When Religion is a Refuge for GOP Scoundrels

The Republican Party loves to proclaim itself to be the bastion of religious faith against the godless Democrats. Yet, if you track the social policies of the GOP versus the Gospel directives of Christ, one finds a huge disconnect. The GOP doesn't practice what it claims to preach and the godless Democrats despite their many problems seem to better heed the Gospel directives of caring for the poor, the sick, the hungry and the homeless - the very people that the GOP deems disposable and worthy of the trash heap. Meanwhile, greed and benefiting the obscenely wealthy is fine and dandy in the GOP view of things. A piece in Religious Dispatches looks at this GOP hypocrisy with particular emphasis on the moral disconnect evident among Catholic politicians in the GOP. Here are some highlights:

Six members of the Supreme Court are Catholics. Speaker of the House, John Boehner, and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell are Catholics. Also in this new Catholic dynasty is the alleged wunderkind of Republican economics: perky Paul Ryan. Ryan wears his form of Catholicism with a jaunty pride, declaring that “Catholic social doctrine is indispensable for officeholders.”

But, ah, there’s the rub. Neither Ryan nor the right-wing bishops who coddle him, nor five of the Catholic Supreme Court justices, have done their homework. They are handling theopolitical dynamite which, if applied, would explode their right-wing projects into a fine and smelly dust.

“Catholic social teaching” is a too often overlooked treasure of social justice theory and it’s been growing even more impressive over the past two centuries. This teaching is not fringe; it is papal to the core. It is “a pity beyond all telling” that Catholic bishops, obsessed with condoms and such, could not raise their passions and attention above the pelvic zone and shout from the rooftops a message that is crucially and brilliantly relevant to a global political economy on the brink of total collapse.

Like Jesus’ description of his own mission, the Vatican document is “good news for the poor.” (Luke 4:18) Ryan’s budget is not. Budgets show where the heart is: they are intensely moral documents. To budget-makers we can say: show me the losers and the winners, and I will tell you what you are.

Among the losers in the Ryan-Romney budget, are programs that help the 99 percent: medicaid, medicare, food stamps, health insurance (one-half of the $5 trillion in cuts over a decade would come from health care even though our health care potpourri is the worst in the developed world.) Other losers include: preschool programs, environmental and financial regulations, Pell grants, Head Start, and mortgage guarantees.

As to winners, it is the bloated rich who get help they do not need and could never deserve. As Robert Reich reports, in 2010 15,600 super-rich households (the top 1/10th of 1 percent) got 37 percent of all the economic gains that year with the rest going to those in the top 10 percent. The Ryan budget defends greed over need. Extend the tax breaks and further deregulate the dogs of greed.

The Catholic tradition of “subsidiarity” means that nothing should be done by a higher authority that can be done by active participation at lower levels. Right-wingers like Paul Ryan grab that one word, “subsidiarity” and claim it supports their maniacal hatred of government. It doesn’t. It calls for a more active citizenship, not voter suppression.

The Vatican document supports fair taxation, greed-controlling regulation and bailouts “with public funds” when necessary. It excoriates “neoliberalism,” the greed-is-good creed of the right wing. . . . as the Vatican says, it’s immoral.

Catholic social teaching is not wild-eyed idealism; it is a pragmatic realization that without the taming of greed and without poverty-ending sharing, we face global economic chaos.

Yes, it's another example of why I see today's GOP peopled principally with right wing religious extremists and utter hypocrites who gush over their supposed religiosity while acting in direct contravention to the Gospel message. I suspect most atheists and agnostics are better at acting in a manner consistent with the Gospels' message than the godly Christian set.