Faith in Public Life

We noted last week that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact.com gave its Lie of the Year award to the myth that health care reform legislation represented a "government takeover" of the health care system. This has me musing over what the biggest Catholic lie of the year was in 2010. I'm picking the laughable effort that Deal Hudson, the CatholicVote.org crowd and other conservative Catholics made to brand Tea Party ideology as all nice and cozy with Catholic social teaching. This effort was so transparently partisan and willfully ignorant of centuries of Catholic social teaching that it runs away with the award like Cam Newton and the Heisman. The idea that the Catholic principle of "subsidiarity" fits lockstep with anti-government rhetoric, free-market fundamentalism and lower taxes for millionaires and billionaires is a stunning distortion of papal encyclicals and Catholic social teaching through the ages. The always insightful Vox Nova blog says it well. Fundamentally, subsidiarity is all about letting human dignity flourish by creating the space for social relations to take place at the most personal level. It is meaningless when stripped away from solidarity. It has nothing to do with low taxes, minimal regulation, or low spending. In the economic sphere, solidarity calls for government intervention in certain core areas (such as determining working conditions and support for the unemployed), while subsidiarity calls for the government to create favorable conditions for the common good to flourish. That, by the way, means correcting the problems that come with the free market. This was patently clear to Pius XI, the intellectual architect of subsidiarity, when he railed against the injustice created by unregulated large corporations, especially in the financial sector. Properly understood, subsidiarity provides a bulwark against both the centralizing tendencies of socialist collectivism, and the decentralizing tendencies of the free market. Deal Hudson and Thomas Peters might want to put down those Republican talking points and dust off their Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Released by the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace in 2004, the Compendium describes the "common good" as "the reason that political authority exists." In Catholic teaching, government has an essential role in helping to create the conditions of a just society where human dignity can flourish. The Catholic Church is not a spiritual subsidiary of the Cato Institute. The Church's call to reject excessive individualism and warnings about the dangers of unregulated markets don't sound anything like the Tea Partiers. John

Despite constant political attacks designed to dismantle regulations and environmental protections, an exciting new report from the University of Maryland Center demonstrates there is tremendous room for dialogue with members of the religious community on issues of environmental justice. As... Casey

Beau Underwood, FPL Partnership and Outreach Coordinator, discusses the role of faith in the public square during a great interview this week with Liz Essley at The Washington Examiner: You've been doing some work with the Occupy movement. The Archbishop... Casey

An infographic to complement the new study on the relative job-creating value of spending on defense vs. discretionary budget items. From MilitaryEducation.org:... Nick http://www.faithinpubliclife.org

Spencer Ackerman weighs in on the exchange between Secretary Stockton and Rep. Lungren about conservative insistence on "naming the threat" of violent Islamist extremism. Acknowledging that this framing can sound "on the surface" like a good way to distinguish between... Nick http://www.faithinpubliclife.org

Following Dan's debunking of Tony Perkins's argument that "Jesus is a free-marketer" yesterday, Aaron M. G. Zimmerman also has a theology lesson for the Religious Right leader: Perkins writes: "Jesus rejected collectivism and the mentality that has occupied America for... Nick http://www.faithinpubliclife.org

Last week, a group of prominent evangelicals penned a Washington Post op-ed calling for a rethinking of international nuclear policies. "Nuclear weapons, with their capacity for terror as well as for destruction of human life, raise profound spiritual, moral and... Jess

The FPL News Reel is a daily round-up of the top faith and politics stories in the news. You can sign up for the email version of the News Reel here and follow it on twitter at @FPLNewsreel 99 Percent'... Jess

People of faith came together this morning for a prayer vigil in support of unemployed workers, calling on Congress to extend unemployment insurance to protect the economic security of struggling families. Part of the Take Back the Capitol activities, hundreds... Beau

As the economy relegates social issues to the back-burner, Religious Right leaders are baptizing the Tea Party's agenda of punishing the vulnerable in order to further enrich the wealthiest Americans. Toward this end, Tony Perkins wrote a post on CNN's... Dan

Of the three witnesses that testified on the first panel of Rep. King's hearing yesterday, the Assistant Secretary of Defense and U.S. Army Senior Adviser for Counterintelligence Operations may have been the higher profile names, the third witness, Lieutenant Colonel... Nick http://www.faithinpubliclife.org

In the ongoing economic debate over the most effective way to manage debt and create jobs, conservative ideologues have maintained a hard line of cutting taxes and slashing spending--except when it comes to the defense budget. Paradoxically, while dismissing the... Tara

The FPL News Reel is a daily round-up of the top faith and politics stories in the news. You can sign up for the email version of the News Reel here and follow it on twitter at @FPLNewsreel Religion Stories... Nick http://www.faithinpubliclife.org

In a brief aside during his hearings on radicalization in the military, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) praised the 6,000+ Muslim U.S. service members have served overseas since 9/11 and the 14 Muslim troops who have been killed in the line... Nick http://www.faithinpubliclife.org

Brian at Political Correction flags a telling exchange from yesterday's hearing on radicalization in the military, in which Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) tries to get Assistant Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas' Security Affairs Paul Stockton to... Nick http://www.faithinpubliclife.org

After publishing my post on the U.S. Catholic bishops' approach to poverty and economic justice a few weeks ago, I received a note challenging my representation of the bishops' record on these issues. On a specific point I should make... Nick http://www.faithinpubliclife.org

In his previous hearings on the "threat of Muslim radicalization in the United States" Rep. Peter King invited witnesses who seemed selected for the likelihood that their testimony would validate King's misinformed conviction: that the primary threat facing the U.S.... Nick http://www.faithinpubliclife.org

The core lie underlying the recent rise of Islamophobia is the claim that Muslims' loyalty to their faith makes them untrustworthy Americans. As we've tracked in the past, Anti-Muslim commentators (and even former presidential candidates) continue to falsely promote... Casey

As John noted yesterday, some Catholic bishops and conservative pundits have been criticizing the Obama administration for a purported "anti-Catholic bias," citing a Department of Health and Human Services grant with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that was... Tara

Following the defeat of a radical "fetal personhood" ballot initiative on Election Day in Mississippi, another abortion legislation battle looms in Ohio, where the state Senate is considering H.B. 125, which would make performing an abortion a felony if a... Jennifer Butler