English Bishops Veering Away from Big Government

Perhaps there are many Bishops presently for who want to spend more time engaging in wealth confiscation as an abettor of liberal government, but they're increasingly departing from their liberal orthodoxy and getting some old orthodoxy. Perhaps they are going to become more concerned about saving souls as they are about promoting the same old Labour policies and extolling the mythical "common good"?

Perhaps they are starting to realize that collorating with Liberal governments don't serve their stated mission to save souls very well?

The Bishops Have NOT backed the Tories Yet -- but they are beginning to talk sense.

[The Telegraph] The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales unveiled their pre-election briefing today and it’s a vast improvement on their traditional “let’s-throw-money-at-social-problems-and-you-know-which-party-that-means-voting-for” approach.

Choosing the Common Good questions the myth – yes, it uses the word “myth” – that the state can solve all our problems. In that respect it’s a big advance on 2004’s Taxation for the Common Good, a hymn to the public sector that could have been (and maybe was) dictated by Downing Street.

There are paragraphs that resonate with David Cameron’s “bottom-up” philosophy of community initiatives. Also, though this is not mentioned, Bishop Malcolm McMahon, who has the education portfolio, has given his blessing to the free schools initiative (rather to the alarm of doctrinaire Lefty Oona Stannard, head of the “Catholic” Education Service).

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