Ted Schmidt, Toronto

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats:
The Second Coming

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats:
The Second Coming

 Nothing bespeaks the devolution of contemporary Catholicism and the abandonment of the Vatican ll vision as the announcement of Paul Ryan as Vice-Presidential Republican candidate for the year 2012.
   One hardly knows where to start when analyzing the shocking use of “my Catholic faith” in describing Ryan’s bizarre gospel worldview.
   Of course Ryan begins with his conservative creed — his pro life stance — meaning anti-abortion (a fight which will never be won given the polarization in the US), so it’s safe to be “pro life” — and vote for war budgets at every chance.
 In April, Ryan was taken to the woodshed when he dared use Catholic Social Teaching, in particularly subsidiarity, as the basis of his budget proposal. Fifty Catholic theologians and leaders blasted Ryan’s proposals out of the water, stating that CST always saw a positive role for the federal government. As John Paul ll summarized this approach in Centissimus Annus (1991).
   It is the task of the State to provide for the defence and preservation of common goods such as the natural and human environments, which cannot be safeguarded simply by market forces. …the State and all of society have the duty of defending those collective goods which, among others, constitute the essential framework for the legitimate pursuit of personal goals on the part of each individual.
   Here we find a new limit on the market: there are collective and qualitative needs which cannot be satisfied by market mechanisms. There are important human needs which escape its logic. …Nevertheless, these mechanisms carry the risk of an “idolatry” of the market, an idolatry which ignores the existence of goods which by their nature are not and cannot be mere commodities.
   The 50 theologians challenged Ryan’s budget: “Simply put, this budget is morally indefensible and betrays Catholic principles of solidarity, just taxation and a commitment to the common good. A budget that turns its back on the hungry, the elderly and the sick while giving more tax breaks to the wealthiest few can’t be justified in Christian terms,” argue the signatories.
   Give Ryan credit, he is not short of chutzpah. He then marched over to Georgetown, the Jesuit university to defend the indefensible. Here he was met by a petition of 90 faculty members and administrators basically telling him he was totally out to lunch. They asked Ryan to justify cuts to social programs which benefit the poor and no cuts to the shocking bloated military budget
   Former America editor Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese, one of the organizers of the letter bluntly stated, “This is nonsense. As scholars, we want to join the Catholic bishops in pointing out that his budget has a devastating impact on programs for the poor.”
   You can bet Ryan never read America or Centissimus Annus. But as a market idolator, he sure loves Ayn Rand, the high priestess of untrammeled capitalism and blatant selfishness.
   Here are a few choice bons mots of Ryan on his literary heroine:
   “I just want to speak to you a little bit about Ayn Rand and what she meant to me in my life and [in] the fight we’re engaged here in Congress. I grew up on Ayn Rand, that’s what I tell people.”
   “I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are.”
   “It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff. We start with Atlas Shrugged. People tell me I need to start with The Fountainhead then go to Atlas Shrugged [laughter]. There’s a big debate about that. We go to Fountainhead, but then we move on, and we require Mises and Hayek as well.”
 “But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”  
 “It’s so important that we go back to our roots to look at Ayn Rand’s vision, her writings, to see what our girding, under-grounding [sic] principles are.”
 “Because there is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through Ayn Rand’s writings and works.”
   Sadly Paul Ryan has revealed himself as a “market Catholic” one has bent the gospel in tortuous ways to justify the worst excesses of free market Catholicism. With his embrace of Randian principles he has shown himself a stranger to prophetic biblical Catholicism.

Ted Schmidt is the former editor of Catholic New Times in Toronto, Canada.