Quote for Day: Michael Gerson on Selective Biblical Inerrancy of Christian Republicans

Michael Gerson, "Trump Exposes the Hypocrisy of Christian Republicans":

Paul Ryan and the House Chaplain: Gospel According to Ayn Trumps Gospel of Jesus Christ

If they fired Fr. Conroy for praying for God’s politics in the House, they will also have to get rid of Moses and Isaiah, Deborah and Jesus, Frederick Douglass and Francis Perkins, Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King. https://t.co/3u6jiSWz29

— Rev. Dr. Barber (@RevDrBarber) April 28, 2018

Elizabeth Dias and Shirley Gay Stolberg, "Firing of House Chaplain Causes Uproar on Capitol Hill":

"If There's a Single Worst Actor in This Drama, It Is Ryan": Time for White Catholics to Face Responsibility for Trump

Jamelle Bouie writes, 

The GOP’s passage of Trumpcare is one of the most callous things the party has ever done.

GOP Votes to Rip Healthcare from Millions of Americans, Beer Bash Ensues: Twitter Documentation of Today

Republicans cheering the fact that they're about to vote for a measure that strips 24 million of coverage (while preserving their own care) pic.twitter.com/mdMiY3WaoO

— igorvolsky (@igorvolsky) May 4, 2017

Twitter capturing what's happening in Washington, D.C., today as a bill to strip millions of Americans of healthcare coverage to afford tax credits to the richest people in the country passes the House, and cases of beer are rolled into the Capitol for the celebration:

The Healthcare Debacle and the GOP Culture of Cruelty: "A Display of Incompetence and Cruelty"

Thoughts and prayers with Paul Ryan, whose youthful dream of robbing poor people of their health coverage was dashed today.

— Ned Resnikoff (@resnikoff) March 24, 2017

New York Times, "The TrumpRyanCare Debacle": 

As Day Goes On, William J. Barber's Prophetic Moral Testimony about Trump-Ryan Take Health Care Away Death Bill

Reverend William J. Barber II speaking yesterday at a protest of the Trumpcare legislation — by way of Charles Pierce: 

Reactions to the Trumpcare "Healthcare Plan" = Tax Cut for the Super-Rich: "How About Everyone Gets the Same Healthcare Coverage Congress Gets. Easy!"

Matt Shuham at Talking Points Memo

David Dayen, "The Republican Health-Care Bill Is the Worst of So Many Worlds":

Fundamentally, the ACHA is a tax cut bill, which just happens to make millions of Americans sicker and more vulnerable in the process.

Trumpcare, Some Questions You Might Ask: Will the "Pro-Life" Catholic Bishops Provide Access to Healthcare for Millions Who Lose Coverage?

True headline 1: the bill is basically a tax cut ($600 billion) funded by gutting Medicaid. 4

— Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) March 7, 2017

To borrow shamelessly from the title of a Mary Oliver poem, some questions you (and I) might ask now that the horror show of the Trumpcare "replacement" plan for the Affordable Care Act has been unveiled:

Good, Bad, Ugly: Week in News — "We Judge This to Be Hypocrisy Unprecedented in the History of American Politics"

Journalists know: When leaders go berserk, furiously denying there's anything going on, blaming others--that's when you're getting close.

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) March 4, 2017

The past week in tweets and newsfeed, as I've captured it for you readers (reflecting my  preoccupation with matters like the obligation to speak truth and defend the least among us, and what happens to social groups that succumb to moral vacuity and do not push back against leaders channeling dark, destructive energies):

On St. Patrick's Day: The Forgetting of Irish Americans (Including Paul Ryan)

As St. Patrick's day arrives, interesting commentary about the grand irony of Irish-American history--that a people who arrived in the U.S. starving, dispossessed of land and futures, have, in many cases, become the chief promoters of the socioeconomic philosophy that led to the Great Famine that drove their forebears out of Ireland. Irish Americans now lead the political pack as the politics of racial dog whistles plays its ugly games, blaming people with darker skins for the woes of the nation, suggesting that "they" are lazy, shiftless, addicted to a culture of handouts--rhetoric used by the English at the time of the Great Famine to justify ignoring the needs of their starving neighbors in Ireland.

In the News: George Zimmerman, Obamacare, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, and Moral Sickness of Cultures

News commentary about disparate topics (though interconnected ones, to my way of thinking) that has caught my eye this week:

Ryan Budget: "I Love Rich People"

Sometimes the title says it all: "What Ryan's Budget Really Says: 'I Love Rich People.'" That's Dean Baker at Common Dreams.

Romney's Stance on Abortion and Contraception: Unmasking the Catholic Bishops' Pro-Republican Politics

This past February, I wrote:

Saving Monsignor Ryan: Frank Cocozzelli Announces Documentary

You wouldn't know this now, but there was a time when Catholics were known in American culture and politics for defending the rights of workers and the poor.  Catholics used to be known for their emphasis on communitarianism--on building just societies in which everyone was included, and, in particular, in which those shoved to the margins were drawn into social participation and allowed to use their talents to the fullest and lead fulfilling lives.

Doug Wright to His "Moderate" Republican Friends: "Simply Be Honest" about Homophobia

Doug Wright to his Republican friends who intend to vote Romney-Ryan for "economic" reasons, and who don't, of course, intend anything discriminatory at all as they vote GOP:

Paul Ryan's Soup-Kitchen Stunt Backfires: Donors Pushing Back vs. Right-Wing Backlash

I was unhappy, but not surprised, to read recently that Paul Ryan's soup-kitchen stunt had brought grief to the Youngstown, Ohio, soup kitchen in which he staged the photo-op stunt that showed him and his wife washing cookware that didn't need to be washed.  To make it appear that he and his wife are intently concerned to assist the hungry and really do care about the poor . . . . 

U.S. Catholic Theologians Defend Catholic Social Teaching v. Paul Ryan

Meanwhile, as the bishops fulminate and brandish their big sticks (and as their leader His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan seeks yet again to pull a veil over Paul Ryan's Randian philosophy and its blunt contradiction of Catholic social teaching), some members of the people of God continue to struggle to keep the fullness of Catholic social teaching in the forefront of public and Catholic awareness during the current election cycle.  A group of some 120 American Catholic theologians has just issued a statement entitled "On All of Our Shoulders: A Catholic Call to Protect the Endangered Common Good."

Quote of Day: Leslie Savan on Paul Ryan and the Abject Failure of Tea-Party Extremism

Quote of the day--Leslie Savan at Salon The Nation on what the tanking of the Romney-Ryan ticket may portend for the future of the American right:

Ryan was chosen to suggest that there’s a rising tide of low-body-fat young people who can’t wait to join the GOP, help update Ayn Rand, and gently ease Medicare off a cliff. But the minute Ryan seems like he’s leading a conga line into a roach motel instead, he becomes toxic. He could come to represent the abject failure of those ideas with the Republicans’ own base.

Big News: Obama and Democrats Enjoying Wide Lead Among Catholics

The big news now vis-a-vis Catholics and politics in the U.S.: as Daniel Burke reports at Religion News Service, a Pew Research Center poll conducted on 16 September shows Obama leading Romney among American Catholics by 54-39 percent.  As Burke notes, this widening lead is despite the U.S. bishops' "fortnight for freedom" shock-and-awe events this summer, and despite Romney's having selected Catholic Paul Ryan as his running mate.

Midweek News: Maryland Marriage Equality, Mel White, Sr. Simone Campbell and Romney-Ryan

A midweek miscellany of articles commenting on topics we've been discussing here of late--the following religion-and-politics themed: