Pacem In Terris

Do Catholic politicians listen to all Catholic teaching?

I think the representative intends the letter to show he is as influenced by Catholic social justice teaching as he is by Ayn Rand’s individualist philosophy . Ryan’s basic argument: Health care (Medicare) by the federal government cannot be sustained by revenue; therefore, this guarantee must be substituted for by a partial allowance to be paid directly to companies in the name of the participants, who will then pay the difference. In other words, instead of Medicare being an entitlement that citizens receive as a right, it will be reduced to a fixed portion of premium costs. On the premise that “something is better than nothing,” Ryan argues this will save Medicare.

The key misstep, I think, is that Ryan’s letter puts quotation marks around the word “entitlement” on page 3. Grammar books indicate quotation marks qualify the meaning of a term and thus Ryan -- in Ayn Rand fashion -- disputes that health care is a right. In contrast, for the bishops, as indeed for all Catholics, health care is a right ( Pacem in Terris, 11 ). Denying the entitlement of Medicare, therefore, risks denying the elderly their right to health care. One who has a right to vote, for instance, is entitled to a ballot that the government must provide. The government would be in violation of its responsibilities to ensure the right to vote if it denied ballots to voters claiming there isn’t enough money to pay for printing them. Likewise, if health care is a right in Catholic teaching, then complaining about the lack of revenue is not an excuse. If fulfilling government’s responsibilities to citizens requires taxation, then the taxation is called for if the government is to remain legitimate.

To bolster his case that lack of funds is an excuse to deny health care, the writer of the Ryan letter, makes two erudite citations. One is from the passage (48) in Centesimus Annus ,that warns the Social Assistance State often produces laws “depriving society of its responsibility.” Moreover, the letter invokes the principle of subsidiarity ( Quadragesimo Anno ) that if services are better provided at a local level, then centralized government should not intervene with its own programs.

The context for Medicare, however, belies these two sources. First, the context for the Social Assistance State is Eastern Europe under decades of totalitarian Communism, not the United States which pays private firms and doctors for services. Second, the reason Medicare was made law in 1965 was that there was little health insurance for the retired and elderly whose fixed income could not meet medical costs. Medicare picked up a slack that had the elderly dying of illnesses that could have been prevented or cured, but which had often gone untreated because patients couldn’t pay for care.

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The Pope explains in this encyclical that conflicts "should not be resolved by recourse to arms, but rather by negotiation." He further emphasizes the importance of respect of  human rights as an essential consequence of the Christian understanding of men. He clearly establishes, ...'That every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life'...

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