Sunday Sermon #2: Catholic Workers

My Catholic upbringing and schooling has equipped me to understand a good deal of the authoritarian and dogmatic, with-us-or-against-us mindset and the moral hypocrisy of the Christian Right.  And it seems that in large part, the Catholic Church has become part of the Christian Right.

But there is an element that remains, embarrassingly in some instances, of another Catholicism: the Sermon on the Mount Mother Teresa Catholics, the Pope John XXIII Catholics, the Dorothy Day Catholics.  Even the establishment Church honors (however ruefully) the heroes and martyrs who sacrificed themselves for the least among us, and even the most conservative popes will issue at least one encyclical on behalf of the world's poor.

But acts of political courage on behalf of the weak and oppressed are so rare as to be almost shocking.  But even a lapsed and former like me is impressed, and feels compelled to acknowledge this one.

 GOPer House Speaker John Banal was invited to give the commencement address at Catholic University.  Banal went to Catholic schools and is a practicing member.  Following on a letter from American Bishops expressing their concern for the effects of the GOPer budget, dozens of faculty members at Catholic U. and other universities sent Banal a letter, which read in part:

"Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.

The 2012 budget you shepherded to passage in the House of Representatives guts long-established protections for the most vulnerable members of society. It is particularly cruel to pregnant women and children, gutting Maternal and Child Health grants and slashing $500 million from the highly successful Women Infants and Children nutrition program. When they graduate from WIC at age 5, these children will face a 20% cut in food stamps. The House budget radically cuts Medicaid and effectively ends Medicare. It invokes the deficit to justify visiting such hardship upon the vulnerable, while it carves out $3 trillion in new tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy."


The use of "shepherded" in the above graph is the Catholic equivalent of a dog whistle.  Added Stephen Schneck,  Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at Catholic U: "Speaker Boehner’s budget eviscerates vital programs that protect the poor, the elderly, the homeless and at-risk pregnant women and children. This is not pro-life.”

On Saturday Banal gave his largely non-political commencement address--but was also greeted by: " Katy Jamison strode toward her graduation from Catholic University on Saturday wearing the requisite black robe and mortar board — plus a neon green message to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). “Where’s the compassion, Mr. Boehner?” said the 8-by-10-inch sign pinned to her chest."

Jamison, 26, said Boehner, the keynote speaker at Catholic’s graduation and recipient of an honorary law doctorate, had cut too much in the federal budget aimed at protecting the poor. Doing so defied the Catholic church’s teachings, she said, and will hurt the people she hopes to help with her newly minted master’s degree in social work.

Shades of Dorothy Day.