you belong to the government

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Sep 17, 2009

 You can count on Cardinal Renato Martino, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, to support any fashionable liberal cause. Roughly a year ago your Uncle Di observed:

When he is not referring to the late Saddam Hussein as a "tragic figure" or announcing that a proposed border wall between the US and Mexico would be an "inhuman program," he is coming up with lists of traffic-safety tips and pleas for better education of pedestrians, or astonishing insights into the importance of water in human life.

Now he's at it again, with his statement that he "cannot but applaud" the Obama plans for health-care reform. 

And that's not all. The Italian cardinal drops a few pearls about the American federalist system ("The health of their own citizens belongs to the authorities, to the central government.") and on the principle of subsidiarity ("And you know that everywhere in the world it is a concern of the government first of all, and after there are possibilities also on the private sector..."). 

Uncle Di "cannot but applaud" the fact that Cardinal Martino will celebrate his 77th birthday in October-- that is, he'll be 2 years beyond normative retirement age.