ABSTRACT
Catholic liberals insisted that Paul Ryan's economic ideas were incompatible with Catholic social doctrine, citing in particular his one-time intellectual infatuation with the atheist libertarian Ayn Rand, which he later repudiated. Stephen Schneck repeated the conventional liberal argument that poverty was the principal reason for abortions and that an expansion of the welfare state would eliminate that cause. Exit polls showed that a majority of active Catholics regarded some of the policies of the Obama administration as threats to religious freedom. The Obama administration sought to obscure the issue of religious freedom by deflecting it into an argument about contraception, and the Reporter readily cooperated, accusing the bishops of basing their argument "on the sandy foundation of church teaching about contraception". The Reporter quickly recanted, assuring readers that the bishops had little credibility and accusing them of "trumpeting a manufactured and unfounded concern over the use of federal money for abortion, thereby causing an unnecessary split in the Catholic community".
