himself in the past year. Bwaaaaaaaaaaaah!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

8. Re: 'subsidium'. The wiki seems to garble the relevant point about Ryan's

misuse of Catholic social teachings in his absurd budget rationale. Ryan apparently says that Catholic social teaching advocates addressing social issues at the lowest level of government possible. But Ryan goes way too far with this, advocating what Reagan's budget director David Stockman called a "shift and shaft" strategy on social programs: shift responsibility to a lower level of government, but remove almost all of the funding necessary to accomplish the programs' goals.

Compare what the wiki says to what the Georgetown Voice says about "subsidiarity" in the OP snippet at http://www.democraticunderground.com/125167518 .

[Jim Lane]

35. Can the Wikipedia discussion be improved?

It appears to me that the Wikipedia article is accurately reporting what's in the source document(s) (from the Georgetown faculty and/or the conference of bishops).

If the report is not accurate then it should be corrected. If the source garbled the point then the alternative point of view can be included in Ryan's bio, PROVIDED that there's a reliable source (generally speaking, mainstream media) that says so.

I'm an experienced Wikipedian and I'd be glad to work with you to improve Ryan's bio in this or any other respect.

[Motown_Johnny]

10. "THIS IS AN ATTACK ON RELIGION!" The Republican War On Religion continues!

Oh man, this really could be fun.

[LynneSin]

15. And btw Biden is Catholic

He's very popular with the Catholics in his homestate too!

[Patiod]

18. But not a "real" Catholic, since he isn't out fighting abortion and teh gayz

[LynneSin]

25. Catholics around here aren't like that

They judge more on what you do to help those in need.

[Patiod]

27. Funny, the one group of Catholics I know who are representative of your brand of Cathoic

Are in Northern Delaware.

I'm sure there's a lot more in many, many places, but my friends' parish outside Wilmington is the one I know of personally that indeed embodies that spirit.

[demosincebirth]

29. I consider myself Catholic, go to mass most Sundays and I'm not "out fighting abortion and

the gays." Also, I think he goes to mass quite often. What' is your definition of a "real" Catholic?

[Motown_Johnny]

31. Catholics are split into factions

and only the conservatives really care about those things. There are also liberal Catholics who care more about helping the poor than they do anything else, then there are the ones who just go through the motions and really don't care about anything.



Sorry for the Huffpo link but it is only 2 hours old so I am gonna go with this one, there are plenty others.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/paul-ryan-catholic-dilemma-_b_1767670.html#s308815&title=Luke_62021

^sniip^


Last April, the US Catholic Bishops sent a blistering message to the House Ways and Means Committee saying that any federal budget must be judged by the way it protects the 'least of these.' In Bishop Blaire's words: "The House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria."

The architect of the budget the Bishops deemed immoral was Rep. Paul Ryan, a Catholic, who has now joined Mitt Romney as his running mate on the GOP ticket.

[Le Taz Hot]

16. I can't see the die-hard Catholics

advocating voting for Obama either, considering he advocates "killing babies" (which will, of course, be the wording they'll use). What WILL they do?

[demosincebirth]

30. "Killing babies"? thats a spurious statement

[Le Taz Hot]

34. Talk to the anti-choicers,

it's their terminology.

[lunasun]

17. Ryan sounds Irish which sounds Catholic and that is how many folks vote do u actually

think a large portion of people in the US think much further than that when voting?? I don't

Ayn Rand yeah they are going to connect him to that....doubtful the concepts can enter thier brains
Annie who?

Plus he promised to lift up the middle class and offer equal opportunity not equal outcomes + that should be enough heard to vote for him +Mitt for the average Catholic IMO
plus he wont allow any fetus killing of course and has voted to keep those gays away from adoptions and marriage so what is not to love???

just my opinion but many Christians are"" profoundly misreading Church teaching" so not a real problem for Ryan

[SickOfTheOnePct]

19. I doubt it will make any difference at all in the Catholic vote

Social justice Catholics weren't going to vote for Romney anyway, and pro-life Catholics won't vote for President Obama.

I see it as having little to no effect on the Catholic vote.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

24. that's funny

the catholic church talking criticizing for abandoning the poor. when the bishops and cardinals give up their lavish lifestyle, then they can talk.

sP

[HereSince1628]

26. Ryan's house district is mostly roman catholic

with the exception of Rock Co, his district is 25%-50% roman catholic, and if you didn't already know, catholics are the group of largest religious adherents in Wisconsin.

[mmonk]

33. I expect the Franciscans will go after him hard.

[nini]

37. Catholics that vote republican usually do so because of the abortion issue

Or the scary gay marriage. They abandoned the needs of the poor long ago.

The ones I know who vote that way are so out of their minds over abortion they don't see all the other things that hurt those Jesus said they should be worried about.

Brainwashing will do that to you.