Rep. Paul Ryan

Last week’s spike in gasoline prices hasn’t slowed Nuns on the Bus a whit. The nuns and Network, their parent organization, are squeezing every drop of mileage out of their new-found fame, which has more to do with supporting liberal causes than reflecting church principles of caring for the poor and limiting government’s role in the private sector.

Over the weekend, the CBS program 60 Minutes had a sympathetic overview of the supposed Vatican crackdown of the sisters’ activities – censorship! Inquisition! – that was presented fast on the heels of the group’s March 13 press release registering its displeasure with Rep. Paul Ryan’s FY14 budget proposal.

The CBS profile failed to cover the nuns’ weighing in on such topics as averting climate change and the Affordable Care Act via proxy shareholder resolutions while focusing on social topics regarding the ordination of female priests and same-sex marriages. While sensitive to the very real works of compassion performed by the nuns, the network depicted the Vatican as hard-hearted and unyielding in its enforcement of church doctrine. Read more on Nuns, 60 Minutes, Go After Rep. Paul Ryan…

Political activism  by religious took a relatively new twist during the last presidential election cycle when the Nuns on the Bus initiative hit the road. The Roman Catholic sisters insisted they backed neither candidate, but were vehemently opposed to Sen. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) proposed budget.

The election has long since been decided, but the progressive crusade of Nuns on the Bus and its parent organization Network continues apace not only on the nation’s highways and byways, but as well in corporate boardrooms. This last is precipitated by proxy resolutions by “social justice” activists who are elbowing their way into annual shareholder meetings, courtesy of retirement funds invested in stocks or tax-deductible stock donations made to such organizations as Network.

On its website, Network asserts: “Gifts of stock are a great way putting the stock market to work for justice!” However, Network’s concepts of justice don’t necessarily align with the faith that all nuns have taken vows to uphold. Read more on ‘Social Justice’ Nuns Throw Doctrine Under the Bus…

In a lengthy interview in the Daily Caller, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg picks up many of the themes in his terrific new book, Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and How America Can Avoid a European Future. Here’s an excerpt:

Read more on Samuel Gregg: California, Illinois and New York Going Euro…

Acton’s Director of Research, Samuel Gregg, notes in a recent NRO article that vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan has avoided “emotivist nonsense” and presented a clear moral vision for our country.

Among other things, Ryan, ever so politely but unambiguously, underlined the immense damage inflicted by sometimes well-intentioned government welfare programs upon those in need. Yet he did so in a manner that detailed the economic costs but also went beyond a narrowly materialist reckoning. Ryan pointed to the manifold ways in which government programs have undermined the dignity of those in need and constrained their opportunities for human flourishing.

Read more on Samuel Gregg: Paul Ryan’s Way…

For many on the Catholic left, the confusion of “non-negotiables” in Church teaching with matters of prudential judgment has become all too common. In this week’s Acton Commentary (published October 17), Dr. Don Condit looks at how Vice President Joseph Biden’s “facts” about Obamacare were received by the Catholic bishops. The full text of his essay follows. Subscribe to the free, weekly Acton News & Commentary and other publications here.

Read more on Acton Commentary: Politics, Social Justice and the Non-Negotiables…

Ahead of tonight’s vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, Hunter Baker (a Baptist political scholar) and I (a Reformed moral theologian), offer up some thoughts as “Protestants in Praise of Catholic Social Teaching” in a special edition of Acton Commentary.

Read more on Up for Debate: Catholic Social Teaching and Political Discourse…

Acton Institute President and Co-Founder Rev. Robert A. Sirico was invited on America’s Morning News, a syndicated radio show, earlier this week to talk about tonight’s vice-presidential debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan. Rev. Sirico talks about how the candidates’ Catholic faith will play into the exchange. Click on the player below to listen in.

Read more on Audio: Rev. Sirico on the Biden vs Ryan Debate…

As I leafed through this week’s Wall Street Journal Europe political commentary, I finally felt a little redemption. Hats off to WSJ writers Peter Nicholas and Mark Peter whose brief, but poignant August 20 article “Ryan’s Catholic Roots Reach Deep” shed light on vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s value system. This was done by elucidating how Paul Ryan views the relationship of the individual with the state and how the local, small-town forces in America can produce great change for a nation gravely concerned about its weak and vulnerable.

The article references a standard Catholic but still-very-unknown-teaching on “subsidiarity.” Go figure, not even my word processing program recognizes the term in its standard U.S. English lexicon. Alas, subsidiarity is not a word you read about in the secular Wall Street Journal, either, whose op-eds debate many critical intuitions of the free market and democratic society yet seldom examine the intersection of theology and economics, like the Acton Institute does so well.

Indeed the WSJ Europe article was not that erudite (for other more elaborated pieces on subsidiarity go here and here and be sure to watch Fr. Robert Sirico’s  enlightening video (below). Neither do the WSJ writers spell out the details of Ryan’s various economic and welfare reform proposals inspired by the principle of subsidiarity, which include a repeal of nationalized medicine and drastically reducing spending on various excessive national welfare and other expansive public agencies.  Nonetheless, last Monday this secular media outlet gave its readers a very Catholic glimpse into  Ryan’s political world view which is  a product of a hardworking, Irish  Catholic family from  “small-town” America  (Janesville, Wis.)  trying to solve its own problems by the teachings of the Catholic Church. Read more on Small-town Paul Ryan: Defender of Subsidiarity…

Some proponents of limited government understandably yearn to see Mitt Romney’s recently announced running mate, Paul Ryan, as something like the pure intellectual descendent of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Some on the left, meanwhile, will be tempted to portray him as a heartless monster who only wants to enrich the 1 percent. Paul Ryan the politician is more complex than either portrait. Far from throwing granny under the bus, his efforts at budget reform are an essential step in saving Social Security and Medicare, along with improving the long-term fiscal health of the nation. On the other hand, and although his American Conservative Union score is a solid 91.69, he did vote for TARP, the bank bailout, and the auto bailout–government intrusions he has said he now partially regrets.

Read more on The Complexities of Paul Ryan…

Most Rev. Joseph F. Naumann, D.D., Archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas

On Catholic World Report, Carl E. Olson interviews Rev. Joseph F. Naumann, the Archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas, about the HHS mandate, the Ryan budget, and what the Supreme Court ruling means for the religious freedom fight.

Read more on ‘We didn’t pick the time, nor did we pick the fight’…