Is Koch Brothers Money Fueling Criticism of Pope Francis on Climate Change?

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

In my last post I examined conservative criticism of Laudato Sii, (“Praised Be”), Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment and poverty. Indeed, some of the loudest howls of disapproval have arisen from Catholic Right pundits and think tanks. But clearly, there are other sources as well.

Is some of this criticism being fossil–fueled by the Koch Brothers? Well, let’s follow the money!

Movement conservatives who have become accustomed to the pronouncements of recent pontiff s as fuel for their culture war diatribes now find themselves in the awkward position of being at odds with Church teachings on the environment. For the first time many movement conservative Catholics are now forced to choose between God and the mammon of their financial backers – and mammon seems to be winning the day. A lot that mammon comes from the Koch Brothers Family foundations as well as Koch allies.

One of the Catholic Right climate change skeptics challenging Francis on the new encyclical is Catholic League president Bill Donohue. Whether it be a coincidence or not, it is worth noting that Donohue is an adjunct scholar for the Heritage Foundation. The conservative think tank is heavily funded by Koch Brothers money.

Another Catholic Right climate change skeptic organization working overtime to blunt the effects of Laudato Sii is ultra-libertarian think tank the Acton Institute . As the website Source Watch noted :

The Acton Institute’s strong support for both Catholicism and free market economics has come under strain as Pope Francis has actively criticized global inequality and unfettered capitalism. In May 2014, the Pope’s Twitter account posted a tweet saying “Inequality is the root of all evil.” Joe Carter, a senior editor at Acton, tweeted in reply, “Seriously, though, what was up with that tweet by @Pontifex? Has he traded the writings of Peter and Paul for Piketty?”, referring to economist Thomas Piketty, author of the 2014 book Capital in the 21st Century, a critique of growing economic inequality.

Action features a page on its web site filled with blog posts critical to varying degrees of the pope’s stand on climate change.

Acton also receives significant funding from Koch Brothers foundations. According to Greenpeace, between1997 to 2011 the Kochs kicked-in about $423,750 to Father Sirico’s organization.

Then there is self-described Koch Brothers ally billionaire Foster Friess. ABC News has dubbed him as “ The Man Behind Rick Santorum’s Money ” :

Friess is a born-again Christian who, along with his wife, Lynn, has given millions to conservative and Christian causes, including $1 million to Koch-brothers-related causes, as well as non-political charities, including raising money for children orphaned in the Haitian earthquake.

As I pointed out in my last piece, Santorum criticized Francis’s encyclical by complaining that the Pope is not competent enough to discuss matters of science.

But the t w o infamous libertarian siblings are funding those attacking the Pope ’s environmental ism from outside of Catholicism as well as from within. For example, there is the Chicago-based Heartland Institute. S ourcewatch describes Heartland as “ a nonprofit “think tank” that questions the reality and import of climate change, second-hand smoke health hazards, and a host of other issues that might seem to require government regulation. ” More importantly, the organization is strongly linked to and heavily funded by Charles and David Koch.

The Heartland Institute seems to be particularly threatened by the Pope’s stance on climate change. The organization has not only dedicated a page on its website to disputing Francis on global warming but even sent a contingent to protest the issuance of the encyclical .

Fred Koch, Charles and David’s father and founder of the Koch Family empire once did contract work in Stalin’s Soviet Union during the 1920s. Indeed, it was Stalin who sarcastically remarked in 1935, ” The pope! How many divisions has he got? ” A little more than a half a century later it would be another pope that would play a significant role in bringing down Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe.

Perhaps Charles and David Koch understand that when it comes to climate change they are now up against a force truly to be reckoned with. Here is a pope who can not only rally liberal and moderate Catholics but a significant number of religious conservatives too. Perhaps unlike Stalin they know not to underestimate his nontraditional source of power. And, they appear to be spending an awful lot of money to make sure that they do not repeat the Soviet mistake.

Advertisement

The Pope, Climate Change and the Catholic Right

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

The conservative criticism of Laudato Sii, (“Praised Be”), Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment and poverty that began even before its release, has now reached a fever pitch.

It is of more than passing interest that many of the cadre of naysayers are members of the Catholic Right. And not coincidentally, many of them have strong ties to conservative Evangelicals. What is it that they truly fear about Laudato Sii? Is it the encyclical’s inconvenient discussion of the disastrous implications climate change has upon the world’s poor – or is it something else? To wit, does the Jesuit Pope Francis threaten to undermine the power of the Catholic Right-Evangelical political alliance?

Among the rankled conservatives feeling the political heat are several hopefuls for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, including: Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal and Rick Santorum.

In the past, Catholic Democratic Party candidates who disagreed with the Vatican on biological issues bore the onus of being out of step with Church teaching. Now that dynamic has changed. The emphasis of the current Pope is not abortion and birth control but economics and now environmental justice. This places GOP Catholic pols in the unfamiliar (and often uncomfortable) position of being out of step with the Church on significant issues.

The worrying has led to well-orchestrated pushback. Coal industry lobbyists, for example, have been distributing “talking points” to members of Congress in order to lessen its impact. Rush Limbaugh is again dissembling about Pope Francis being influenced by Marxist economics.

As the New York Times recently noted:

This stance has rankled some conservative Catholics, as well as climate change skeptics, who have suggested that Francis is being misled by scientists and that he could veer into contentious subjects like population control. Others have argued that papal infallibility does not apply to matters of science. In April, a group of self-described climate skeptics, led by the Heartland Institute, a libertarian group, came to Rome to protest.

As well as:

Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo of Argentina, who is also chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, has sharply rebutted the criticism and postulated that many of the attacks have been underwritten by oil companies or influenced by conservative American interests, including the Tea Party. “This is a ridiculous thing, completely,” Bishop Sorondo said in an interview at the Vatican.

Among those on the Catholic Right who chided the pope on the encyclical were Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Catholic League President Bill Donohue. Both came off as best, ineffectual.

Santorum started the ball rolling by complaining that Pope Francis is not competent enough to discuss matters of science. While the pontiff does not hold a Master’s degree in chemistry as has sometimes been reported He did, however, earn a 2 year degree in the subject along with working several years as an actual chemist.

And of course Bill Donohue went into overdrive to obfuscate matters. And in one attempt at discrediting the pope the Catholic League President attempted to make the document be about the condemnation of air conditioning. In reality, air-conditioning is mentioned only once in passing, in the book-length document.

Pope Francis’s Jesuit credentials are of no small consequence in this matter. For the last century the Jesuit order has been one of the most progressive within Catholicism both in economic and scientific matters. Among other things, they run the Vatican Observatory. (Georges Lemaître, the astronomer who developed the big bang theory of the universe was a Jesuit-educated priest and a professor of physics.) And it has been the Jesuits – current pontiff included – who dismiss a fundamentalist rejection of evolution. And of course they have been active in pursuing distributive justice economics.

It is no wonder that the Catholic Right looks upon the Jesuits with distrust and alarm. Culture warriors such as Opus Dei’s Rev. C. John McCloskey and recently resigned Bishop Robert Finn have epitomized their preferred visions of Catholic clergy. As I have previously written, this cabal has long desired replacing moderate and liberal Catholics with converts from the fundamentalist Evangelical Protestantism. Obviously, the more progressively minded Francis frustrates this plan of action.

Then there is a political alliance that now exists between the Catholic Right and elements of fundamentalist Evangelicals. Frederick Clarkson has written extensively on this development, explaining how the two camps – often distrustful of the other – are now collaborating in ways that were, until relatively recently, unthinkable. But now, it is the new reality.

Laudato Sii is clearly not the signal the Catholic Right wants to send to potential fundamentalist Evangelical converts to Catholicism. Nor is it a subject that climate change skeptical Catholic GOP presidential hopefuls want to discuss with the evangelical voters they need to win the nomination. Just as John F. Kennedy was asked in 1960 by some of their number, there may also be some concern about whether the where their loyalty may lie: To his evangelical supporters or to Catholic teaching? Indeed, recent polling has revealed that the majority of American Evangelical Protestants attributed the cause of Extreme weather as a sign of end times as opposed to a manmade climate change.

At least for now, gone are the days when most of the significant pontifical pronouncements provide comfort to the GOP and movement conservatism. We do indeed live in interesting times.

Archbishop Chaput Wins the 2014 Coughlin Award!

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

It’s time again for the presentation of the annual Coughlin Award. This year’s award goes to the cultural warrior’s cultural warrior, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia.

The Coughlin Award — affectionately known as “The Coughie” — recognizes the person who has best exemplified an exclusionary, strident interpretation of the Catholic faith in the preceding year. The award is named for Father Charles Coughlin, the notorious radio priest of the 1930s who is the role model for today’s Religious Right radio and television evangelists, and other conservative media personalities.

Best known for his diatribes against FDR, Judaism and open sympathy with the racist policies of Adolph Hitler, Coughlin’s advocacy was clearly antithetical to the very definition of the word “catholic,” which, according to Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary means:

Catholic Cath”o*lic\ (k[a^]th”[-o]*[i^]k), a. [L. catholicus, Gr. kaqoliko`s, universal, general; kata` down, wholly + “o`los whole, probably akin to E. solid: cf. F. catholique.]

1. Universal or general; as, the catholic faith.

Men of other countries [came] to bear their part in so great and catholic a war. –Southey.

Note: This epithet, which is applicable to the whole Christian church, or its faith, is claimed by Roman Catholics to belong especially to their church, and in popular usage is so limited.

*Not narrow-minded, partial, or bigoted; liberal; as, catholic tastes.

*Of or pertaining to, or affecting the Roman Catholics; as, the Catholic emancipation act.

In order to win a Coughie, a candidate must complete three qualifying tasks: 1) Make the faith decisively less inclusive 2) Engage in incendiary behavior and 3) Ultimately embarrass the Church. This year’s winner — as usual — has risen to the challenge.

Chaput did not earn the 2014 “Coughie” because of any one specific action; instead, he earned his award through the sheer cumulative force his divisive career in the Church and in movement conservative politics. He is a role model for contemporary Coughlinesque Church leaders.

Archbishop Chaput has not only met requirements — he epitomizes them. So much so, that he is often able to meet more than one of the criteria in a single episode, and this year’s Coughie is in many ways a lifetime achievement award.

First; His career has been marked by stern pronouncements that meet the first Award requirement of making Catholicism less inclusive. From his time as the Archbishop of Denver when he uttered a harsh declaration of support for a Boulder, Colorado Catholic school’s denying re-enrollment of a lesbian couple’s two children; to his call for denying pro-choice Catholics Holy Communion; and finally to his open displeasure with Pope Francis’s most recent overtures to divorced and gay Catholics, Archbishop Chaput has made it clear that in his vision of the Church there is no room for greater tolerance, understanding, and dialog.

Second; Over the years he has engaged in incendiary behavior. For example, during the 2004 presidential election Archbishop Chaput declared that it was a sin for American Catholics to vote for the Democratic Party nominee John Kerry (Kerry is pro-choice and supports embryonic stem cell research). While serving as the archbishop of Denver, Colorado he opposed legislation that would expand the statute of limitations for prosecuting child abusers. He gives the appearance of one who is more interested in preserving the financial assets of the Church as an institution, and the privileges of an old boys club, than in securing the safety of the children in his care and holding to account people who abused their position to exploit the vulnerable.

Last Fall, he said: “I was very disturbed by what happened” at a Vatican sponsored Synod on the Family, where some 190 cardinals and bishops discussed such matters as how to treat LGBT people and divorced Catholics. “I think confusion is of the devil,” he declared, “and I think the public image that came across was one of confusion.”

To suggest that a conversation convened by the Pope is ultimately “of the devil” is about as incendiary as it gets in Catholicism. But Chaput was not finished. He went so far as to suggest that in the wake of the court decisions legalizing same-sex marriage in most states, Catholic bishops might consider engaging in what he called “principled resistance” by opting out of certifying civil marriages.

Archbishop Chaput will be the host of the long planned World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia next September. Pope Francis will be the featured speaker (replacing Pope Benedict who retired before he could make his planned appearance.) The Vatican Synod on the Family, which Chaput found to be “of the devil”, was a forerunner event to the World Meeting. So if past is prologue, Philadelphia may be shaping up as a showdown between the two leaders.

Third; All of this is an embarrassment to the Catholic Church.

So, for all that and so much more, Archbishop Chaput come on down and claim your 2014 Coughlin Award!.

Note to Bookmakers: It sure looks like Chaput is positioning himself to be an early front runner for the 2015 Coughie.

Vatican Defrocks A Bishop Over Sexual Abuse – But Not Finn.

Originally posted at Talk to Action.
Pope Francis recently indicated he is serious about ending child sex abuse and cover-ups by Catholic prelates by defrocking a former apostolic nuncio (a nuncio is essentially a high level Vatican diplomat) for having sexual relations with young boys.

But while the Holy See should be applauded for this decisive action, there is unfinished business with the bishop of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri. And the bishop in question is Robert Finn a darling of the American Catholic Right who have very little to say – at least now that he is a convicted criminal.

As the National Catholic Reporter described recent events:

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has ordered the laicization of an archbishop-ambassador accused of paying for sex with minors.

Józef Wesołowski, former apostolic nuncio to the Dominican Republic, will have two months to prepare an appeal to the ruling, which was announced in a brief statement from the Vatican on Friday.

The former nuncio, who the Vatican did not refer to as an archbishop in the statement, was removed from his post in August with little explanation. News accounts days afterward detailed allegations of paying for sex with minors and being connected to a Polish priest accused of sexually assaulting at least 14 underage boys.

But while Francis has acted on Wesołowski, he has yet to remove Robert Finn.

Let’s recall that the crimes of Bishop Finn resulted from his knowledge of the related crimes of a priest in his diocese who pleaded guilty in Federal Court to four counts of producing child pornography and one count of attempted production of child pornography. As I reported here and here, Bishop Finn had constructive knowledge of that priest’s improper touching of young girls and possession of child pornography. Finn knew or had good reason to suspect the priest‘s crimes. Had he acted, he would have prevented other crimes against children under his pastoral care. Indeed, in September 2012 Bishop Finn became the first American prelate convicted of failing to report a pedophile priest.

It is worth recalling that the beneficiary of the cover-up was Fr. Shawn Ratigan who was prosecuted and pleaded of his crimes in Federal Court.

As I reported here and here, Bishop Finn had constructive knowledge of Ratigan’s improper touching of young girls and possession of child pornography. I wrote here that Bishop Finn must go.

In March of this year I reported that a growing number Kansas City Catholics want Bishop Finn gone.

Pope Francis recently met with victims of Catholic clerical sex abuse. He used the occasion to publicly call for stricter, more decisive actions against Catholic clerics who either engage pedophilia or fail by negligence to prevent it. The Times reported:

In his homily, Francis also vowed “not to tolerate harm done to a minor by any individual, whether a cleric or not,” and declared that bishops would be held accountable for protecting minors. He said the abuse scandals had had “a toxic effect on faith and hope in God.”

As a progressive Catholic I truly want Francis to succeed. Catholicism is wanting for the kind of reforms he seems to be all about. People recognize that he seems to be the breath of fresh air the Vatican so desperately needs. But with that said, in certain areas Francis is beginning to face a credibility problem. Soothing words are not enough. Credibility, especially with regards to the pedophilia issue, requires decisive action. And decisive action requires punishing negligent as well as abusive bishops.

And the perfect place to demonstrate decisive action is in Kansas City.

The Continuing Spectacle of Bishop Robert Finn

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri has so far survived calls for his resignation or removal by Pope Francis. Finn is a convict who not only failed to report suspected child abuse by a parish priest under his charge: He has become the symbol of ongoing institutional intransigence in addressing the problem of child sex abuse in the Church.

Many Catholics in Finn’s diocese — including priests and nuns — have had more than enough of him. As the National Catholic Reporter recently reported they have formally appealed to the Vatican “to conduct a canonical review of Bishop Robert Finn say the church’s lack of response to his misdemeanor conviction has caused further spiritual harm to the diocese.”

One would think that Pope Francis would be inclined to act decisively. Prior to his election as Pope he had recognized the practice of placing the image of the Church before the well being of children had contributed to the problem. He declared: “I do not believe in taking positions that uphold a certain corporative spirit in order to avoid damaging the image of the institution.”

It has been that “certain corporative spirit” that has caused pain to many inside and outside of the Church. Indeed, the Church isolates itself and undermines its credibility by seeking to hold itself above and beyond the law.

The success of the Church generally, and this papacy in particular, may depend on how it finally addresses the sex abuse scandals. For example, Francis is going to need all the credibility he can muster in order to really be heard when he calls for reform of the shortcomings and abuses of laissez-faire capitalism.

If anyone has enjoyed the protection of corporative spirit, it has been Bishop Finn. A member of Opus Dei, he is well connected to the neoconservative Catholic Right. Indeed, Bill Donohue’s Catholic League (apparently with Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s blessing) has been running interference for the beleaguered bishop to keep him in power.

It is worth recalling that the beneficiary of the cover-up was Fr. Shawn Ratigan who was prosecuted for his crimes. He has since pleaded guilty in Federal Court to four counts of producing child pornography and one count of attempted production of child pornography.

As I reported here and here, Bishop Finn had constructive knowledge of Ratigan’s improper touching of young girls and possession of child pornography. I wrote here that Bishop Finn must go.

The Kansas City Catholics written about by National Catholic Reporter clearly agree.

“Civil law has done what civil law can do. The church has done nothing in terms of calling Bishop Finn to accountability. He continues as bishop as if nothing really ever happened,” said Mercy Sr. Jeanne Christensen, a former victims’ advocate for the diocese co-heading the appeal. She spoke at a press conference Monday outside the diocesan offices.

The article continued:

“This lack of action by the Catholic Church to do justice and to repair scandal contributes to the ongoing scandal among the faithful that is a result of the Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis,” wrote Fr. James Connell in the formal appeal.

Connell, a retired Milwaukee priest and member of the Catholic Whistleblowers victims’ advocacy group, acted as the catalyst to the appeal and contends that Finn’s actions — or inactions — violate ecclesiastical law and thus requires some form of church response. However, he refrained from suggesting an action to the pope, instead limiting his request that an investigation begin.

In the petition, Connell argues that Finn’s failures in the Ratigan case to protect children create a poor example others could follow, and in addition, “could lead other people to alter their faith life and their religious practices.”

The Vatican has confirmed receipt of the petition to investigate.

Writing recently, also in the National Catholic Reporter, retired priest and victims’ advocate Tom Doyle succinctly summed up Pope Francis efforts to date:

A year has passed and Pope Francis’ moves have been minimal. He made sex abuse a crime in the Vatican City State, a move so meaningless it is almost comical. He has not made a major or even a minor pronouncement about the problem and he has done little about bishops who have enabled perpetrators.

Doyle added, in a broadcast interview with PBS Frontline:

“I think what he has to do there is take some very decisive, concrete steps. The bishops that are the foremost ones, who have covered up, who continue to cover up, he has to publicly dismiss them.”

And as many Kansas City Catholics will tell you, Bishop Finn should be the first to go.

Donohue Runs Interference For Conservative Attacks on the Pope

Donohue Runs Interference For Conservative Attacks on the Pope

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

When a mob of conservative commentators led by Rush Limbaugh and Fox Business News morning host Stuart Varney recently red-baited Pope Francis, many of us wondered what the self-appointed defender of all-things-Catholic William Donohue would say.

As it turned out, given the choice between movement conservatives and those in line with Catholic economic teachings, the President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights attacked the pope’s defenders.

Now we know. But most of us are probably not surprised.

Pope Francis had dared to call out the inequities of laissez-faire capitalism, giving fits movement conservatives, long accustomed to a friendly Vatican focused almost exclusively on cultural war issues. The conservative pundits who hyperbolically miscast the pontiff’s recent encyclical as call to Marxist revolution didn’t know or didn’t care that Francis was articulating nothing more than good Catholic social teaching.

Indeed, Francis is clearly out of sync with Marx and Engels when he issued a renewed call for distributive justice; a cornerstone Catholic concept that calls for workers be able to earn enough to acquire private property.

But this did not stop many on the right from spinning this obvious laissez-fairytale. But when we listened for a full throated defense of the Holy Father from William Donohue, we heard nothing but
crickets.

When the liberal Catholic group Catholics in Alliance actually challenged Limbaugh, saying what Donohue would not — Donohue changed the subject, raising a red herring argument about the group’s tax-exempt status.

For his part, Donohue offered a rather ho-hum defense of the pope in the online conservative journal Newsmax. In it, Donohue not only failed to criticize the red-baiting mob, but he failed to name the transgressors,

He did, however, manage to include this factually correct passage:

On economic issues, the Pope posits a clear animus toward unbridled capitalism, a view shared by his predecessors. But he is more pointed, rejecting “trickle-down” theories.

He is not rejecting a market-based economic model in favor of a socialist one — indeed he restates Catholic teaching on subsidiarity — but he is warning us against greed and the single-minded pursuit of profit.

Then he dropped the other shoe, seeking to deflect any criticism aimed at them.

“The private ownership of goods is justified by the need to protect and increase them,” Pope Francis says, “so that they can better serve the common good; for this reason, solidarity must be lived as the decision to restore to the poor what belongs to them.” This is welcome, but his focus on the structural causes of poverty, to the exclusion of the cultural causes, suggests an incomplete understanding of this issue. He is very much in the Latin American mode of thinking on this subject. [emphasis added]

The “Latin American mode of thinking?” By subtly suggesting that Francis is a proponent of Liberation Theology, he was issuing a dog whistle for rightists like David Horowitz who has described Liberation Theology as “Marxised Christianity”).

These things said, we should not be surprised to find William Donohue siding with movement conservatism over Catholic social teaching (Donohue is an adjunct scholar with the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation). He has repeatedly engaged in ad hominem attacks on people he sees as critical of his version of Catholicism — especially if that version of Catholicism is in line with laissez-faire, trickle-down economics. As I have reported, examples abound.

When Opus Dei bishop and culture warrior Robert Finn became pleaded guilty to criminal charges for failing to report an instance of child sex–abuse buy one of his diocesan priests, Donohue waged a scorched earth policy against both The Kansas City Star (the local newspaper that there the bulk of investigative reporting on the matter) and SNAP ( the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ).

When there was criticism of Mel Gibson’s controversial film Passion of the Christ for its not-so-subtle anti-Semitism (readily spotted by Catholics such as Sister Rose Thering and Fr. Andrew Greeley), Donohue lashed out by claiming, “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.”

And this is not the first time that Donohue chosen the wrong side.

Several years ago when self-proclaimed rodeo clown Glenn Beck equated from notions of real Catholic social justice with the bigoted Rev. Charles Coughlin — a thinly veiled effort to equate the social justice teaching of the Church with fascism – Donohue sided with Beck over Catholic economic principles.

And when evangelical megachurch pastor (and fellow movement conservative) John Hagee was discovered at the time of his very public endorsement of Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential run to have made anti-Catholic remarks it was Donohue who took this upon himself to absolve Hagee on behalf of Catholics everywhere.

Indeed, this is his standard operating procedure. What I observed about him three years ago still stands with necessary addendum:

Donohue does not in any way rebuke Beck (now in addition to Rush Limbaugh and Stuart Varney), let alone defend Catholic notions of Social Justice or such leaders as Monsignor Ryan, Robert Wagner, Sr. and Dorothy Day.

But this is nothing new. I’ve written before that for Donohue, movement conservatism always takes precedence over addressing anti-Catholicism.

Glenn Beck (as well as other conservatives) not only launched a frontal assault on Catholic theology, but provided an opportunity for Donohue’s Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights to carry out its stated mission. That the League deflected for Beck and the others rather than standing up for the social justice teaching of the Church ought to be a singularly illuminating moment for American Catholicism.

If you are the victim of a pedophile priest demanding justice, then Donohue denounces you as “vicious and vindictive.” Yet if you are John Hagee, who, in Bill Donohue’s own words,, “…made a lot of money off bashing the Catholic Church and blames Catholics for the Holocaust…” you get on the Catholic League’s “A” list – even if you describe the Church as “the great whore of Revelation 17.” An apology will suffice provided you’re a player of the Religious Right. And if you falsely attack the Pope economics as “Marxist” you do not even have to apologize – as long as you are a political friend of Bill.

Is Pope Francis a Marxist — or Just a Good Catholic?

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

This post is reworked from one I wrote during last year’s presidential election campaign entitled, Is Redistribution Marxism? No, Just Good Catholic Doctrine!.  In light of Rush Limbaugh and Fox Business News host Stuart Varney’s strong suggestions that Pope Francis is espousing “Marxism” let’s once again set the record straight. – FLC

Rush Limbaugh and Stuart Varney seem to be confused and perplexed by Pope Francis’s recently encyclical, Evangelii Gadium (Joy of the Gospel). Perhaps the term “threatened” is a more accurate description. They have accused the pope of advocating Marxism in place of capitalism.

This is, of course stale, left-over McCarthyism — the same old game of slandering any sort of reform economics – even those solidly based upon capitalism — as either “Socialism” or “Marxism.” But what Limbaugh and Varney probably have no idea that His Holiness is advocating nothing more than “Good Catholic doctrine.”

Advocating Marxism?

Nowhere in the encyclical does Francis denounce capitalism. Nowhere does he call for the abolition of either private property or the private ownership of the means of production – two cornerstones of Marxism. Certainly, he is concerned about our priorities as a society: “How can it not be a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion.”  Francis is also concerned about the acceptance of social Darwinism:  “Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless.”   And like such mainstream economists as Robert Skidelsky, he observed that wealth is a means to an end and not an end in and of itself:  “Money must serve, not rule!”

But Francis made one statement that made Limbaugh and Varney think they saw a Red:

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.

“This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope,” Limbaugh bellowed. “…the Pope here has now gone beyond Catholicism here, and this is pure political.”

Varney added that “capitalism, in my opinion, is a liberator,” and he drew the analogy that Pope John Paul II knew that free markets were necessary because he grew up under communism. Varney claims that “markets work well for everyone.”

(It seems that Limbaugh and Varney are not familiar with either Mark 10:21-22 or  Luke 16:19-25.)

However, had they actually read the document, it is clear that Pope Francis was not calling for the abolition of capitalism, he was criticizing a particular style of capitalism:  laissez-faire.  In fairness, both commentators acknowledge that they are not Catholic, and they certainly demonstated ignorance about the teachings of the faith. That is, perhaps, the understatement of the day.

The Real Target: Distributive Justice

Limbaugh and Varney are really taking aim at is New Deal-inspired liberal economics – which is not about Marxism or destroying capitalism. Instead, it is about saving capitalism from those bad apples that would abuse it, seeing it only as a means to create non-meritorious wealth by dint of deceit and unscrupulousness.

Part and parcel of New Deal economics is Distributive Justice. Its roots are found in the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Maimonides and adopted into Catholicism by Thomas Aquinas. And it is Aquinas who defines distributive justice as follows:

…in distributive justice something is given to a private individual, in so far as what belongs to the whole is due to the part, and in a quantity that is proportionate to the importance of the position of that part in respect of the whole. Consequently in distributive justice a person receives all the more of the common goods, according as he holds a more prominent position in the community. This prominence in an aristocratic community is gauged according to virtue, in an oligarchy according to wealth, in a democracy according to liberty, and in various ways according to various forms of community. Hence in distributive justice the mean is observed, not according to equality between thing and thing, but according to proportion between things and persons: in such a way that even as one person surpasses another, so that which is given to one person surpasses that which is allotted to another.(1)

Aquinas addresses something either Limbaugh or Varney conspicuously do not: a duty to distribute with provision to the poorest of society

That is why with the issuance of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum (Of New Things; subtitled, “The Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor”) Distributive Justice was adopted as the heart and soul of Catholic Economics.

What Is Distributive Justice?

The liberal economist Monsignor John A. Ryan (1869-1945) outlined six canons for the distributive justice of wages. The first three, needs; arithmetic equality; and efforts and sacrifices are ethical in nature; while the next two, scarcity and comparative productivity, are economic in nature. Any one by itself, consummate to the product produced, would not pay a worker a just wage. And while laborers of superior talents deserve greater reward for their efforts and creativity, the first canon of needs is prominent and must always be the first to be satisfied. All five when properly balanced against each other results in the equitable distribution of wages as described by the sixth cannon, human welfare.

It is the all-too-common mischaracterization of the canon of arithmetic equality that gives rise to the accusation that liberals are “levelers,” “egalitarians” and of course, “Marxists” or “socialists.” Conservatives and neoconservatives often score points by taking this one canon of distributive justice argument out of context by interchangeably using the term “redistribution of wealth.” Our opponents erroneously claim that liberalism is about taking hard-earned income out of wealthier taxpayers’ pockets and redistributing it to the poor solely for the sake of soaking the rich. Nothing could be further from the truth.

First, the canons of distributive economic justice only apply when the employer enterprise can first provide his family with their basic needs. Secondly, it kicks in solely to justly distribute profits proportionately based upon meritorious contribution. Cleary, that is not Marxism but a fairer form of capitalism.

Modern distributive justice was first enunciated by Catholic progressives during the early 1890s and more clearly articulated in The Bishops’ Program of 1919. Led by economist-priest Monsignor John A. Ryan many in the Church were beginning to embrace the reformist ideas of the protestant Social Gospel movement then being pursued by progressive ministers such as Walter Rauschenbusch.

The Role of Progressive Taxation.

Progressive taxation has nothing to do with “the confiscation of wealth.” Such an interpretation is – once again – based upon a serious misunderstanding, focusing on only one of the six interdependent cannons of distributive justice: arithmetic equality. Instead progressive taxation seeks to maintain the wealth of those who succeed by playing by the rules. This means helping the middle class maintain a standard of living for which many of its members struggle every day to maintain.

It is not merely the percentage of taxes paid that defines justice, but the payment in proportion to wealth created by each individual after which the basic necessities of life have been first satisfied. The working poor and the lower echelons of the middle classes should not be forced to pay a flat tax rate equivalent to wealthier members of our society; the overwhelming majority of the former’s income goes to basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter. They have little or no superfluous income. Thus, their tax burden should be the lightest.

Middle-class workers have a bit more superfluous income, but in light of their decreasing power in this area, care should be given to their tax burden. Yes, they should pay proportionately more than the poor, but always with the caveat that they fund many of our government programs.

If the middle-class or even lower echelon wealthy have some superfluous wealth by the dint of operating a small business that, too must be taken into account. The owner of a small trucking company or a produce distributor is more prone to suffer financial hardship than the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Furthermore, small business owners generally reinvest a greater proportion of their personally created wealth into their endeavors than does the hired executive. Because they are in the middle of the economic spectrum and reap the fewest benefits from the government, they naturally have a greater resentment of the abuse of tax revenue. They are the ones who, more and more, are struggling to maintain their measure of hard-earned wealth that they have created for themselves.

The stock conservative argument that our present tax system is one based upon “the envy of wealth” or “is a redistributer of wealth” is a fraud. Instead it is a value for value transaction-especially for the very wealthy. If the rich want to argue that a 90% or 70% top tax bracket is onerous, they may have a point. But having Bill Gates pay a federal tax rate of about 41% does not put a crimp in his lifestyle; he will not be denied self-development. In fact, in the early 1960s when the highest tax bracket was 90%, the conservative writer Willmoore Kendall proclaimed that if the top bracket were to be lowered to 40%, it would allow anyone to become “smacking rich.”

It is the wealthy who have the most to gain but who lately have been contributing the least. Yes, the rich are entitled to their rewards, but their wealth is their reward, not massive tax rebates. And if they want to protect their wealth, it does not come without a cost: A just and progressive taxation system.

Protecting wealth means paying for military and homeland defense, as well as for “first providers” such as police, fire fighters and EMS workers. Protecting wealth means having enough funds to ensure that the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission can go after those who would engage in fraud and stock manipulation in an effort to unjustly separate the wealthy from their money. Protecting wealth means sufficiently funding the F.D.I.C. to protect citizens against bank failure.

The greater proportion of their tax burden does not come from income going primarily for basic necessities, but from overabundant, superfluous income. How can we bemoan their inability to buy a third or fourth vacation home when many hard-working Americans do not even have basic health care, let alone have the ability to purchase private property?

There is nothing wrong with being a millionaire. We should not discourage wealth creation, but encourage it. However, where we differ from the right is that wealth must gathered and maintained more fairly. Does this mean an egalitarian redistribution of wealth? No — but, it does mean adhering to the principle that our tax contributions fairly correlate with the benefits we receive the government.

On the False Charge of Marxism.

Distributive Justice capitalism is not Marxism — although that is what many of its critics on the Right falsely allege. Instead it is a third way that strives to ignore the arbitrary power that often results from the unchecked power that accompanies both Marxism and yes, laissez-faire capitalism.

Unlike Marxism, the model presented here still centers on the twin goals of private property ownership and profit motive. And unlike under Marxist regimes our government does not become the ultimate owner of property nor of the means of production. Instead, it acts as the umpire to assure that laws and mechanisms exist to allow workers to better bargain for a fairer share of private profits, safer working conditions and the ability to acquire private property.

Marxism desires to do away with both profit and private property. Distributive Justice concentrates on the democratization of capitalism through the fairer distribution of profits to all those who produced a given product or provided a specific service.

Capitalism at its best unleashes creative forces that have provided a vast improvement in standards of livings in many, many societies. But while capitalism is the most efficient vehicle across the board, it has also been uneven and sometimes unfair in its results. The trick is to make capitalism more democratic and thus more just.

For far too long this viable economic philosophy has been in the hands of buccaneer types who see market-based economics as an excuse to satisfy greed and do so under the guise of “economic freedom.” Clearly, there is no freedom for the collateral victims of economic practices that have no consideration for the common good. As we have seen in the 1920s and in the post-Reagan years, unfettered capitalists left to their own devices will only care about one thing and one thing only: maximizing profit. Government’s proper role is to not to eliminate their capitalistic instinct, but to prevent that instinct from causing unnecessary collateral harm.

The distributive justice model differs from the laissez-faire model is in its understanding that a just form of capitalism requires a sturdy government guarding against exhibitions of arbitrary economic power. Its mechanisms include the governmental oversight of financial institutions, progressive taxation and policies that favor the distribution of profit primarily based upon an individual’s contribution in creating such profit.

“Good Catholic Doctrine.”

This is far from the first time a Catholic has been called a Marxist or a Socialist for wanting to use the power of government to ensure that capitalism be fairer and less predatory. It is a battle that was being fought a hundred years ago often in the form of providing workers with safe working conditions.

Shortly after the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, two prominent Catholic politicians took up the cause of Distributive Justice. They were then-New York State Senator Robert Wagner and then-Assembly Speaker Al Smith — two giants whose imprimatur would be on FDR’s New Deal. As Dave Von Drehle recounts in his book, Triangle: The Fire that Changed America:

The work of 1912 produced a series of new laws in the 1913 legislature that was unmatched to that time in American history. The Tammany Twins [Wagner and Smith] pushed through twenty-five bills, entirely recasting the labor laws of the nation’s largest state. There were more fire safety laws – by that point, two years after the Triangle fire, nearly every deficiency in the Asch Building [the site of the Triangle fire] had been addressed. Automatic sprinklers were required in high-rise buildings. Fire drills were mandatory in large shops. Doors had to be unlocked and had to swing outward. Other new laws enhanced protections for women and children and restricted manufacturing by poor families in their tenement apartments. To enforce the laws, the Factory Commission pushed through a complete reorganization of the State Department of Labor.

Business leaders didn’t quite know what had hit them. But gradually they started making their complaints known. Real estate interests, in particular, were upset by the number of safety modifications they were required to make. One member of the Factory Commission, Robert Dowling was a New York real estate man, and he often found himself dissenting from the sweeping recommendations pushed by the volunteer staff. (Eventually he resigned from the commission, blaming Francis Perkins, in particular, for going too far.) He saw it as his job to remind Wagner and Smith of the costs involved in their unprecedented reforms. During one executive session, he referred to the statistics on the number of people killed in factory fires. Notwithstanding the catastrophe at the Triangle, he ventured, “It is an infinitesimal proportion of the population.”

Mary Dreier was shocked. “But Mr. Dowling,” she cried, “they were men and women! They were human souls. It was a hundred percent for them.”

Smith jumped in on Dreier’s side. “That’s good Catholic doctrine, Robert! He declared.

Not Marxism or even socialism; as Al Smith said, just “good Catholic doctrine.”

—————-

(1) Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, “Question 61: The Parts of Justice, Article 2.”

William Donohue: Will You Please Go Now?

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, achieved the seemingly impossible in a recent interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo — a new low.

Like every other Catholic of any prominence, Donohue was asked about his views on the surprising comments by Pope Francis regarding LGTB Catholics. When the conversation turned to the ongoing priestly pedophilia scandal, he not only failed to embrace the new spirit emanating from the throne of St. Peter — he continued to attack gay people and as is his wont, he blamed the sex abuses committed by priests on the victims.

“I always tells the truth”, he declared, while badly mischaracterizing the findings of a recent study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (the 2004 report commissioned by The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; as for the press release put out by John Jay, it concluded, “that there was no single cause or predictor of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.”). Karen Terry, PhD., the principal investigator concluded that neither celibacy nor homosexuality were causes of abuse. But Donohue told Cuomo that because many of the victims involved were teenagers, “It’s not a pedophilia… most of the victims were post-pubescent… .” Apparently, Donohue thinks that the criminal sexual violation of teenagers is ok.

Cuomo, to his credit, did expose many of Donohue’s past hypocrisies. Unfortunately, they did not discuss Donohue’s role in the Ratigan-Finn debacle in the Diocese of Kansas City St. Joseph Missouri. Fr. Shawn Ratigan pleaded guilty in Federal Court to four counts of producing child pornography and one count of the attempted production of child pornography. His Bishop, Robert Finn, was convicted by a Jackson County court of a misdemeanor count of failing to report suspected child abuse. But while Ratigan was sentenced to 50 years in prison Finn (a darling of Opus Dei) still sits as bishop in the era of “zero tolerance.”

Donohue’s defense of these convicted criminals is a vile spectacle that has to be seen to be believed. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of Donohue’s more egregious howlers in this interview.

Donohue complains at the 2:58 minute mark, that the bishops mishandled the scandal by sending the sexual predators to see psychologists instead of throwing them in jail. What actually happened is that Donohue and the Catholic League sought to thwart the prosecution of Ratigan while running interference for his immediate superior, Bishop Finn. What’s more, one of the groups working in consort with the Catholic League was Opus Bono Sacerdotii (OBS), (an organization which has ties to Domino’s Pizza magnate Tom Monaghan) which had shuffled Ratigan off to see psychologists who declared that he was not a pedophile and that his pornography problem was a result of loneliness and depression. I pointed out at the time that Donohue is pictured on the OBS homepage next to a link to his piece, “Straight Talk about the Catholic Church and SNAP Exposed.”

But Donohue’s straight talk did not include seeking to get the truth about the Finn-Ratigan affair to the world. For example, Donohue issued a press release in September 2012 which stated, “The case did not involve child sexual abuse—no child was ever abused, or touched, in any way by Father Shawn Ratigan. Nor did this case involve child pornography.” However, as the New York Times reported at the time:

In May 2010, the principal of the Catholic elementary school where Father Ratigan was working sent a memo to the diocese raising alarm about the priest. The letter said that he had put a girl on his lap on a bus ride and encouraged children to reach into his pockets for candy, and that parents discovered girl’s underwear in a planter outside his house. Bishop Finn has said he did not read the letter until a year later.

The prosecutor said the photographs discovered on Father Ratigan’s laptop in December 2010 were “alarming photos,” among them a series taken on a playground in which the photographer moves in closer until the final shots show girls’ genitalia through their clothing. Confronted with the photographs, Father Ratigan tried to commit suicide, but survived and was briefly hospitalized.

This is what William Donohue has claimed “did not involve child sexual abuse” and did not “involve child pornography.”

While we await some actual straight talk from William Donohue, let’s be aware that one of his standard tactics is attempting to shift the focus of the problem. In effect, changing the subject. For example, in the Cuomo interview he claimed that “78% of the victims are post-pubescent” and “the word in the English language [describing this behavior] is not pedophilia, it’s called homosexuality.” Such a statement, however, is nothing more than a ruse. It is a transparent attempt to shift the blame from the offending priest to the victim by esoterically suggesting possible seduction on the latter’s part.

Not only did Donohue incorrectly equate sexual orientation with the legal age of sexual consent while simultaneously discounting the coercive power of a predatory adult, the John Jay Report does not show what he claims it shows. In fact, at page 10 it shows the opposite:

“Most sexual abuse victims of priests (51 percent) were between the ages of eleven and fourteen, while 27 percent were fourteen to seventeen, 16 percent were eight to ten, and nearly 6 percent were under age seven.”

Again, by Donohue’s definitions, apparently puberty is the line at which coercive sex by priests becomes consensual.

It is incomprehensible to me and to many other Catholics that this man leads any organization that calls itself Catholic. It is even more incomprehensible that he works closely with the American Catholic hierarchy — especially Cardinal Dolan of New York. This episode makes it clear that the most vulnerable among us are expendable if they get in the way of William Donohue and his cronies.

Donohue is the embodiment of the culture-war politics the new pope has disavowed. I recently wrote that Pope Francis must fire — and not only because he is the only one who can. I think it is essential for the credibility of his effort to reform the Church. But I’d like to amend my comments to say that just as the bishop who sat on evidence of child-abuse needs to go, those who sought to impede justice need to go as well. And that includes William Donohue.

Priest Gets 50 Years for Child Porn – Bishop Who Knew Remains Bishop

Originally posted at Talk to Action.

Earlier this year I wrote that the credibly of the new Pope may depend on how he lives up to his claim of having a zero tolerance policy regarding child sex abuse.

What measure of tolerance shall we say that the Pope is giving to Bishop Robert Finn, who was convicted over a year ago of failing to report suspected child abuse by a priest under his authority and still leads the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri?  A federal judge deemed the child porn charges of which pedophile priest Fr. Shawn Ratigan was convicted to be so serious that he sentenced Ratigan to 50 years in prison.

I am one of those Catholics who has been cheered by the new pope’s refreshing tone and his embracing of tolerance and humility. Indeed, his recent comments about the Church’s recent obsession with culture war issues may have pulled the rug out from under the Republican Party Auxiliary we generally call the Catholic Right. His recent statements clearly indicate that he may lead the Church to an approach to economic and social justice that transcends Roman Catholicism and embraces the entire world.

But the longer he waits to act on the problem of sex abuse in the Church, the greater the risk that the good will he had earned, and the hope he has given to many millions of Catholics (and non-Catholics) will be lost.

Only the pope has the power to remove a Bishop. And the removal of Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri would be the perfect starting point to show the world that he will back up his words with deeds.

On its face, it ought to be a no-brainer.  Let’s recall that the crimes of Bishop Finn resulted from his knowledge of the related crimes of Fr. Shawn Ratigan who pleaded guilty in Federal Court to four counts of producing child pornography and one count of attempted production of child pornography. As I reported here and here, Bishop Finn had constructive knowledge of Ratigan’s improper touching of young girls and possession of child pornography. Finn not only knew of or had good reason to suspect Ratigan’s crimes, but had he acted, he would have prevented other crimes against children under his pastoral care.

I’ve previously written that Bishop Finn — a darling of the American Catholic Right must go.  But Finn has powerful friends.  The American Catholic Right is led by prominent neoconservatives and members of the secretive Catholic order, Opus Dei — and Finn is one of their own. Finn is also revered as a culture warrior, par excellence — having called on the Church to be “the Church militant.”  

No matter who Finn’s friends may be, Pope Francis — who has prominently claimed that he stands with the poor and the vulnerable — is faced with what may be the critical bellwether challenge and opportunity of his papacy.