Links for 05/21/15 | National Catholic Reporter

Links for 05/21/15 | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: The Nebraska Catholic Conference statement on the death penalty seems like a pretty standard pro-life press release, which is why we make dogma in person with an audience. I suspect this was done by staff who usually does anti-abortion work.  The part about wrongful convictions is a nice touch, but they could have gone further by equating life without parole to death and parole while elderly an infirm to cost shifiting,and not in a good way.  I was amazed to find that Nebraska had three diocese and Virginia only two. Of coruse, Nebraska is a very Catholic state. Its why any let up on abortion as a criticical issues (it,isn't by the way), would make the state blue overnight.



I am sure George Weigel's anti-Germanism extends to the Pope Emeritus as well as to Cardinal Kaspar and his colleagues. I can see why right wing Catholics fear a social democratic, which is Germany in a nutshell.  If the state takes better care of people than the Church, they often abandon the Church.  Of course, they could be punishing the Church for not creating more martyrs against their last right wing government our of control. Or they could be hoping there is no God, for a vengeful God would annihilate them all (instead of the Palestinians, who had no part in the Holocaust or the Porajmos).  The culture as buried its feelings about these events - and of the atrocities of the American and British Air Forces on German Civilians and that part of industry that did not make weapons. The die off we allowed to happen from famine did not help either, regarding either the USA or God.  Stopping the insanity from the right wing on marriage and gays will not solve the problems of the empty pew.  Dealing with smoldering issues that took one generation out of Church, which be default takes the next ones out, just might. (In the 19th century, French churches were empty - probably still are).  God cares what people do the rest of the week, something which George Weigel and his supporters find even more terrible than history is to the Germans.



Robert Christian at Millenial hits a lot of those points addressed this week on how some Churches put the moral social issues over the moral action issues - at least in rhetoric.  When he takes the focus off of Churches and puts it on the parties, he hits the nail right on the head. It is not the Church who stands for protecting life until birth, but certainly some protect the fetus Republicans start singing from the hymnal of personal financial responsibility one the child is strapped into the car seat for the first time. Then they talk about limiting sex, not just managing it - usually putting the woman in charge of that. That should be a non-starter for the Church, oddly because sex is part of unitive love in Humanae Vitae.  The Church, however, does little to jump up at that point and tell the anti-sex crowd NO! Sadly, some are in that crowd.



On social issues, the odd thing is that the Catholic Church was huge in getting Social Security passed.  Would that it had done more on health care. There is actually further to do than the current social democratic solution for the elderly.  For one, we could do parish level intake - with parish funds filling gaps in public social services as they happen (like making sure people have some cash for Metrorail or shampoo when SNAP does not cover these things.  Family can help, but not always).



It can also be open to supporting more advanced solutions in the public square, like a greatly expanded refundabe child tax credit payable with wages - say $1000 per month per child (who would ever have an abortion?) or being less unfriendly to teen pregnancy or teen sex. Here is a kicker, using diverted and equalized Social Security revenue to buy employer voting stock - not for new projects but exisiting shares - until there are no capitalists to go to the Catholic Charities Annual Ball, not because they are ticked, but because they are gone. That is radical.