Pushback from the Religious Left

Yes and how often in the gospels did Christ call on Rome to raise to taxes and redistribute money to the poor?

Progressives do not want to help the poor at all. If they did they would come up with something better than the failed social programs that have institutionalized poverty and in particular have destroyed the single best defense we have against poverty the nuclear family.

How anyone can look at how families, in particular black families have been destroyed by these failed experiments and say "we need more of this", is beyond me.

I love this guy!! Are priests allowed to run for office? Clete Kelly for President!!

Interesting. I would have liked to attend.

For us Catholics, the ethics of Ayn Rand and the Catholic Faith are completely incompatible.
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Amen!     This cannot be said too often or too loudly.     Thank you Fr. Kiley for raising your prophetic voice against the Randian false gospel.
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People should never forget that real health depends how well you take care of yourself and not what health insurance you carry but I agree health insurance is important for every one. Search "Penny Health Insurance" or online for dollar a day insurance plans.

How refreshing to hear that right across the street from the religiously certain, as Terry Pratchett dubs them, another more genuine group has been talking about taking care of people, finding ways to do that and not blame people for the circumstances they find themselves in. When Christ said "go and sin no more" he didn't add but you never should have gotten in the situation to begin with. My friends know how to help without getting in the way or becoming a nuisance or judging how someone walks in their moccasins. They are living the true spirit of Christ and the Buddha and other traditions. That view certainly does not begin with blame and finger pointing or pride in having what one 'deserves' while others go without. Health Insurance is what we have to rely on as when our bodies, young or old, do not function as they should no matter how knowledgeably we have taken take care of ourselves. Healthcare should be regarded as a human civil right and all countries should be taking steps to figuring out how to do that. Obscenely substantial profit margins for top executive and political power ball games using dubious financial 'studies' should not be the driving force. Uplifted patient care should be the driving force for the financial model. If you ask any doctor is 12 to 15 minutes with your patient sufficient per visit? the answer will be no, of course not; yet that is what happens when medical groups form and insurance and pharmaceutical corporations begin to dictate costs. Savings aren't seen within the practice for the patients, the office staff, the doctors or the patients - it is garnered by the insurance companies, administrators of what is allowed and what is not and pharmaceutical companies all insisting the patient be provided with less so their bottom lines are adequate to pay higher salaries and bonuses to executives. We the people, all the people, are the representatives of whatever philosophy or religion we practice - even if that it as an agnostic or atheist or humanist - all approaches which ask us to serve our fellow man as we would be served. Objectivity as an -ism is self serving with no regard for others well being - how that callousness came to be a model to be emulated in business is beyond my comprehension and will never be anything I will vote for or support. When I read Rand in high school I knew the where that road that would lead and what our neighborhoods would look like. I rejected it out of hand at age 17. Someone has to be down so someone else can be up? I continue to reject that as a model for human behavior...and I will vote for those who know the difference between serving All the people and serving only Their own ideology and then chose to serve all the people. Money as a measure of success is futile, facile and without merit. And no I am not a socialist. I believe that free enterprise does work well when left in the hands of small business.

How refreshing to hear that right across the street from the religiously certain, as Terry Pratchett dubs them, another more genuine group has been talking about taking care of people, finding ways to do that and not blame people for the circumstances they find themselves in. When Christ said "go and sin no more" he didn't add but you never should have gotten in the situation to begin with. I have friends who know how to help without getting in the way or becoming a nuisance or judging how someone walks in their moccasins. They are living the true spirit of Christ and the Buddha and other traditions. That view certainly does not begin with blame and finger pointing or pride in having what one 'deserves' while others go without. Health Insurance is what we have to rely on as when our bodies, young or old, do not function as they should no matter how knowledgeably we have taken take care of ourselves. Healthcare should be regarded as a human civil right and all countries should be taking steps to figuring out how to do that. Obscenely substantial profit margins for top executive and political power ball games using dubious financial 'studies' should not be the driving force. Uplifted patient care should inform the financial model. If you ask any doctor is 12 to 15 minutes with your patient sufficient per visit? the answer will be no, of course not; yet that is what happens when medical groups form and insurance and pharmaceutical corporations begin to dictate costs. Savings aren't seen within the practice for the patients, the office staff, the doctors - it is garnered by the insurance companies, administrators of what is allowed and what is not and pharmaceutical companies all insisting the patient be provided with less so their bottom lines are adequate to pay higher salaries and bonuses to executives. We the people, all the people, are stewards or representatives of whatever philosophy or religion we practice - even if that it as an agnostic or atheist or humanist - all approaches which ask us to serve our fellow man as we would be served. Objectivity as an -ism is self serving with no regard for others well being - how that callousness came to be a model to be emulated in business is beyond my comprehension and will never be anything I will vote for or support. When I read Rand in high school I knew where that road that would lead and what our neighborhoods and cities would come to look like and behave. I rejected it out of hand at age 17. Someone has to be down so someone else can be up? I continue to reject that as a model for human behavior...and I will vote for those who know the difference between serving All the people and serving only Their own ideology and then chose to serve all the people. Money as a measure of success is facile and without merit. And no I am not espousing socialism - free enterprise and innovation work well when left in the hands of small business who do make products and provide services directly for appreciative customers.

If I were religious I would believe the Anti-Christ was among us and his name would be the religious right.

Christ said we should go into our closet and pray. The religious right prays on television. Christ told us of the good Samaritan. The religious right tells us to be afraid of Muslims. Christ tells us Christ tells us that it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle. The religious right tells us that wealth is a sign of God's favor. Christ said "Even as you do it to the least of these you do it unto me." The religious right says helping the poor is not our job. Christ said give away your wealth and follow me. The religious right says follow us and you get wealthy. Christ said the meek shall inherit the earth. The religious right is anything but meek.

I could go on and on retracing the story of Jesus through the New Testament, but you get the idea.

"How anyone can look at how families, in particular black families have been destroyed by these failed experiments and say "we need more of this", is beyond me."

The person who posted this is correct in focusing on the breakdown of the nuclear family as a key element in many areas of our nation's decline, but to identify "failed experiments" aimed at alleviating poverty as the principal destroyer of black families is ludicrous, although some ill-conceived policies and programs have probably done at least as much harm as good. Like the racism that has largely precipitated it, the decline of black families in our inner cities is a complex problem that is insusceptible to simplistic solutions.

Much of the failure of government efforts to address this problem is rooted in a lack of the will and vision needed to simultaneously address the many factors contributing to it, which include inadequate educational opportunities, the exodus of quality employment opportunities from the urban core, lack of access to quality health care, rampant crime, and the many problems associated with the distribution and abuse of various substances. These ills are interconnected, and the glue that binds them together in a way that focuses their destruction particularly on black and Hispanic inner-city neighborhoods is racial segregation.

The isolation of the have-nots along racial lines in certain neighborhoods creates a virtually inescapable cauldron in which simmers a toxic stew of social pathologies and economic disincentives whose foul odor intensifies over time. The damage is exacerbated by a criminal justice system that is often truly criminal in its handling of those most likely to be caught in its web. Minimum sentencing guidelines, "three strikes" provisions, an inordinate and racially discriminatory focus on drug offenses (e.g. the disparity in sentencing between offenses involving crack cocaine and those that involve its powdery sibling), lack of access to adequate legal counsel, and a pervasive emphasis on punishment rather than rehabilitation or restitution have resulted in the overcrowding of jails and prisons at every level, and in a steady flow of ex-cons back into settings where their inability to find gainful legitimate employment is virtually assured.

Largely as a result of these factors, many black men who might otherwise be holding jobs and heading households are either behind bars, battling substance addictions, or meeting only frustration in their attempts to turn their lives around following their release from incarceration. This is not to hold them blameless, but rather to insist that there is plenty of responsibility to go around, and some of it rests squarely on the shoulders of white people (including many Catholics) who are content to reside in comfortable communities in which people of color are conspicuous mainly by their absence. The existence of troubled inner cities populated mostly by people of color is in many ways attributable to the exclusion of such people over the course of generations from other possibilities (this, after all, is part of what is implied in sales brochures for communities deemed “exclusive,” since exclusivity entails exclusion, and racism has long been more the rule than the exception in the real estate market).

In the current climate, what black families emphatically do NOT need is a dose of government a la Rand. If the Catholic hierarchy were anywhere near as vocal on issues of race as it is on sexual morality and abortion, we might witness a profound change for the better on many of these fronts, because Catholic social teaching runs diametrically counter to the thinking of Ayn Rand.