Theologian Daniel Maguire on Paul Ryan's "Catholic Problem"

Regular readers of The Wild Reed may recall that the organization in which I serve as executive coordinator (CPCSM/Catholics for Marriage Equality MN) sponsored an event in October 2010 featuring Catholic theologian and author Daniel C. Maguire (pictured with me at right). Also, I include Maguire's Whose Church?: A Concise Guide to Progressive Catholicism in The Wild Reed's list of "Recommended Books." (See sidebar for other titles). I share all of this as way of introducing the following article by Maguire published earlier today at The Huffington Post. In it he takes on Republican vice-presidential hopeful Paul Ryan's "strange version of Catholicism." It's definitely worth reading.

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Paul Ryan's Catholic Problem

By Daniel C. Maguire

The Huffington Post
August 21, 2012

Sound the alarm! There has been a Catholic coup d'etat in the United States of America! Six members of the Supreme Court are Catholics (just imagine the furor if six were Muslims or Jews!). Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell are Catholics. And now, rising to top of this surging Catholic dynasty is the alleged Wunderkind of Republican economics, perky Paul Ryan.

Ryan wears his strange version of Catholicism with a jaunty sophomoric pride. "Catholic social doctrine is indispensable for officeholders." If only Paul Ryan knew what "Catholic social doctrine" is he would take flight from it just as fast as he is scrambling from the Ayn Rand breasts that, as he has proclaimed, suckled him and inspired all his political and economic views. Catholics who know the difference between Jesus Christ and Ayn Rand skewered perky Paul. They know that Jesus' mission, unlike Ayn Rand's, was "good news for the poor" (Luke 4:18). They embarrassed the righteous Ryan when he spoke at the Jesuit Georgetown University carrying a sprawling sign that asked: "Where were you, Paul Ryan, when they crucified the poor?"

Of course they know where he was. He was driving the nails into everything that helps the poor – and remember most of "the poor" are children. Budgets are intensely moral documents. They show where the heart is. To budget-makers we can say: show me the losers and the winners and I will tel you what you are. The Ryan budget plan, embraced by Mitt Romney as "marvelous," puts greed over need. Among its losers: medicaid, medicare, food stamps, health insurance, preschool programs, environmental and financial regulations, Pell grants, Head Start, mortgage guarantees. "Are there no poor houses?"

The budget is not all sour. There are sweet tidings for the already engorged mega-rich. And as for the military, ah, yes, the military, Ryan feels they do not ask enough though they have never been known for modesty or timidity in their requests. Ryan would further feed that black hole in the economy that already sucks out some $2 million a minute. Kill-power is prized more highly than Head Start and Medicaid.

How Dare You, Paul Ryan!

How dare you invoke "Catholic social teaching" to bolster that warped and brutal vision! Had you presented that budget as an assignment in my theology class at Marquette University I would have had to give you an F and a note would go to your parents saying, "this student is wasting your tuition money." So, listen up, Paul, and I'll show you why the "Nuns on the Bus" and Catholic university faculties are storming against your Catholic pretensions. It is no major undertaking to correct you. That's why your ignorance must be classified as crass.

Just last year, in October 2011, Pope Benedict's Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace gave all the help you need. They summed up centuries of "Catholic social teaching" in a single document and applied it to today's tottering global economy. When asked about the document, you equivocated about whether you had read it. Clearly, from your recent utterances you either did not read it or you read it and trashed it. Small wonder. It would give Ayn Rand a stroke. Jesuit Thomas Reese said the document is "closer to the view of Occupy Wall Street than anyone in the U.S. Congress."

Catholic Social Teaching 101

Here it is in gist: The Vatican document supports fair taxation, greed-controlling regulation and bailouts "with public funds" when necessary. Now, brace yourself, Paul, it excoriates "neo-liberalism," the greed-is-good creed of your right wing. The document calls for an international solidarity that would end poverty and obsessive reliance on military violence for security. It calls for more active citizenship, not voter suppression. Internationally, it calls for "a new model of a more cohesive, polyarchic international society that respects every people's identity within the multifaceted riches of a single humanity." It calls for a "public, supranational authority with universal jurisdiction," a "true world political authority" and a "world bank" to preside over a "global, universal common good." Nations need to "transfer a part of each nation's powers to a world authority and to regional authorities."

It does not call for a tyrannical despotic world authority. The Catholic tradition of "subsidiarity" means that nothing should be done by a higher authority that can be done by active participation at lower levels. Right-winders like you grab that one word "subsidiarity" and claim it supports their maniacal hatred of government. It doesn't. The document, like the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, considers government the prime care-taker of the common good with a particular mission to protect the powerless and the poor from exploitation.

Catholic social teaching abhors despotism, either that of governments or that of corporate power that can enslave the poor of the world as it is now doing. The blood, sweat and tears of the poor are on our clothing, our shoes and on our iPads. Using what is cynically and euphemistically called "labor arbitrage," corporations ship most of their work to slave operations in "the third world."

Now at this point, my student, Paul Ryan, is squirming in his seat. What I had just taught, relying on papal teachings, is not right wing. It is left wing in as much as the left stresses social justice and fair distribution of wealth and opportunity, and the left has a preference for peace-power over kill-power.

So, Paul Ryan, call your knavish, mean-spirited budget plan what you will. But do not call it Catholic. Stop defaming and insulting the stirring compassion and richness of Catholic social teaching by associating it with your form of upper-class warfare.

Have you no shame!

Daniel C. Maguire is Professor of Moral Theological Ethics at Marquette University and past-President of the Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health, and Ethics. Holder of a degree in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, one of the world’s major Catholic universities, Dr. Maguire is author of more than 150 articles in publications such as the New York Times, Atlantic, USA Today, The Crisis: Journal of the NAACP, the Christian Century, the Humanist, the Journal of Religious Ethics, the National Catholic Reporter and Ms. Magazine. He is also the author of eleven books, including Sacred Energies: When the World’s Religions Sit Down to Talk about the Future of Human Life and the Plight of This Planet and Sacred Rights: The Case for Contraception and Abortion in World Religions.


Related Off-site Link:
Biden And Ryan Share Faith, But Not Worldview – Barbara Bradley Hagerty (NPR, August 21, 2012).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Daniel Maguire on the Progressive Core of Catholicism
Daniel Maguire on Catholicism's "Long History of Demeaning Sexuality"
Daniel Maguire on Sex as Liturgy
Daniel Maguire on the Wedding of Spirituality and Sexuality
Quote of the Day – April 10, 2012