'Catholicism and American Freedom': That Old-World Religion
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/03/books/review/03LACEY.html?pagewanted=all&position=
By MICHAEL J. LACEY


In two angry moments of praise and blame reported in The New York
Times, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, last of the great New Deal liberals,
vented his frustration over the certain passage of a welfare reform
bill he had bitterly opposed from the beginning. The Clinton White
House had collaborated with Newt Gingrich's Republicans to overhaul in
their fundamentals the workings of the nation's poor laws, a field in
which Moynihan was the Senate's chief authority. They had done so in a
fashion he thought morally evasive. An intense lobbying effort in
opposition to the bill had been mounted by the Roman Catholic bishops,
and Moynihan, a Catholic, acknowledged the importance of their
advocacy. In 1995, alluding to their position on welfare and throwing
an old political caution to the winds, he said: "I just do what the
Catholic bishops tell me. Write that down. They've been at this a hell
of a lot longer than anyone else." A year later, as the fight ended,
he added that the bishops "admittedly have an easier task with matters
of this sort. When principles are at issue, they simply look them up.
Too many liberals, alas, simply make them up."