The American Spectator

C Bowen| 7.11.11 @ 6:13PM

The piece cut off before I could read about TARP and Catholic Social Teaching, but I guess the long and the short of it is that Paul Ryan wants to raise the debt ceiling.

Dixie Pixie| 7.11.11 @ 8:06PM

A key point of difference between the Catholics and Protestants is that the ultimate authority for Protestants rests in a personal relationship with God through the study of the Bible not in the Catholic Magesterium.
Thus it is a simple logical step for the Protestants (in general) to separate temporal and spiritual law.
Catholics prefer that temporal law be derived from religious law.

Muslims and to a lesser extent Jews see no difference between the temporal and the spiritual and thus no difference between common law and religious law with religious law dormant.
While I am no expert in such matters, I think most Religious Scholars will agree to the distinctions.

Paul Ryan in trying to find in Catholic Intellectual Traditions a basis for budgetary policy goes in a rather unnecessary intellectual direction.
As a religious concept most Conservative Protestants do not believe budgetary discipline is a moral imperative but is a financial imperative.

The Conservative Movement and Paul Ryan would be on solid intellectual ground to keep Monetary and National Financial matters in the temporal realm and out of the spiritual realm.
Bringing Religion into already difficult budgetary negotiations can only worsen and complicate matters.

Dixie Pixie| 7.11.11 @ 8:54PM

Let me further simplify the difference between Secular and Religious arguments on matters of credit.

If you have a teenager who went hog wild on a credit card binge, sending wildly on his friends and supporters, you do not invoke the Gods of Finance!
You do not make sacrifices to God or Banks, nor inflict religious authority to correct the obvious moral flaws.

You cut up the damned credit card and impose a strict monetary discipline until the financial behavior is corrected.

Congress would do well to not only decrease the credit limit but to pull all borrowing authority from the Federal Government until Federal spending falls to within Federal income.

weddingdress| 7.12.11 @ 5:19AM

Muslims and to a lesser extent Jews see no difference between the temporal and the spiritual and thus no difference between common law and religious law with religious law dormant.
While I am no expert in such matters, I think most Religious Scholars will agree to the distinctions.

Oldefarte| 7.12.11 @ 10:24AM

As I have said here many times, FOR EVERY RIGHT, THERE IS A CO-EQUAL RESPONSIBILITY. If the impoverished have a 'right' to governmental welfare benefits [paid for by taxpayers], they also have a co-equal 'responsibility' to do all within their power to wean themselves from said benefits as soon as they possibly can. They cannot/should not therefore continue to have children that they cannot themselves pay for/support. They have an obligation to apply themselves in school, to learn, to work at earning an education that will allow them to earn their own way in life, as opposed to continually depending upon the government/taxpayers for their subsistance. Governmental welfare was always intended to be a temporary provider of income assistance, not a permanent one, but the current historical class of governmental assistance recipients think that it is their 'right' to receive same, while completely disregarding their co-equal 'responsibility' to wean themselves off of same eventually!!!!!!