It goes without saying that if the same thing had occurred at a Tea Party rally it would have been front-page news and the infant’s father would be held up as the face of a heartless, conservative movement.

Regardless, this sad incident serves as a good reminder to activists and social do-gooders on either side of the political spectrum: charity must always begin at home.

The pope and Vatican often talk about promoting “solidarity between peoples”. Sowing discord and envy between segments of people is surely the opposite of this.

While not equating Democrats with the Occupy Wall Street movement, can anyone, for instance, ignore the similarity between their mantra of the 99% against the 1% and President Obama’s own insistence that wealthy Americans (i.e., those earning more than $250k a year) “pay their fair share”?

The examples of this class warfare sort of rhetoric are myriad, but Thomas Edsall at the New York Times does a good job of highlighting one aspect of the Democrat Party’s intention to completely write-off a whole “class” of Americans in the 2012 race, namely, white working class Americans (predominantly males):

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

The entire article is worth reading, and I could comment on many of the points that Edsall makes, but instead I’d like to point out the clear harm that results when a political party largely decides to advocate for one segment of Americans even if that advocacy disadvantages the other segment.

Conservatives believe that their ideas and policies are good not just for one “set” or “class” of people, but for all people in a civil society. It’s pretty evident, however, that progressive policies which may temporarily advantage one group of people directly effect another group adversely, and that even the individual groups in such a system end up being harmed themselves as well.

Take, for instance, the breakdown of a marriage culture among those who are less educated and less wealthy. Efforts to redefine marriage and to further weaken it come primarily from wealthy, highly-educated Americans. And yet, paradoxically, these advocates of breaking down the marriage culture themselves are more likely to live in intact marriages. It is the poor and less educated who are most harmed by their broken (and absent) marriage experience.

I think it’s fairly obvious how efforts to redistribute wealth hurt individuals whose money is taken from them. But what is harder to grasp is how money, when taken from the wealthy, tends to go towards government bureaucracy and waste, instead of directly to people who would benefit from receving it. That’s the genius of private charity – it allows money and resources to pass from those who have much to those who have little without having to pass by a whole string of intermediary persons and institutions which take their “fair” share.

A fascinating (and as yet un-answered) question remains about how Democrats and progressives who promote pro-abortion and anti-family policies will fare among their Latino support base which is strongly pro-life and pro-family.

I could go on, but I hope I’ve piqued your interest enough to read Edsall’s piece for yourself.

It took this story out of Canada to help me connect the dots:

Organizers of the Occupy Vancouver movement almost took over the Holy Rosary Cathedral in downtown Vancouver on Sunday morning.

Vancouver Police stopped the protesters from disrupting Mass at the Catholic church. A spokesman for the group, which renamed itself Occupy Vatican, said the purpose of the aborted church takeover was to bring to the Catholic Church’s attention the thousands of residential school survivors who suffered under the clergy.

…Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miler anticipated the march of protesters and requested extra police protection outside the cathedral to prevent the disruption of the Mass.

What’s the Occupy the Vatican movement? They have about 3,500 supporters on Facebook. They are allied with groups such as “STOP the Missionaries of Charity” (“Holding Mother Teresa’s charity accountable for their monumental medical negligence and financial fraud”), “Freedom From Religion Foundation”, “Religion Poisons Everything”, “Hell Does NOT Exist – It Is A Lie to Control Victims With Fear” and literally hundreds of other angry lefty causes.

I saw an informal poll last week (but can’t find it now — if you spot it, please drop me a line) that a vast majority of the occupy wall street (OWS) protestors are self-avowed atheists. Now this is interesting when one considers how many in the media are trying to claim that the OWS movement is the lefty equivalent to the Tea Party. That comparison actually makes sense considering the Tea Party is overwhelmingly Christian.

More importantly, I can never remember a Tea Party rally that explicitly was anti-religion, anti-Christian, anti-Catholic, or anti-institutional religion. In fact, the Tea Party movement, broadly speaking, supports the freedom of religion and the freedom of religious people to bring their moral values into the public square.

That’s just the opposite from what I’ve seen in the Occupy Wall Street and similar lefty protests. There is an unmistakeable anti-religion (and especially, anti-Catholic) streak that runs through the movement. No, I’m not claiming that the OWS movement is entirely made up of these elements, I’m just saying these anti-religious elements are at home with the OWS movement, and they simply do not find a home with the Tea Party movement.

That’s revealing. Why? Because once again we find that efforts to claim that the OWS movement is “supported” by Catholic teaching originate exclusively from lefty Catholics (such as Catholics United and Faith In Public Life).

Paradoxically, lefty Catholics tell us that the Catholic Church has more in common with the OWS movement, even though the OWS movement is more cozy with anti-religious sentiment than with the Catholic Church. What does it say about liberal Catholics that they find their strongest supporters and activists not in Church pews, but in the encampments of Occupy Wall Street and Vancouver?

Here’s the false premise that lefty Catholics use to claim affinity between OWS and Catholic Teaching: “Because the Church and the OWS agree that society, politics and the economy are broken and imperfect, they must also agree about how to solve these serious problems.”

Of course Catholic teaching and the OWS demands (whatever they are) do not agree. For one, the Catholic Church defends her right to speak out for truth in the public square, and believes in her own institutional freedom and autonomy. The Catholic Church strongly proclaims the dignity and right to life of the unborn (and all people) as the foundation for a free and just society. The Church continually upholds the dignity of marriage as the fundamental building block of a healthy society. Most individuals in the OWS movement strongly deny all of these principles.

I would have extremely serious reservations about supporting the Tea Party movement (or conservative politics in general) if it continually argued against religious liberty and supported anti-Catholic elements, or if it also worked to promote abortion and redefining marriage and family. These things, for me, are deal-breakers.

Apparently, however, lefty Catholics don’t have a problem associating with a movement that regularly promotes anti-Catholic elements and aggressively acts to erode religious freedom (personal and institutional), and categorically disagrees with the Church on the other issues I mention.

That tells us something about the Occupy Wall Street movement, and it also reveals to us something deeply troubling about the lefty Catholic supporters of the OWS project.

Then again, if a Tea Party rally recently tried to invade a Catholic Church during Mass, destroyed a statue of the Virgin Mary, and if the OWS protestors have recently pledged to promote a culture of life and uphold the sanctity of marriage, let me know. Maybe I don’t have all the facts.

UPDATE 2: A Round-Up of Excellent Comments On The Justice & Peace White Paper.

24 hours have passed since the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace released its note (i.e., “White Paper”) on finance and development.

I find that’s about how much time it takes to get a good snapshot of where general opinion is on a given news story, so now it’s time to take stock over what we have learned from Day One.

First of all, many liberal Catholics are complaining that orthodox Catholics have sought to “downplay” the level of teaching represented in this document and have “refused” (they claim) to actually engage with what the text says. In other words, they’re trying to claim orthodox Catholics are “cafeteria Catholics” for simply explaining and following the distinction the Church herself makes about her various levels of teaching.

And news flash: the official English translation of the document has not yet even been made available on the Vatican website! Plus the link that originally contained a provisional translation on the Vatican radio website has since been taken down. (An unofficial translation has now surfaced on www.News.va).

I, and my orthodox Catholic friends — and the Catholic press — do not enjoy the luxury apparently afforded Fr. Tom Reese who, as I noted yesterday, had advance access to the document. I know from my experience with embargoed texts that you are not supposed to leak the contents of the document in advance, and yet for some strange reason I don’t see liberal Catholics complaining that Fr. Reese got the scoop days (if not weeks) before the rest of us.

Once again, orthodox Catholics and the Catholic press who care seriously about accurately presenting the authentic teachings of the Church were scooped by a liberal Catholic voice who, with advance warning and talking points prepared, got in front of the mainstream media to confuse millions of people about the Church’s message before the rest of us had even had a chance to see the text. That’s the headline story about Day One.

With all that in mind, it should therefore come as no surprise that the first reaction of many orthodox Catholics was to simply set the record straight and say what we can know before even reading the text: namely, that the Pope and the Vatican do not introduce new teaching binding for Catholics around the globe through a note published through a curial council aimed in particular for the attendees of a United Nations General Assembly which won’t take place for weeks!

It’s extraordinary how many self-professed Catholic and reporters on things Catholic don’t get this point, while simultaneously lecturing the rest of us about what it means to be Catholic. It makes me wonder if they actually understand their own argument.

Here’s what I mean.

Evaluating the level of authority of papal documents is not a game of comparing words that can be found (or will soon be found) on the Vatican’s website with other words that can be found on the Vatican’s website. It’s to fundamentally comprehend how the Church teaches. Furthermore, it strikes me as a deep hypocrisy for liberal Catholics to complain that orthodox Catholics are being “selective” when we don’t accept prudential comments on tangential things such as economics issued by a second-tier curial department, when liberals regularly refuse to accept authoritative teachings on the fundamental right to life, on the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, let alone the Church’s whole doctrinal system.

Is that the debate they really want to have — fidelity to the Church’s most basic teachings?

I’ll make this simpler: for any liberal Catholic who claims orthodox Catholics are being “cafeteria Catholics” on questions of economics, they should pledge publicly that they fully, 100% support the Church’s teaching on life, marriage and contraception right now.

Then we’ll talk. If not, we simply don’t share the same basic commitments to being fully Catholic.

I look forward to reading this document eventually, around my many other daily obligations. But I know that reading it won’t revise what I said above about how the Church teaches. And if liberal Catholics seriously want to invite orthodox Catholics to read it fairly, they can begin by not falsely claiming that it is on the same level as actual authoritative Church teaching.

In the meantime, I’ll conclude with a section of Nicholas Hahn’s critique of the document:

“…a question that must be asked is: does [the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace] a king? [It] has, in effect, suggested the creation of a near god-like emperor to rule the world’s financial and monetary systems.

This king would be entrusted with “universal jurisdiction” over the world’s economy. It would, because the International Monetary Fund has supposedly “lost an essential element for stabilizing world finance,” facilitate the creation of a “central world bank” responsible for “global monetary management.”

The king would have authority to tax transactions made by firms like Goldman Sachs. Revenues from such taxation would be deposited into a “world reserve fund,” a fantasy collection basket of sorts, aimed at supporting economies most affected by financial crises.

And if that wasn’t enough, the king would also be directed to bailout banks (“recapitalization with public funds”) subject to wildly ambiguous “virtuous behaviors.” As if the guarantee of a bailout would somehow ensure a stable market.

Ultimately, the king calls on States to look beyond Hobbes’ “state of nature” which would trap people “in a never-ending struggle with one another.” Evidently, this new global authority is the “only horizon compatible with the new realities of our time and the needs of humankind.”

People of good will know better. There is brighter horizon. One of self-government and free markets. One that has lifted more people out of poverty than any other. One that has empowered the disenfranchised and most vulnerable. Indeed, one that has some measure of Truth, albeit imperfect.

The Council concludes its document with a reference to the Tower of Babel “where selfishness and divisions endure.” Yet, the real towers of Babel these days are precisely the kind of bureaucratic authorities the Council seeks to proliferate.

As I said, I look forward to reading it.

Everyone is equal in the barnyard, but some animals are more equal than others.

I didn’t think I would see it get this stark this quickly, but this article really reads like an article from The Onion.

It seems the Occupy Wall Street folks are getting ticked off over corporate greed and underperforming governance. This wouldn’t be news, except that this time it’s within their own ranks.

The disputes are arising, ironically, but predictably, over money. They have something like $500,000 in the bank.

Dwell on that last sentence for a few moments.

A rag-tag populist movement with socialist roots, an ill-defined mission, and an internal policing problem, has a “General Assembly” and a “Finance Committee,” and has raised $500,000 in a few short weeks which they’re keeping in the bank. I’ve got no problem with them keeping their money in a safe place like a bank, but aren’t the bankers and financiers the Worst People in the Their World?

Then, the tension has arisen because a bunch of the people doing the work of OWS aren’t getting the funding they feel they deserve or need to perform their function. Like the guy in the Comfort Group who has 3 tons of wet laundry from rain storms and no ability to get it all cleaned, along with the responsibility to get adequate cold-weather clothing as the fall wears on and winter approaches.

See, the Comfort Group only gets $150 per day from The Man in Finance, who says he is powerless to give more because it hasn’t been authorized by The Man in the General Assembly.

In other words, it’s just like life in general. Once again, Utopia lives up to its name.

I would quote extensively, but that would mean either just posting the whole article or leaving our some of the good parts. So go read the whole thing, and realize that it’s a serious news article, NOT from The Onion.

The National Journal, a political news magazine that is not conservative, noted that the Tea Party has infused the Grand Old Party with lots of minority candidates like Marco Rubio, Allen West, and Herman Cain. But the Journal noted: “The biggest roadblocks to these challengers often were within their own party.” They noted that Republican insiders in Washington (known as the Establishment) often side with candidates deemed “more electable” like Charlie Crist rather than Marco Rubio. Right now the more moderate establishment-backed candidate in the Texas Senate race is Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. Just like the Rubio-Crist race, conservatives and Tea Party activists are supporting the more conservative challenger, who like Rubio, is Latino. That man is Texas Attorney General Ted Cruz. “Republicans always had a message that was going to appeal to a certain group of these minorities,” said former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. “The problem is, they didn’t have the right messengers.” The National Journal noted: Thanks to the rise of the tea party, the GOP may have found those messengers. http://cvote.to/63

Michele Bachmann’s campaign in New Hampshire had some staffing issues today: They all decided to quit. WWUR-TV in Manchester, N.H., is reporting that the entire New Hampshire staff for Michele Bachmann has quit due to “deep frustration with the campaign’s lack of commitment to New Hampshire.” http://cvote.to/62

President Obama signed into law trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Columbia. For many years President Bush pressed the Democratic Congress to send the bills to his desk, but Democrats refused to do so because of their ties to organized labor. The bills found new life when Republicans took back the House this January. Though Democrats control the Senate, enough of them supported the measures to get them passed. The free trade agreements will likely give the economy a boost but that might come too late for Obama. http://cvote.to/61

Other articles of interest:

After passage of New York’s same-sex “marriage” law, gay activists in the Empire State have mounting doubts of pursing the institution of marriage at all. http://cvote.to/64

A Maryland man nearly starved to death like Terri Schiavo is now responsive. http://cvote.to/65

Protesters allied with Occupy Wall Street force London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral (Anglican) to close for 1st time since WWII. http://cvote.to/66

Taylor Marshall at Canterbury Tales spots this heartbreaking photo:

Taylor accurately observes:

At the recent economic “occupy” demonstration in Rome, the protesters decided to take their anger out on…our Blessed Mother! What?…

Did the Virgin Mary take away their jobs? Did the Immaculate Mother ruin the Euro? Did the sweet Mother of Christ endorse the rotten assets of Euro-nation banks? No.

Whatever we think about the OccupyWallStreet protests and their inter/national spin-offs, can we all agree that the destruction of private property, and especially religious property, is wrong?

Some people are trying to compare the OccupyWallStreet (OWS) protests with the Tea Party movement. I’ve watched both groups closely and the number of arrests and examples of destruction and civil disobedience displayed by OWS is exponentially greater.

Whatever the causes of both groups’ protests, the effects of their protests couldn’t be more different.

And frankly, when it comes to evaluating these protests, by their fruits you will know them.

UPDATE — some readers are trying to claim this vandalism was an “accident.” Oh?

The Vatican has condemned Saturday’s violent clashes in central Rome including an attack by protesters on a church in which a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary were destroyed.

…“When I came down, I saw the entrance door had been smashed in,” the church’s parish priest, Father Giuseppe Ciucci, was quoted by Italian media as saying.

“The Virgin Mary’s statue, which was at the entrance, had been taken away and I saw it had been thrown into the street and smashed,” he said.

“I went into the sacristy and I saw the door there was also destroyed. The large crucifix at the entrance had been vandalized,” he added.

Hundreds of protesters torched cars, smashed banks and hurled rocks at police during the clashes. Tens of thousands of people had been protesting against government cutbacks and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Source: Inquirer News

But it isn’t just Pelosi’s actions on unborn life. Her supportive comments on radical people and causes generally have been legion. For years, Congresswoman Pelosi has made outrageous statements, from the Cold War to the Middle East, that consistently leave one utterly speechless.

I’ll never forget her stunning House floor tribute to Harry Bridges, a notorious communist agitator who spent a lifetime lying about his secret loyalties to Stalin and Communist Party USA (CPUSA), even while his position on the Central Committee of CPUSA was directly authorized by Stalin’s Kremlin. “Today we can all hold our heads high and be proud of Harry Bridges’ legacy,” said Pelosi. “Harry Bridges is … beloved by the workers of this nation, and recognized as one of the most important labor leaders in the world.” (Click here to watch.)

Bizarre statements about the extreme Left are old hat for Congresswoman Pelosi. And now, add to the list yet another.

Commenting on the out-of-control gang of Wall Street “Occupiers,” Pelosi glowed and said warmly, “God bless them for their spontaneity.”

“God bless them?”

What a remarkably strange thing to say. Of everything said about this Manhattan mob, no other remark so fittingly rises to Twilight Zone status.

“God bless them?”

Well, we certainly don’t want God to damn them. We would like for God to bless everyone. We should pray for everyone.

But, frankly, I doubt this particular band of hooligans is even thinking along such lines. This is an extremely secular, militant, radical crowd.

Ironically, Pelosi’s comments came almost the same time that a representative of the mob, Roseanne Barr, literally called for guillotining—yes, guillotining—wealthy Americans bankers. She openly called for their forcible “re-education” and execution.

I have friends and students who are there in New York observing this spectacle. They email me daily. One took a picture of two homosexual men embracing while holding a sign imploring the brethren to “KILL YOUR PARENTS.”

As he snapped this picture, the throng initiated a frightening march upon the homes of those loathsome “millionaires and billionaires” that President Obama targets unceasingly with his terribly destructive class-based rhetoric. (Click here and here to read more.)

It’s only a matter of time before this angry, envy-filled insurrection turns violent.

“God bless them?” I say “God help them”—and help those they threaten to hurt.

Think about that strange inflection: “God bless them.” What does it normally mean, or how is it more typically applied?

It’s the kind of sentiment you usually wish to a church secretary or Religious Ed director who unselfishly does five peoples’ jobs for $18,000 per year; to your priest on call 24/7 to administer sacraments, often at 2:00 AM to people he doesn’t even know; to a little girls’ choir singing angelically; to cute kids raising money for a soup kitchen; to a dying woman suffering in silence from breast cancer; to Salvation Army volunteers paying peoples’ heating bills; to a Crisis Pregnancy Center volunteer who works the rape hotline; to a nursing-home worker who cheerfully bathes mentally retarded adults; to the guy who snow-blows every driveway on the block; to the black college students who stoically dared enter an Alabama school building while ugly rednecks spat on them; to Rosa Parks. Yes, God bless those people.

“God bless them” isn’t the kind of sentiment anyone would normally direct to a ranting, raving, raging, screaming, shouting crush of self-professed “occupiers” bordering on anarchy without a whiff of religious motivation. I seriously doubt that the horde smashing and littering the streets honestly even care for someone to “bless” their event. Are there prayer chains and prayer circles and rosary sessions going on there?

As anyone paying attention can see, this is an unkempt, cursing lot, some of them trust-fund kids on voluntary sabbatical from $100,000 (per year) elite educations. They hoist a Starbucks in one hand and iphone in the other while shouting “down with capitalism!” As anyone there will tell you, there is everything from group sex to group bong sessions.

This is not a Norman Rockwell picture. It’s about as cute as an LSD trip, as quaint and charming and innocent as a Grateful Dead concert.

Is this the kind of thing we as Christians are expected to bless?

To Congresswoman Pelosi, apparently so. And she says such bizarre things all the time, invariably leaving me just staring at the page or screen or radio, dumbfounded into complete non-response. Even this latest statement has taken me a few days to try to assimilate.

I say God pray for them, pray for all of us, pray for me—and pray for Nancy Pelosi.

Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand (Ignatius Press) and Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.