Friedrich Hayek called it a weasel word. The American Spectator has my new essay on it here.
More on social justice as it appears in Catholic social teaching here. And more on social business here.
Read more on Social Business, Social Gospel, Social Justice…
In this week’s Acton News & Commentary, Rev. Gregory Jensen observes that religious communities on both the left and the right can agree that government budgets are “moral documents.” He then offers a novel suggestion for closing budget gaps while offering clergy an opportunity to show solidarity with the poor. Subscribe to the free weekly ANC and other Acton publications here.
The next skirmish over the country’s financial direction will come in September as Congress tries to prepare for the federal government’s new fiscal year, which starts October 1st. The Christian Left has quoted the Bible quite freely during the budget battle, throwing around especially the “red letter” words of Christ in its campaign to protect all of the federal government’s poverty programs (even those so riddled with fraud that the White House wants to cut them). It seems bizarre, then, that they never make reference to the most obviously political passage of the Gospels—Christ’s dictate to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s…”
Read more on What Would Jesus Cut? Who’s Asking, the Pharisees?…
John Baden, chairman of the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment in Bozeman, Mont., wrote a column for the August 19 Bozeman Daily Chronicle about the Circle of Protection and Christians for a Sustainable Economy and how each has formulated a very different faith witness on the federal budget and debt debate. Baden says that the CASE letter to President Obama is “quite remarkable for it reads like one written by respected economists and policy analysts.”
My contribution to today’s Acton News & Commentary. Sign up for the free weekly Acton email newsletter here.
By John Couretas
One of the disturbing aspects of the liberal/progressive faith campaign known as the Circle of Protection is that its organizers have such little regard – indeed are blind to — the innate freedom of the human person.
The recent budget battle may have sparked new questions for Americans to answer, such as what is poverty and who falls under such a classification? Furthermore, due to its massive debt, government may need a limited role in helping the poor. While Christians who stood behind the Circle of Protection advocated for the protection of programs they claim that benefit the poor, other Christians looked at the debate differently arguing for another way to help the poor. However, despite how we decide to help the poor, is our understanding of what it means to be poor misleading?
Mark Tooley has an excellent write up over at FrontPage about religious left figures staging martyr like arrests in defense of tax increases, unsustainable deficit spending, and the welfare state. Here are some details provided by Tooley:
It looks like Congress will vote later today or this evening to raise the debt ceiling and avert a possible default by the United States Treasury. How the debt ceiling compromise will fair when measured against Acton’s Principles for Budget Reform it is too early to know, but one thing is certain: if the deal contains a single budget cut for even the most ineffective of social programs, we’ll hear screams of protest from Jim Wallis and his Circle of Protection.
The Circle of Protection radio advertisements being broadcast in three states right now make their arguments, such as they are, from a quotation of the Bible and a federal poverty program that might be cut in a debt ceiling compromise. But the scriptural quotation is a serious misuse of the Book of Proverbs, and the claims about heating assistance programs are at best overblown: the ads are really no better than their goofy contemporary piano track.
Read more on Circle of Protection Ads: A Telling Distortion of Scripture…
In my 2009 commentary addressing the nation’s debt crisis I included words from Admiral James B. Stockdale. The full quote comes from an essay on public virtue from the book Thoughts of A Philosophical Fighter Pilot. In his 1988 publication, Stockdale declared:
