Tea Party Catholic: Connecting Religious Liberty and Economic Freedom

[trotsky]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/tea-party-catholic-connecting-religious-liberty-and-economic-freedom-2013-09-09

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Sept. 9, 2013 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- In his new book, Tea Party Catholic: The Catholic Case for Limited Government, a Free Economy, and Human Flourishing (The Crossroad Publishing Co., 2013), Samuel Gregg, director of research for the Acton Institute, draws on Catholic social teaching and the thought of Charles Carroll of colonial Maryland - the only Catholic Signer of America's Declaration of Independence - to make a powerful case for the enduring value of economic freedom and the role it plays in sustaining America's unique experiment in political and religious liberty.

In Tea Party Catholic, Gregg poses important questions about America's founding principles that are increasingly under threat. Can a believing Catholic support free markets? Does the Catholic social justice commitment translate directly into support for big government? And perhaps most importantly: Do Catholics understand how the loss of economic freedom in America is undermining the United States' robust commitment to religious liberty?

This First Amendment right - not simply to worship privately but to express one's faith in the fullness of civic life - is a principle integral not only to the American Founding but also to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.

"Unfortunately for the Church in America, it is now apparent that the effects of excessive government economic intervention go beyond Americans' ability to engage their economic liberty in the pursuit of human flourishing," Gregg writes in Tea Party Catholic. "It is now directly impacting a freedom that has always been central to the achievements of the American Revolution and to which the American republic has always accorded a high priority: the right of religious liberty."

Religion and politics. Always a great mix!

[rug]

1. You've posted a press release for a book by the Research Director of the Acton Institute.

[struggle4progress]

2. There are also Atheist/Freethinker Tea Party folk, if that's more to your taste

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Atheist+Freethinker+Tea+Party

[trotsky]

3. Thanks for the irrelevant info!

You rock!

[struggle4progress]

4. I thought you might be interested in what sometimes happens when atheism and politics mix

[trotsky]

5. Since nothing based on atheism can be claimed to come from a supernatural source,

it's not really a relevant comparison.

[cleanhippie]

9. Did you really just say that this is what happens when lack of belief in a god and politics mix?

Seriously?

[2ndAmForComputers]

6. Isn't it mind-boggling? It's like arguing that snow has nothing to do with winter...

...because sometimes it snows in early Spring. AND there's winter days in which it doesn't snow!

[struggle4progress]

7. Acton has ties to American Enterprise and Cato: it has received money from the tobacco

industry and the oil industry, as well as Scaife and Koch and the rightwing Bradley Foundation. They push standard rightwing causes, such as climate-change-denialism and opposition-to-health-care. Their so-called "Acton University" seems to organize peculiar seminars to reframe modern issues in terms of historic issues: reframing (say) anti-Affordable-Care activists as comparable to anti-Nazis such as Bonhoeffer. I don't know why you think it's useful to muddy the waters about what's really going on here



... Between 1991 and 2001, it received more than $2.5 million in grants from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundation, and John M. Olin Foundation, according to Media Transparency, a website that tracks “the money behind the media” ...
The Acton Institute
By Bill Berkowitz

... Acton’s media director Jay W. Richards states, “climate is changing all the time, the real question is if humans are causing it.” Richards also has ties to the Cato Institute and sits on the Board of Advisors for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), one of the most vocal anti-environmental fronts for the petrochemical and biotechnology industries. Acton’s governing boards reveals other Koch connections through Dr. Alejandro A. Chafuen of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, as well as affiliates of Amoco (BP) and Wolverine Gas and Oil ...
Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group
Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
$278,750 received from Koch foundations 2005-2011 ...

[trotsky]

8. Yes, of course he does. He's a tea party nut.

And he claims his Catholic faith is perfectly compatible with it. Can you prove him wrong?

[struggle4progress]

10. um ... Acton is an incorporated front group, not a "he"

[trotsky]

11. Yes, yes, I read "Author".

Regardless, you've done nothing to address the topic - the author of the book bases his tea party beliefs on his Catholic faith. Do you have any comments on that, any way to prove him wrong?