Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Weigel on the Smarmy Catholic Professors

Love that word 'smarmy,' and it fits.

More substance:

>The Church’s concern for the poor does not imply a “preferential option” for Big Government. The social doctrine teaches that the problem of poverty is best addressed by empowerment: enabling poor people to enter the circle of productivity and exchange in society. The responsibility for that empowerment falls on everyone...

>Fiscal prudence is a matter of justice extended toward future generations, and is therefore an intergenerational moral imperative (as is provision for the retired elderly). To leave mountains of unserviceable debt to future generations is shameful.

>There are legitimate disagreements about the implications of the Church’s social doctrine for American social welfare policy. To suggest that the social doctrine provides obvious, clear-cut answers to questions about the future of Medicare or Medicaid is to misrepresent that teaching...

More at the link, well-written and well-reasoned.

3 comments:

jimspice said...

Any discussion surrounding religion can't really be pegged as "well reasoned" now, can it? You just have to accept the opposing viewpoint as a matter of faith. Why would you attempt to argue a matter of faith while so disinclined to suffer the same yourself? I try to live by that advice, and that's why you'll rarely see me chiming in on any of your posts religious in nature. If that's what you believe God wants you to do, so be it. Hope you're wrong and I'm right.

Anonymous said...

Jimspice,

To have religious faith is quite reasonable. A Catholic, for example, can be assisted in making the act of faith to believe what God has revealed because God has shown Himself to be believable. God has done this by working in real human history through Christ's miracles and Resurrection, through the miraculous spread of the Christian faith, through the lives of the saints, etc. If you believe all of this stuff is just a bunch of fairytales, read books on Catholic apologetics by authors like Peter Kreeft. Their arguments are rather convincing.

Dad29 said...

Any discussion surrounding religion can't really be pegged as "well reasoned" now, can it?

There are few entirely "faith" truth-claims in any religion, Jim. So happens that in the case at hand, there are zero of them. Plenty of written evidence to back up Weigel's comments, and little for the perfessors.

I happen to agree with you, partially: I don't get involved in Lut'ran/Episcopal/Methodist, or Islamic interfaith squabbles; that's up to them.

But since I'm a Catholic, I get to have an opinion about Catholic issues, and I intend to make it known.