The Reverend Thomas V. Berg and I have an article up at The Public Discourse, where we defend the Ryan Budget against the criticism from some Catholic bishops that it violates the principles of Catholic social teaching.
To his credit, Chairman Ryan — a Catholic himself — didn’t simply ignore the criticism and move on. Instead, he chose to engage his critics in a conversation by offering, in a speech delivered at Georgetown University, a detailed defense of his budget based on his understanding of what Catholic social teaching calls him to do as an elected leader in the United States Congress.
And so, for the first time in recent memory, Catholics and the broader public have an actual and potentially useful debate under way addressing what the sound and widely shared principles of Catholic social teaching have to say about the federal budget, our out-of-control national deficit, and programs for the poor.
You can find the rest of the article here.