Pray for Rep. Ryan (WI)
The other day in the local newspaper I read how faculty members and priest of Georgetown University, a Jesuit school in Washington D.C., wrote Rep. Paul Ryan (WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee how his budget plan did Not reflect the teachings of the Catholic Church as he claimed.
Rep. Ryan, a Catholic, claimed that his budget proposal reflects the social teaching of the Catholic faith while the faculty members and the Jesuit say “it decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks to the wealthiest few.” Rep. Ryan does not understand, it seems, that in Catholic social teaching the main role of the government is to exist for the ‘common good.’
Rep. Ryan does not understand that the ‘preferential option for the poor’ in the Catholic Church is based on Jesus’ parable about the Judgment of Nation where he talks how feeding the poor, visiting those in prisons, visiting the sick as how we treat God and nations be judged and rewarded and how when a nation does not do the works of mercy it is condemning itself to ‘eternal punishment’. Americans tend to read Matthew 25 as individual acts. In the time of Jesus there was no individualism like we now have in the USA. Jesus was talking about nations and governments in the parable. Pray for government leaders, like Rep. Ryan, who do not get this basic understanding of faith that government’s major role is to serve the common good, especially to the poor and least amongst us. Pray that Rep. Ryan hears the voice of God and does not harden his heart.
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