Catholic Sisters blast Romney’s ‘woeful ignorance’ about struggling families

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

The group of Catholic Sisters who gained international attention for their “Nuns on the Bus” tour have invited Mitt Romney to spend a day with them to learn about the needs of struggling families.

Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of NETWORK, described Romney’s latest ad regarding welfare as “terribly divisive and demeaning”

“Recent advertisements and statements from the campaign of Governor Romney demonize families in poverty and reflect woeful ignorance about the challenges faced by tens of millions of American families in these tough economic times,” Campbell said in a statement. “We are all God’s children and equal in God’s eyes. Efforts to divide us by class or score political points at the expense of the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters reveal the worst side of our country’s politics.”

The group of Catholic Sisters have previously protested against House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R) over proposed budget cuts they said would hurt struggling families. The nuns are not the only Catholic group to have criticized Ryan’s budget. ReferencingMatthew 25, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have claimed that cuts in Ryan’s budget plan are “unjustified and wrong.”

“Paul Ryan has claimed to be a faithful Catholic, and I have no reason to suspect that that isn’t accurate,” Sister Mary Ellen Lacy Daughter, a lobbyist for NETWORK, told Raw Story last month. “What we do know, and what the bishops agree with us on, is that the document, the budget that he wrote, is not a moral document. It is not a faithful budget. It is not consistent with the Catholic social teachings. He may claim one thing, but it is clearly in opposition to what we believe.”

The proposed budget is meant to prevent a 10 percent cut in defense spending and 8 percent cut in non-defense discretionary spending from taking effect. The automatic cuts were part of the debt ceiling deal signed into law last year, and will take effect in 2013 unless Congress passes a budget that provides $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction measures.

Ryan’s plan would cut programs for low- and moderate-income people while allowing defense funding to remain well above the automatic 10 percent cut, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found that Ryan’s proposed budget would give millionaires an additional $265,000 on top of the already-enacted Bush tax cuts while cutting funding for the food stamp program by $134 billion. An additional analysis found that 62 percent of Ryan’s proposed budget cuts come from programs for low-income Americans.