Progressive faith leaders are refusing to let elected officials neglect their moral responsibilities to working poor families by letting improvements to the Earned Income Tax Credit expire and forcing seniors and the disabled to bear the burden.  They write,

“Inspired by the clear mandates of Scripture, many of our nation’s prominent faith leaders have drawn a circle of protection around programs such as education funding, food stamps, and the Earned Income Tax Credit. This stance reflects not only religious teachings about justice and compassion, but also popular opinion among people of faith.”

Rev. Butler and Whitman go on to say that excuses that the conservative movement uses to push for cuts in safety-net programs are unjustifiable:

“Using deficits caused by irresponsible tax cuts, unfunded wars, the financial crisis and an inefficient healthcare system as an auspice to weaken programs that ensure basic economic security and access to health care for millions of Americans is wrong. Arguing that we must slash these programs now to avoid destroying them later is a failure of leadership.”

There is a shared vision for the future of America among members of the faith community. It is clear that religious leaders are united in their commitment to protect the common good and economic well-being of millions of Americans.

Catholic bishops have every right to oppose birth control and same-sex civil marriage, even as research shows a majority of Catholics support both, and a recent study in St. Louis found greater access to contraception significantly lowered abortion rates. The real challenge for bishops today is a growing perception that they are simply cheerleaders for the Republican Party. In fact, Catholic social teaching has long put economic justice, respect for immigrants, universal health care, environmental stewardship and labor rights at the center of its tradition. The Vatican’s call for sensible regulations of global financial markets and stark warnings about climate change are to the left of many Democratic leaders. Catholicism is not a single-issue religion, and the church’s “consistent ethic of life” framework has long recognized that being “pro-life” must include defending the sanctity of life outside the womb.

In recent years, a vocal minority of conservative bishops have drifted from this proud tradition. Bishops launched a “religious freedom” campaign this summer, led by Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori, largely aimed at the Obama administration’s requirement that most employers must offer contraception coverage to women at no cost under the health care reform law. Catholic churches are exempt. Catholic hospitals and universities, which in some states already provided birth control coverage to their employees with little controversy, do not have to pay for coverage under an accommodation that requires the insurance company to pick up with tab. While reasonable people disagree over this policy, and details must still be worked out for some Catholic institutions that self-insure, the apocalyptic rhetoric of some church leaders suggests that President Obama is waging a war on the Catholic Church — a theme adopted in Mitt Romney’s campaign ads.

(RNS) The “Nuns on the Bus” have been a consistently popular and effective faith-based tool for religious progressives this campaign season, but on Monday a group of demonstrators apparently organized by a local Tea Party affiliate met the nuns at a stop in Marietta, Ohio, and provided a far different welcome than the sisters usually receive.

Holding placards with slogans like “Bums on the Bus” and “Romney-Ryan Yes, Fake Nuns No,” the protesters focused their fire on the abortion issue, accusing the sisters of not being sufficiently anti-abortion.

Someone claiming to be a member of the local “We the People” chapter — that is the name used by some Tea Party affiliates in the region — posted a YouTube video of the counter-demonstrators taken before the half dozen nuns and some 100 supporters arrived. It says there were more than 175 marchers opposing the nuns and it shows the demonstrators praying the rosary and singing hymns before challenging the sisters.

They were also fleeting. Just two decades later, Jerry Falwell made the religious right the public face of Christianity. Today, at a time when debates over the role of faith in politics are as prickly as ever, Catholic nuns in the United States are reawakening the spirit of Vatican II and inspiring a new generation of disillusioned Christians as they face harsh rebuke from an increasingly conservative hierarchy.

After meeting Sister Simone Campbell, the phrase “radical feminist” isn’t the first to come to mind to describe her.

The 66-year-old wears her gray hair short, smiles with her eyes and possesses an easy, quick wit. But “radical feminist” is how some described her after the Vatican told her and other nuns raising their voices about social issues to pipe down.

That just got them fired up.

“We took the notoriety we had, and said ‘How can we use this for mission?” Sr. Simone says. The answer was Nuns on the Bus, a nationwide sister-palooza this summer that included rallies, meetings with Congressional staffers, and visits with college students.

Polls show that one-third of people raised Catholic no longer attends church.

That may not be a bad thing, says Bill Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League and author of Why Catholicism Matters.

Donohue notes that Pope Benedict XVI has intimated that a smaller, more orthodox church might be better anyway. If people are so dissatisfied, Donohue says, why don’t they just join a liberal denomination, like the Episcopalians?

“I think for a long time, what I would consider the base of Catholic Church — the ones who practice, who go to church regularly and who pay the bills, generally of a more conservative stripe — we feel like we’ve been neglected,” Donohue says. “And now we feel like, ‘Hey, maybe our time has come.’ ”

It certainly feels that way to John Gehring, a church-attending Catholic who works for the progressive advocacy group Faith in Public Life. Gehring says the Church he loves used to care as much about poverty and social justice as sexuality.

“I believe in a ‘big tent’ Catholicism, where liberals and moderates and conservatives can get along,” Gehring says. “We share a faith, we share rituals, we break bread together. But this is as much my church as it is Bill Donohue’s church.”

And so Gehring plans to stay — and hopes that one day, the pendulum will swing back his way.

The two-week, 2,700-mile tour concluded with a prayer service and press conference on Capitol Hill.

The nuns have been compared by some to rock stars, greeted by screaming fans holding signs and wearing commemorative T-shirts. That was also the scene outside the United Methodist Building on Monday as scores of attendees cheered the arriving bus.

“Nuns on the bus speak for not just Catholics, not for Christians only, not for Jews. They speak for all of us,” said Sayyid Sayeed, national interfaith director of the Islamic Society of North America.

A nine-state bus trip by Catholic nuns opposing proposed cuts in federal programs for the poor, stopped in Cleveland Tuesday to visit a West Side soup kitchen and to drum up support for their crusade.

The trip, on a brightly decorated touring coach with red letters, “Nuns on the bus,” is stopping at life-line agencies run by nuns to highlight the work they do for the poor, the sick and the disenfranchised.

“We’re getting educated about what the real needs are for real people,” Sister Simone Campbell told the editorial board of The Plain Dealer. “We have seen nothing but responsible programs since we left Des Moines.”

“Nuns on the Bus” came to Cedar Rapids a few days ago on their national bus tour to call attention to a Republican congressional budget plan that they insist would “decimate” the social safety net.

The plan’s author, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, contends that his budget blueprint was informed by his Catholic faith and teachings. The nuns begged to differ. “My astute political analysis was ‘liar, liar pants on fire,’” said Sister Simone Campbell of the Washington D.C.-based social services lobbying group Network.

The nuns’ basic argument is that broad cuts or changes in social programs such as Medicare and food assistance proposed by Ryan’s plan would deny millions of Americans access to the help they need in tough economic times. And they question the contention that charities and churches can make up the gap. For one thing, many churches and charities partner with the government to provide programs, and would struggle without that help. Campbell said Bread for the World, a faith-based anti-hunger advocacy group, estimates that every religious congregation in the country would have to raise $50,000 annually to just make up for the proposed cut in food assistance.

In 2010, the Knights were also generous with their contributions to individual bishops, doling out nearly $350,000 for a variety of programs in various dioceses. Of that, $248,700, or 71 percent, went to Lori’s former Diocese of Bridgeport.

Lori — who is the man most directly in charge of the Fortnight for Freedom campaign — has been the Supreme Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus since 2005.

The Knights did not respond to requests for an interview about the organization’s involvement with the bishops’ campaign, but the organization has dedicated recent issues of its monthly magazine to the topic of religious liberty.

John Gehring, Catholic program director at Faith in Public Life, a liberal advocacy group in Washington, said while the Knights’ charitable works was “commendable … its leadership has steered a fraternal organization into political waters in ways that should raise questions.”

Asked by reporters in Atlanta last week if the Knights’ involvement in the religious liberty campaign introduces at least the perception of partisanship, Lori said no. Other groups have contributed to the campaign, he said, mentioning Our Sunday Visitor and the Order of Malta.