Countering distortions, attacks over health care reform

In the visuals of the verbal muggings that some characterize as debate over health care reform, we (and I am grateful to this point) haven’t seen much of a discernibly Catholic presence. But the same vituperative, over-the-top language is out there on Catholic blogs. In the past it would have become the unchallenged “Catholic” point of view and its perpetrators the “experts” weighing in for the rest of the church.

So we might have seen the priest from pizza magnate Tom Monaghan’s Ave Maria University assert that the U.S. bishops have it wrong when they say that health care is a right -- and not hear a counter argument. Or the personal attacks on the nun who heads the Catholic Health Association might have gone unchallenged. However they are ably challenged here by John Gehring of Catholics in Alliance.

Groups like Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good came into existence post-2004 when active and educated Catholics decided they’d had enough with a small but loud, if ill-informed, minority constantly misrepresenting the depth and richness of Catholic thought. They’ve proven their worth repeatedly since in countering the narrowest interpretations of Catholic teaching and are doing it once again in taking apart some of the sillier arguments and ugly accusations related to health care reform.