[brooklyn dave]

OK if we get Obama Care then all those Catholic hospitals will have to close (as if so many haven’t closed already). For all its stances on abortion and other issues, the RC Church is rather socialistic in its attitudes such as labor, economy, immigration etc. I belive abortion is murder,but I think the RC church has gone awry in its socialistic attitudes on so many other things.

[Mrs. Don-o]

American Catholic religious orders--- who are notorious for being dissenters on major portions Catholic doctrine, and defectors-in-place ----have largely accepted the false social justice=socialism equation. But I am obliged to point out that they have overlooked 150 years of absolutely consistent papal teaching against socialism, including the present Pope who has not "stayed out of" the debate:

BENEDICT XVI

“The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person − every person − needs: namely, loving personal concern.

"We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need.

"In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live ‘by bread alone’ (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3) − a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.” (Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, December 25, 2005, n. 28)

That's just a sample --- I could cut-and-paste pages, but that's not needed --- and these quotes are fully representative of the teaching of every Pope (you can click this) ---since +Pius IX, whose mid-19th century writings against socialism were contemporaneous with the publication of the works of Karl Marx.

It is not the Popes who should be faulted for not teaching, it is the U.S. Catholic Bishops who should be faulted for not teaching; and the efffectively-apostate religious orders faulted for not listening. (The U.S. bishops are notably negligent on a number of canonical duties, including Canon 915--- but that's a topic for another day!) (God save all sinners, including that unworthy meddlesome biddy known as Mrs. Don-o.)

Their problem, if I, though myself negligent, may sound a precise note of judgment here, is in their lack of fidelity to the teachings of the Church --- their failure to act like Catholics.