FILE - In this April 13, 2011 file photo, House Budget Committee Chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Carolyn Kaster - AP) Two letters recently exchanged between Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the USCCB have been both praised, and condemned. The exchange sets off dog-whistles about how low has fallen political influence of the church over Washington’s office holders.

Ryan’s letter came after an attack on some provisions by Bishops Stephen Blaire and Howard Hubbard, speaking for USCCB committees. Ryan seems to ask Dolan to trump the bishops’ verdict, just as a politician might seek a White House statement to counterbalance congressional spokespersons.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York speaks during a news conference after being elected president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops during the conference's annual fall meeting Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010 in Baltimore. (Steve Ruark - AP)

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.

Second, Ryan’s invitation for “personal responsibility” in paying for health care creates an unrealistic scenario where an 80-year old with Parkinson’s must get a job to pay for health care. Note as well that Ryan ignores the part of the encyclical that states personal responsibility comes only “in addition to the necessary care” from government.

The archbishop’s two page reply to his shoddy piece of theological rationalization was an exercise in polite rejection. Like a basketball point guard, he faked right then left and passed the ball to other bishops to take the shot. As pointed out in his own weekly column, Dolan did not join Ryan’s team.

These two letters suggest that whether about abortion or social justice, politicians of both left and right use Catholic teaching as a guide mostly when it serves their pre-established political goals and that the USCCB has limited arsenal for reversing its marginalization.