Comments on: Georgetown faculty and administrators release letter to Rep. Paul Ryan deploring budget

By: Charles

Charles — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:49:40 +0000

GTown has just announced pro-abortion Kathleen Sebelius as a graduation speaker. I invite those same 90 scholars who excoriated Ryan to provide an even more vehement objection to her invitation and demand it be rescinded. (…crickets….chirp….chirp…)

By: Patricia Krommer C.S.J.

Patricia Krommer C.S.J. — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 22:12:51 +0000

And who are you?

By: jimbo

jimbo — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:53:59 +0000

Fortunately, no one really cares what the Georgetown faculty says. Their effect on anything is fleeting and minimal.

By: Patricia Krommer C.S.J.

Patricia Krommer C.S.J. — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:48:31 +0000

Private charity has never taken care of all of the needs of poor people in this country. Only a nation state can fairly handle that. The Common Good requires that the people pay taxes which provide for all the services required to run a country. It’s a no-brainer. Every social encyclical in the Roman Catholic Church from Leo XXIII to the present Pope addresses the responsibility of conscientious government to address the legitimate needs of its people. The problem with current Republican policies is that they want to go back to the 19th Century of Robber Barons. Their view of the poor are inferior folks who couldn’t make it so let’s be nice people and drop a few bills in the collection basket. Selfishness likes to feel good with small gifts. It has become an ideology… a way of rationalizing greed. Thank you, Georgetown, a proud Jesuit University, for faculty that have Catholic social consciences, and the intelligence to back it up. Thank you, Tom Reese S.J. for your leadership.

By: @@@Common Sense

@@@Common Sense — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:52:53 +0000

Or someone who engages in intellectual discussion…

By: Struggling Agnostic

Struggling Agnostic — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 12:32:03 +0000

I am pleased see Georgetown faculty strip away Paul Ryan’s purposeful misuse of Catholic doctrine to justify austerity at the expense of those least able to tolerate it. The Church does best when it lives up to and encourages the Beattitudes in public policy and private lives. The poor lead more tolerable lives in the wake of Franciscans and even occasionally Jusuits. Thank you Fr. Reese.

By: typical

typical — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:50:14 +0000

@@Common Sense

I’m guessing you’re someone who gets really angry at bumper stickers.

By: @Common Sense

@Common Sense — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:49:35 +0000

Are you really so attached to your warped ideology that you will not actually step out of it for a second to adopt common sense (as your name would indicate…), realising that any way to help the poor is accepted by ‘Christ’s message’? If you really cared about the well-being of the poor, you would not care about where help and solidarity comes from as long as the poor were enabled and empowered to escape their destitute situation (an often systemic phenomenon derived from their marginalisation from society anyway). And if you truly believed in the teachings of Christ and those of the Church, you would know that they place the equal distribution of wealth or, actually, the distribution of wealth in proportion to those that need it most over an unfair system of property that places the individual above all else, assuming ‘I worked for it so it is mine and I can do whatever the f*ck I want with it’.
Your argument is not about ‘trapping the poor in a vicious cycle of government handouts’, a paternalistic assumption that assumes laziness, stupidity, and inferiority by the way, but about limiting the power of the state because you think you’re so great, you so deserve everything you’ve been given/worked for (*all that you have is completely contingent on the environment you grew up in, no (wo)man is truly 100% self-made).
Maybe you personally would give a nominal amount to a private charity, but let me assure you that most people in a mindset like yours, if given the chance to keep most of their money or give it to the poor, they would keep it for themselves. Your ideology is fundamentally rooted in the extreme of individualism, and that is in selfishness. It is incompatible with true charity, because it advocates one’s own self-interest over the interests of others, including the most vulnerable. Thus, you cannot plausibly hold your ideology while simultaneously holding what I assume is your Christian, probably Catholic, religious beliefs or, if not, even a shred of consideration for the rest of humanity i.e. not you.

By: Emily Patch

Emily Patch — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:56:02 +0000

Thank you!
I hope that this thinking prevails in all Jesuit Universities.
Emily Patch, Seattle University 1962

By: @catholic

@catholic — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:11:33 +0000

Georgetown is a Catholic university, and therefore should have policies in line with Catholic Social Teaching. If you’re aiming to argue that the faculty need not share the opinions of the Catholic Church, then you’re totally right – but that also means that they shouldn’t attach the university’s name to their personal opinions, as it purports the idea that they speak for the university.