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Wisconsin bishop praises Paul Ryan, discusses intrinsic evils, prudential judgments

CWN - August 17, 2012

Making clear that he was endorsing no candidate, Bishop Robert Morlino of Madison praised vice presidential contender Paul Ryan as a Catholic who “is very careful to fashion and form his conclusions in accord with the principles” of Catholic social doctrine.

“It was no shock at all for me to learn that our diocesan native son, Paul Ryan, had been chosen to be a candidate for the Vice Presidency of the United States,” Bishop Morlino wrote in an August 16 diocesan newspaper column. “I am proud of his accomplishments as a native son, and a brother in the faith, and my prayers go with him and especially with his family as they endure the unbelievable demands of a presidential campaign here in the United States.”

“It is not for the bishop or priests to endorse particular candidates or political parties,” he continued. “Any efforts on the part of any bishop or priest to do so should be set aside. And you can be assured that no priest who promotes a partisan agenda is acting in union with me or with the universal Church.”

Bishop Morlino then distinguished between intrinsic evils and policy decisions on which Catholics of good will may disagree.

“Some of the most fundamental issues for the formation of a Catholic conscience are as follows: sacredness of human life from conception to natural death, marriage, religious freedom and freedom of conscience, and a right to private property,” he said. “Violations of the above involve intrinsic evil — that is, an evil which cannot be justified by any circumstances whatsoever. These evils are examples of direct pollution of the ecology of human nature and can be discerned as such by human reason alone. Thus, all people of good will who wish to follow human reason should deplore any and all violations in the above areas, without exception. The violations would be: abortion, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, same-sex marriage, government-coerced secularism, and socialism.”

He continued:

However, a conscience well-formed according to reason or the Catholic faith, must also make choices where intrinsic evil is not involved. How best to care for the poor is probably the finest current example of this, though another would be how best to create jobs at a time when so many are suffering from the ravages of unemployment. In matters such as these, where intrinsic evil is not involved, the rational principles of solidarity and subsidiarity come into play. The principle of solidarity, simply stated, means that every human being on the face of the earth is my brother and my sister, my “neighbor” in the biblical sense. At the same time, the time-tested best way for assisting our neighbors throughout the world should follow the principle of subsidiarity. That means the problem at hand should be addressed at the lowest level possible — that is, the level closest to the people in need. That again, is simply the law of human reason.

As one looks at issues such as the two mentioned above and seeks to apply the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, Catholics and others of good will can arrive at different conclusions. These are conclusions about the best means to promote the preferential option for the poor, or the best means to reach a lower percentage of unemployment throughout our country. No one is contesting here anyone’s right to the basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, etc. Nor is anyone contesting someone’s right to work and so provide for self and family. However there can be difference according to how best to follow the principles which the Church offers.

Making decisions as to the best political strategies, the best policy means, to achieve a goal, is the mission of lay people, not bishops or priests. As Pope Benedict himself has said, a just society and a just state is the achievement of politics, not the Church. And therefore Catholic laymen and women who are familiar with the principles dictated by human reason and the ecology of human nature, or non-Catholics who are also bound by these same principles, are in a position to arrive at differing conclusions as to what the best means are for the implementation of these principles — that is, “lay mission” for Catholics.

“Thus, it is not up to me or any bishop or priest to approve of Congressman Ryan’s specific budget prescription to address the best means we spoke of,” Bishop Morlino added. “Where intrinsic evils are not involved, specific policy choices and political strategies are the province of Catholic lay mission. But, as I’ve said, Vice Presidential Candidate Ryan is aware of Catholic Social Teaching and is very careful to fashion and form his conclusions in accord with the principles mentioned above. Of that I have no doubt. (I mention this matter in obedience to Church Law regarding one’s right to a good reputation.)”

“Let us beg the Lord that divisions in our electorate will not be deepened so as to have a negative impact on pre-existing divisions within the Church during this electoral season,” he concluded. “Let there be the peace and reconciliation that flow from charity on the part of all.”

Dolan: Ryan Is a ‘Great Public Servant’

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

August 17, 2012 4:00 A.M.

The first time Timothy Cardinal Dolan of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, met Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan, the congressman was talking about St. Thomas Aquinas. Cardinal Dolan reminisced about the meeting and their subsequent friendship and correspondence during his Sirius Catholic Channel radio show Thursday.

The meeting took place at Carthage College, a Lutheran school in Kenosha, Wisc., Dolan, then bishop of Milwaukee, was there to receive an honorary degree; Ryan, a fourth-term congressman, was the commencement speaker that year.

“He gave — I timed it — nine minutes, which is excellent, on St. Thomas Aquinas,” recalled Cardinal Dolan, who himself tends to give concise homilies. “It was tremendous, in front of a Lutheran audience,” the cardinal remembered. “So we really started up a great correspondence and got to know each other very, very well.”

“We go way back, Congressman Paul Ryan and I,” the cardinal continued. “I came to know and admire him immensely. And I would consider him a friend. He and his wife Janna and their three kids have been guests in my house; I’ve been a guest at their house. They’re remarkably upright, refreshing people. And he’s a great public servant.”

Dolan stressed that he was “speaking personally and not from a partisan point of view. . . . But I have immense regard and admiration and affection for him, just personally.” Dolan added that he is “happy” his friend has the “honor” of being on a national ticket.

In his first solo outing this week, Ryan met hecklers criticizing him for policies they believe are against the “common good.” This summer, his budget was criticized on a bus tour by politically active liberal religious sisters, one of whom is on the verge of becoming a talking-head-show regular through Election Day. In his own show, taped Tuesday afternoon and aired Thursday afternoon, Cardinal Dolan acknowledged that Ryan has his critics, but commended the congressman for his efforts to tackle the federal budget deficit.

He recalled exchanges they have had about the Ryan budget plan (exchanges that National Review Online first reported on last May) and paraphrased Ryan:

He did say, “I bristle when any Catholic politician who dares to suggest that we need to get our fiscal house in order, that we need to balance the budget, that we need to show some frugality and restraint, is automatically branded as anti-poor. . . . I am passionate about the poor. That, too, comes from my religious conviction. . . . Nobody suffers more from runaway deficits and a poor economy than the poor. And the best way we can help the poor is by getting our financial house in order — meaning jobs will go up, employment will go up, and they’ll be helped.”

Cardinal Dolan summed up his end of the exchange, saying: “And I wrote back and said, ‘You’ve got a good point.’ ‘And,’ I said, ‘let me applaud some of the things you are doing, namely your call for financial accountability and restraint and a balanced budget . . . and . . . let me also applaud your obvious solicitude for the poor.”

“Once again it comes down to that prudential judgment. How are we going to do it?” Dolan stressed that he was “not trying to be an apologist” for Ryan:

He and I had a good, heated conversation and I offered some criticism which he was gracious in accepting. . . . [Ryan said he believes it is] “probably time to ask a big question . . . whether so-called entitlement programs are the best way to help the poor. . . . I’m for the entitlement programs. We always have to have a vigorous safety net. But if we don’t do something to save them, our huge entitlement programs, like Medicare and Social Security” — to which he is committed, by the way — “are going to flounder. So I’m kind of the only one saying what we’ve got to do to save them. Please don’t say to me that I’m the one about to undo them. Actually, if we don’t do this, they’re going to be undone.”
So I admire him. He’s honest. He’s refreshing. Do I agree with everything? No, but . . . I’m anxious to see him in action.

In his letter to Cardinal Dolan in April, Ryan wrote:

The vast network of centralized bureaucracies under a government that grows without limits has reached the point where an increasing majority of citizens are now receiving more in government payments than they provide in revenues. We believe human dignity is undermined when citizens become passive clients living on redistributions from government bureaucracies. Twenty years ago Blessed Pope John Paul the Great identified these problems as the “Social Assistance State” in his encyclical Centesimus Annus: “By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.” . . . What he warned against as a threat to human dignity is now being realized in America.

On his radio show this week, Cardinal Dolan affirmed that the social-assistance state is “not the end-all, be-all. And it shouldn’t become an end in itself, and sometimes, it can become strangling.”

Cardinal Dolan credited Ryan with considering subsidiarity and solidarity, two principles of Catholic social teaching, in his approach to public policy. “It’s a both-and, not an either-or,” consideration, the cardinal said, “as most things in Catholic chemistry are.”

Modeling how one would walk through the principles in making policy, the cardinal said:

The subsidiarity would seem to say, “Hey, we need to work at the local level: families, neighborhood, churches, volunteer associations. The closer we can get to the folks, and the more we can avoid ‘Big Brother’ government, the better off we are.” That’s subsidiarity, and that’s always been a classic part of Catholic social justice. . . . Solidarity, though, also balances it out to say, “By the way, a civil, virtuous society is going to come together to take care of those most in need.” Now, somewhere between the two — which is another great classic of Catholic social justice — usually in the middle stands virtue.

Dolan welcomed the fact that there is a Catholic on each party’s ticket. “Do you not think it’s a cause for celebration in the Catholic community in the United States of America that the two vice-presidential candidates are Catholic? Did you ever think it would come to this?

“We’ve got two men who — and you can disagree with one of them or both of them — say they take their faith seriously, who don’t try to hide it, and who say, ‘Hey, my Catholic upbringing and my Catholic formation influences the way I think.’ Not bad. Not bad.”

President John F. Kennedy, Dolan observed, “couldn’t say, ‘My religion will affect my public policy.’ He couldn’t say, ‘My Catholic faith is going to have an impact on the way I govern.’ In fact, he almost had to say the opposite. And now you’ve got two guys . . . who were picked because their Catholicism was attractive.”

Ryan’s bishop, Robert Morlino of Madison, also commended Ryan this week, as he has before. “I am proud of his accomplishments as a native son, and a brother in the faith, and my prayers go with him and especially with his family as they endure the unbelievable demands of a presidential campaign here in the United States,” he wrote in the Diocese of Madison’s Catholic Herald. He added:

It is not for the bishop or priests to endorse particular candidates or political parties. . . . It is the role of bishops and priests to teach principles of our faith, such that those who seek elected offices, if they are Catholics, are to form their consciences according to these principles about particular policy issues. . . . Some of the most fundamental issues for the formation of a Catholic conscience are as follows: sacredness of human life from conception to natural death, marriage, religious freedom and freedom of conscience, and a right to private property.

“This is a big moment for Catholic voters to step back from their party affiliation,” Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, chairman of a new religious-liberty committee of the bishops’ conference, told me in an interview last week, just before Mitt Romney’s announcement about Ryan. Advising Catholic voters, Archbishop Lori said: “The question to ask is this: Are any of the candidates of either party, or independents, standing for something that is intrinsically evil, evil no matter what the circumstances? If that’s the case, a Catholic, regardless of his party affiliation, shouldn’t be voting for such a person.”

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online.