Watch excerpts from an April 26, 2012 lecture at Georgetown University by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) and an interview with Father Thomas Reese, SJ, senior fellow at Georgetown’s Woodstock Theological Center. Interview and editing by Fred Yi.
5 Responses to “Paul Ryan and Tom Reese: Catholic Teaching and the Budget”
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“The overarching threat to our whole society today is the exploding federal debt.”
Right – that’s the overarching threat. Ecological collapse, the growing gap between rich and poor (subsidized by his party) – none of that matters. All that matters are numbers on a balance sheet that have no real meaning and can be manipulated to prove any point one wishes proved.
Republicans and conservative Christians – a match made in your mythical hell.
I suspect that few would question the wisdom of distributing power and responsibility appropriately among levels of organization such as individual, family, community, state, and federal. But it is sheer misrepresentation for Rep. Ryan to imply that his party’s recent feeding frenzy of ruthlessly gutting vital government services in some way shifts that funding (=power) to any level other than the Economic Elite – that is, to the ultra-rich and the mega-corporations. These few are the ones who blew up the world’s economy – not the poor. These few – not the poor – are the ones who benefit from our perpetual state of war, and created our debt problem. And these few are Rep. Ryan’s true base. He serves them well indeed.
A good clip, but I was disappointed that the latter portion of the clip doesn’t include more of Fr. Reese’s insightful and articulate responses to Rep. Ryan’s Republican doublespeak.
Was Fr. Reese one of the people who decided to remove Christian iconography from the Georgetown podium when the President spoke there a year or two ago so as not to offend anyone? I’m not sure how authoritative his voice is with regard to the Catholic tradition if he’s too afraid to acknowledge the Catholicism of a Catholic university in public.
… the Republicans, with Ryan/Romney at the fore (and I do mean to put Ryan first), want to do that more than anyone in the last 100 years. God help us all! Thank you Fr. Reese. At least some ‘real’ Catholics are saying what is needed, but it needs to be expanded ad infinitum.
http://freecatholic808.com/2012/08/17/do-you-see-jesus-a-6400-question-for-seniors/
“Subsidiarity [doing things at the lowest possible local level wherever possible] does not give a free pass to cut services to the poor.”
Thanks to Fr. Reese for reclaiming what Ryan has attempted to hijack in the name of his un-Catholic budget. http://www.freecatholic808.com