Free Republic

The pope of the poor arrived for his first-ever visit to the world’s wealthiest superpower Tuesday denying he is a leftist and riding in a frugal little family car, windows rolled down. […] The Argentine, known as the “slum pope” for ministering to the downtrodden in his native Buenos Aires, is expected to urge America to take better care of the environment and the poor and return to its founding ideals of religious liberty and open arms toward immigrants.During the flight, Francis defended himself against conservative criticism that his condemnation of trickle-down economics makes him a communist. “I am certain...

Some on the political "right" promote a version of libertarianism which is anti-government and places the individual at the foundation of an understanding of freedom. This is at odds with the insights summarized in the Catechism. Often they paraphrase the American founders to imply that the existence of government itself is the problem. ...If you listen to some on the political "left", they seem to want to federalize everything. They think that our obligation in solidarity always means establishing more federal government programs. They are wrong. They have forgotten the role of mediating institutions and their vital role in governing...

Michael Sean Winters, blogging for the National Catholic Reporter, has written a lengthy piece asserting that Paul Ryan’s “dissent” from “Catholic Social Teaching” makes him a not very good Catholic and a “dangerous” choice for vice president. Others are far more qualified than I to discuss Catholic social teaching and Ryan’s understanding of it (see, e.g., Michael Novak, “Jesuits Rebuke Ryan,” and George Weigel, “Ryan vs. Georgetown”). But Mr. Winters begins his piece with an account of William F. Buckley Jr.’s “dissent” from Catholic social teaching, and that account is wrong in nearly every particular. That, I am qualified to...

he 9/2/09 issue of the Wall Street Journal, in its Notable and Quotable feature, calls attention to an important article that Roman Catholic Bishop R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa, published in his diocesan newspaper on the subject of health care and health care reform. The article is important for two reasons: first, because there has been and continues to be a certain amount of confusion regarding Catholic social teaching as it affects health care; second, because Bishop Nickless goes to great lengths to base his discussion on principles, and not merely on tactical considerations. Bishop Nickless begins by...

What exactly is in Benedict XVI’s new encyclical on the economy and labor issues is not yet known. Catholic leftists and progressives, though, are already trembling with excitement. Three glaring errors have already appeared in these heavily panting anticipations. An accurate presentation of real existing capitalism requires at least three modest affirmations: 1) Markets work well only within a system of law, and only according to well-marked-out rules of the game; unregulated markets are a figment of imagination. 2) In actual capitalist practice, the love of creativity, invention, and groundbreaking enterprise are far more powerful than motives of greed. 3)...

Although I agree on much of what they say, I think their voting guide falls short from being a true consensus document for U.S. Catholics. Folks, the National Catholic Reporter published today on its online edition this report, Common good gets boost from Catholic gathering that I found of interest. These are the first few paragraphs: The concept of the common good, an idea that winds through time from Plato to Aquinas, to the U.S. Founding Fathers and, on the way, through a number of popes, got a boost in Philadelphia July 11-13 when a crowd of more than 800,...

There are few things more frustrating than writing a book, and then being confronted with a ceaseless stream of arguments you?ve already answered while you?re waiting for it to be published. That?s what has happened, though, with Thomas Storck?s recent attack on my Lou Church Memorial Lecture in Religion and Economics, which stirred some controversy and healthy discussion at the time but which was in general far better received than I could have expected. My book-length treatment of the subject will be available next year, but in the meantime I offer one last installment in the ongoing debate over Catholic...

The search to prove that one can be a democrat and a Catholic has once again failed. With John F. Kerry attempting to be John F. Kennedy's protégé as the second Catholic president, the juxtaposition of Catholicism and the Democratic Party has been called to attention again with renewed vigor.Kerry's ambitions to be the next Catholic president sound as reasonable as his designs to be the next black president, for Kerry is as much a devout Catholic as he is a Southern black. Kerry's claims to be a Catholic in good standing have disturbed both the Vatican and the various...