Circle Of Protection?? NOT!!!

Perhaps it would be more accurate to call that "Circus of Pandering". 

Here are some quotes, from the USCCB site.  "We are also committed to resist budget cuts that undermine the lives, dignity, and rights of poor and vulnerable people. Therefore, we join with others to form a Circle of Protection around programs that meet the essential needs of hungry and poor people at home and abroad."

Let's unpack that - shall we?  Let's look at "resisting budget cuts".  Ladies and gentlemen, thanks to the policies of the Messiah Most Miserable (and yes, the profligate spending that did precede him), there isn't the money to keep doling out willy-nilly.  If these "religious leaders" are going to ascribe to the federal government the moral responsibility to meet the needs of the poor, how do they think the government will finance all these programs?  Who will pay for them?  Hint!  Go look in the mirrror!  That's right!  You and I will be taxed - in fact, are being taxed - to the wazzoo.  Who else is being bled to death by taxes?  The poor!  Maybe they aren't paying much income tax (at least not yet), but they are taxed via sales tax, gas tax, etc.  Moreover, businesses are paying onorous taxes too, with dollars that they may have used to hire some of these impovershed people.  I suspect many of these "leaders" are of good heart, but their logic and thinking is downright lousy, if not actually non-existent. 
Notice the talk of "programs that meet the essential needs of hungry and poor people at home and abroad".  Now whose task is it really to meet the real needs of the poor?  Is it that of the federal government?  As I recall various Church documents on that topic, "society" is so tasked.  However, since when are "federal government" and "society" synonymous?  Answer - they aren't!

In Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII set forth the principle of subsidiarity.  Basically, that principle teaches that the fulfillment of human needs must be undertaken at the lowest level of society possible - starting with the individual.  Leo was all too aware of the tendency of centralized government to arrogate to itself all manners of inappropriate functions and to grow into a behemoth.  Our American founding fathers, although predominanty Protestant, seemed to have an instinctive grasp of that principle when they set strict limits on the scope of federal goverment in the United States Constitution - particularly the Tenth Amendment.  Today we find that many progressives, many of them occupying high offices in church structures, are attempting to grow the federal government by ascribing to it all manners of responsibility - and thus authority.

On Thursday I posted about a planned bastardization of Rerum Novarum that will be run almost exclusively by socialists.  One of the two liberal chairs of a discussion panel has, and probably still is, receiving funds from George Soros via the magazine that he edits.  These are the sorts of people whom the Amchurch bureaucracy is allowing to interpret and mutate the authentic social teachings of the Church.  This "circus/circle" is just one more manifestation.

ps HT to Pewsitter