The Great Thing About Being Catholic…

… is that you can simultaneously be Nazi and a Communist.

Over on the Left, you have Progressive nutjobs denouncing Benedict as a closet standard bearer for the Third Reich while in Minnesota, some GOP fool bucking for a promotion from the Right Wing Noise Machine hears the Pavlovian stimuli “social justice” and “common good” and (as he was taught to do by Glenn Beck, perhaps the greatest genius of our age), promptly starts barking about the Komminiss’ under the episcopal mitre. As a reader writes:

MN State Senator David Hann (R-Eden Prairie) accused Archbishop Nienstedt of supporting “socialist fiction”, in a letter Nienstedt wrote to Governor Mark Dayton (DFL), and posted both Nienstedt’s letter to Dayton and his letter to Nienstedt responding to Nienstedt’s letter to Dayton on his Twitter account on June 13.
Nienstedt’s letter and Hann’s response to it are included at the bottom of the MPR article as well.

Senator Hann has supported pro-life legislation and stood for traditional marriage, and I agree with R.R. Reno that the crisis in our culture is rooted in morality. And, there can be legitimate disagreement on budgeting matters, but to launch unfounded ad hominem attacks on Archbishop Nienstedt is uncalled for. Archbishop Nienstedt was merely articulating and drawing on Catholic teachings in his remarks, just as he did in his column on budgeting in the Catholic Spirit,which lays out principles of Catholic social teaching that should guide the budgeting process.

My reader forgets that in the world of the Thing that Used to be Conservatism as it exists today, opposition to abortion takes away the sin of the world. A Republican is free to slander somebody as a Marxist for the sin of talking about the common good and solidarity (hey! Wudn’t that word used by somebody in one of them Komminiss countries?) just so long as he wears those Precious Feet. When you are dealing with the perfidious Nazi Communist bishops and their insidious notions of the common good, you must fight by any means necessary. It’s only dissent when a Lefty dissents on the condom he keeps in his front pocket, not when a “conservative” rides roughshod over even the most basic principles of Catholic teaching about the wallet in his back pocket. Just spit on it as socialism and wealth redistribution and don’t give it another thought.