Thursday, August 09, 2012

Nuns Challenge Romney To Spend A Day With Them To Learn About Plight Of America’s Poor

You know it's bad when Catholic nuns - some of the few Catholic Church clergy who seem to believe in the true Gospel message -  are deriding Mitt Romney for being insensitive and clueless about the plight of the poor.  Worse yet, they call the Paul Ryan GOP budget which Romney has endorsed to be immoral and contrary to Catholic social justice principles.  Romney may have resorted to running ads featuring the late Pope John Paul II as an attack of Obama - apparently forgetting that John Paul II's legacy includes massive cover ups of sexual abuse literally around the globe - but he's clueless on social justice issues.  Enter the nuns who have invited Romney to join their bus tour so that he can be educated about reality.  Will Romney accept the invitation?  I seriously doubt it.  Here are some excerpts from a Think Progress post:

The group behind the Nuns On A Bus tour that highlighted the ill-effects of the House Republican budget in congressional districts across the country is now setting its sights on the party’s presidential candidate, inviting Mitt Romney to spend a day with the nuns to learn about the plight of America’s poorest citizens.
.   .   .   .   The group is specifically targeting Romney a day after his campaign released a misleading ad about welfare reform that Sister Simone Campbell, NETWORK’s executive director, said “demonize[s] families in poverty” and shows Romney’s “ignorance about the challenges” the poor face in America:
Recent advertisements and statements from the campaign of Governor Romney demonize families in poverty and reflect woeful ignorance about the challenges faced by tens of millions of American families in these tough economic times,” stated Sister Simone Campbell. .  .  .  . 
Romney has endorsed the House GOP budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). It was that plan, which includes deep cuts to food stamps and other safety net programs that benefit the middle class, that NETWORK’s Nuns On A Bus tour targeted, with Campbell and other sisters blasting it as “immoral” at the tour’s conclusion in Washington D.C. Romney has also proposed massive tax cuts for the rich that would likely come at the expense of lower- and middle-class families, which would see higher taxes or significant cuts to the programs they depend on.

Those policies, Campbell told ThinkProgress, show that Romney “doesn’t have clue” about the struggles the poor face. “The fact is, his policies shift wealth to the upper class,” she said. “Yes, it hurts the middle class, but it devastates those at the margins of our society.” If Romney were to accept their invitation, Campbell said she would take him to places like St. Augustine’s in Cleveland, where food programs “provide a hand up” to the community’s neediest members. “He thinks they’re lazy,” Campbell said, in reference to Romney’s misleading welfare reform ad. “It is hard work to keep things together when you’re poor. He doesn’t have a clue. Let him talk to them, and maybe they’ll touch his heart. And his mind too.”

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