Catholic Charity Rejects Gov’t Funding to Maintain Religious Liberty

[livingwordunity]

Catholic Charity Rejects Gov’t Funding to Maintain Religious Liberty

by Ben Johnson

Wed Jan 04, 2012 19:01 EST

TULSA, OKLAHOMA, January 4, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Catholic charitable organization has rejected government funding so it can uphold traditional Christian teachings and serve the poor with less bureaucratic red tape.

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Tulsa has chosen to rely strictly upon the donations of private individuals and institutions.

That stands in stark contrast to most of the benevolent institution’s other affiliates. Catholic Charities around the country received $1 billion from the government, approximately two-thirds of their funding.

This had led to a series of increasingly volatile clashes with political authorities. This summer, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) revoked its contract with Catholic Charities after the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act became law. Gov. Pat Quinn, who is Roman Catholic, defended the action, saying the charity had “made a choice…We’re not going back.” In October, the state forcibly transferred more than 1,000 children from the charity’s custody to secular agencies on an accelerated timeline.

The Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, chose to end its adoption program in May rather than participate in homosexual adoptions.

“We represent Catholic people, not the government, in our funding,” said Deacon Kevin Sartorius, executive director of the Tulsa charity. “This allows us to represent the values of our donors.”

He said, “Our mission is to give someone Christ, and we give them Christ through the food or the clothing. We don’t beat them over the head with the Bible; we just love them.”

Some critics believe only foregoing government funds altogether will prevent the state from coercing religious organizations to violate their faith. “What Catholic Charities of Tulsa is doing is showing the way forward for Catholics and other Christians who want to be faithful to the ancient Church’s age-old moral teachings, and who want to assist those in need without compromising the truth of the Gospel,” wrote Dr. Samuel Gregg, research director at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com.

Fr. Robert Sirico, the president of Acton, agrees. “I think we need to separate the giving from the mechanism of the state,” he said. “There’s the threat that he who drinks the king’s wine sings the king’s song.” Deacon Sartorius shares that concern. “It’s natural to want to please the one who is providing the money for your program,” he said.

Dn. Sartorius said with the new financing plan, “We’re in solidarity with the poor. We both have to figure out how to get by.”

Dr. Gregg predicted other religious charities will soon rely exclusively on private donors. “It won’t be long before other Catholic charitable work throughout the United States and abroad will head down the same path - either because more Catholics will see the good sense embodied by the Tulsa example, or because they will be forced to by governments seeking to impose the agenda of secularist relativism upon Catholic and other Christian organizations.”

California Congressman Pete Stark has introduced the “Every Child Deserves a Family Act” - which bars adoption agencies from considering an applicant’s “sexual orientation, gender identification, or marital status” - twice since 2009. That could make clashes like those in Illinois a nationwide phenomenon.

The process is already underway in Europe. Ten of the 11 Catholic adoption agencies in the United Kingdom have either shut down or severed their ties to the Church after the Labour Party mandated homosexual adoption in 2007. Catholic Care filed its fourth appeal in September.

LifeSiteNews.com attempted to contact Catholic Charities of Tulsa, but the call was not returned.

Source

 

[Julia_Mae]

Fr. Robert Sirico, the president of Acton, agrees. “I think we need to separate the giving from the mechanism of the state,” he said. “There’s the threat that he who drinks the king’s wine sings the king’s song.” Deacon Sartorius shares that concern. “It’s natural to want to please the one who is providing the money for your program,” he said.

Dn. Sartorius said with the new financing plan, “We’re in solidarity with the poor. We both have to figure out how to get by.”

Dr. Gregg predicted other religious charities will soon rely exclusively on private donors. “It won’t be long before other Catholic charitable work throughout the United States and abroad will head down the same path - either because more Catholics will see the good sense embodied by the Tulsa example, or because they will be forced to by governments seeking to impose the agenda of secularist relativism upon Catholic and other Christian organizations.”

About time. Now we are on the right track.

 

[_Abyssinia]

This is better than shutting down or severing affiliation from the Church

God Bless Catholic Charities

 

[rfournier103]

Good! Catholic Charities doesn’t do adoptions here in Massachusetts because they won’t place kids in gay households. Polititians LOVE to take good things and try to influence them to suit their tastes. Too bad it’s contrary to human nature to leave well enough alone…

 

[Neildown]

Good - we shouldn’t have been taking government money in the first place.

 

[Dale_M]

My first thought was: “Okay, now the Catholics in the Diocese of Tulsa will need to step forward. Eyes across the nation will be watching to see if eliminating government funding will hamstring services provided.”

But in looking at the 2011 Annual Report for Catholic Charities of Tulsa, it appears only 8% of their funding has come from the government.
catholiccharitiestulsa.org/wp-content/uploads/CC2011AnnualReport-lores.pdf

So perhaps they are not very comparable to other Catholic Charities.

 

[oneofmany]

I am wondering how this will work with Catholic hospitals though.

 

[Tigg]

Good - we shouldn’t have been taking government money in the first place.

 

[JimG]

Relying solely on private donations will not save a Catholic charity from losing its religious liberty. The HHS mandate will apply to them regardless of their funding source. And the HHS mandate requires them to violate their religious principles.

Also, as to government funding–where does that money come from? It comes from the people–including Catholics, who ought to have a say in how it is spent. I agree with charities relying on self-funding. But in that case, let the government get out of the charity business and leave it to the private charities, who do it better anyway. And let them operate their charities in accord with their principles, not the government’s principles.

 

[manualman]

The article is missing a profoundly important point. The changes in Illinois law forced Catholic Charities out of providing adoption services by pulling their license for refusing to place with gay couples. Private funding does nothing to help the situation when you need a license to operate an adoption agency and the state won’t grant a license to anyone who won’t toe the line. It’s like proposing that we buy a sturdy pair of gloves so that we won’t cut our feet up on the streets littered with broken glass…

 

[Dale_M]

The article is missing a profoundly important point. The changes in Illinois law forced Catholic Charities out of providing adoption services by pulling their license for refusing to place with gay couples.

I don’t think that is true. What the state of Illinois did was cancel its contracts with Catholic Charities so that they couldn’t provide foster care and adoption services on behalf of the government. Since Catholic Charities depended on government funding to run their programs, they decided to close them.

In Illinois, Catholic Charities in five of the six state dioceses had grown dependent on foster care contracts, receiving 60 percent to 92 percent of their revenues from the state, according to affidavits by the charities’ directors. (Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Chicago pulled out of foster care services in 2007 because of problems with its insurance provider.)

When the contracts came up for renewal in June, the state attorney general, along with the legal staff in the governor’s office and the Department of Children and Family Services, decided that the religious providers on state contracts would no longer be able to reject same-sex couples, said Kendall Marlowe, a spokesman for the department.

Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Rockford decided at that point to get out of the foster care business. But the bishops in Springfield, Peoria, Joliet and Belleville decided to fight, filing a lawsuit against the state.

In August, Judge John Schmidt, a circuit judge in Sangamon County, ruled against Catholic Charities, saying, “No citizen has a recognized legal right to a contract with the government.” He did not address the religious liberty claims, ruling only that the state did not violate the church’s property rights.

Three of the dioceses filed an appeal, but in November filed a motion to dismiss their lawsuit.

nytimes.com/2011/12/29/us/for-bishops-a-battle-over-whose-rights-prevail.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The issue was money and whether Catholic Charities would pay for its programs.

 

[manualman]

I’ll look. But I live here and my recollection was that they not only could no longer get state contracts, but could no longer facilitate ANY adoptions.

 

[Joe_5859]

I thought that in Illinois, there was some Lutheran adoption agency that took no State funding that continued as is because of that. I’ll have to double check, though.

I can’t say I blame Tulsa Catholic Chairities for going that route. It’s sadly becoming a necessity in many cases.

However, I will always strenuously object to considering State funding to be “government money.” That is our money, not the government’s. And there is no reason that Catholic charitable organizations should not be able to receive such funding to provide necessary charitable services to the broader society without worrying about strings attached that would require them acting in ways that violate their principles. That’s what the money is there for in the first place.

If we want to go the route of not receiving “government money”, we’re going to have to lower taxes (so that people have money to give to those Catholic charities) and also catechize people on the necessity of contributing financially to such charitable entities when they have become so accustomed to their taxes “taking care of it.” That’s not going to be a quick cultural shift.

 

[mildredhults]

Rejecting government funding definitely eliminates certain government controls over how that funding is spent. However, as others have pointed out, government, as in the HHS mandate, is vigorously extending its powers over private charitable activities. This government wants to control all charitable activities. It wants people to be dependent on it for their needs, and thereby eager to support it in elections. It wants to define the ethos under which aid is given and to have the power to decide who receives aid and who does not. Private charities, especially those of the Catholic Church, by far the largest single private charitable organization in the country, are competition to be suppressed. Avoiding dependence on government funds is a step in the right direction. But, until Catholics understand that charity through the Church is far preferable to “charity” from government and stop supporting the anti-God Democratic agenda, all Catholic charities are at risk.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Relying solely on private donations will not save a Catholic charity from losing its religious liberty. The HHS mandate will apply to them regardless of their funding source. And the HHS mandate requires them to violate their religious principles.

Also, as to government funding–where does that money come from? It comes from the people–including Catholics, who ought to have a say in how it is spent. I agree with charities relying on self-funding. But in that case, let the government get out of the charity business and leave it to the private charities, who do it better anyway. And let them operate their charities in accord with their principles, not the government’s principles.

I think you’re right about the HHS mandate, unless Catholic Charities of Tulsa also limits its personnel and clients to Catholics. I know a couple of sisters who are members of the Sisters of Life, an order that provides services to poor women in the South Bronx, encouraging them and supporting them not to abort. They provide food, nursing care, place to live and get them jobs, and persuade them of the sanctity of life.

Those sisters don’t even employ non-Catholics. They do all the work themselves. But they don’t limit their services to Catholics. They will be forced to provide THEMSELVES with health insurance that covers contraceptives and abortifacients or do without. They have decided to do without. Now, the further question is whether they will have to pay fines for failing to do it. Probably they will. Here’s who they are. If anything more despicable could be imagined as a policy of a government, it would be hard to imagine what it is. sistersoflife.org/

 

[Luigi_Daniele]

I think you’re right about the HHS mandate, unless Catholic Charities of Tulsa also limits its personnel and clients to Catholics. I know a couple of sisters who are members of the Sisters of Life, an order that provides services to poor women in the South Bronx, encouraging them and supporting them not to abort. They provide food, nursing care, place to live and get them jobs, and persuade them of the sanctity of life.

Those sisters don’t even employ non-Catholics. They do all the work themselves. But they don’t limit their services to Catholics. They will be forced to provide THEMSELVES with health insurance that covers contraceptives and abortifacients or do without. They have decided to do without. Now, the further question is whether they will have to pay fines for failing to do it. Probably they will. Here’s who they are. If anything more despicable could be imagined as a policy of a government, it would be hard to imagine what it is. sistersoflife.org/

You lost me. If it covers OC’s and they are the only ones who would (not) be using these services, then what is the problem? What am I missing?

 

[JimG]

You lost me. If it covers OC’s and they are the only ones who would (not) be using these services, then what is the problem? What am I missing?

The sisters, because they provide services to non-Catholics, must provide health insurance which covers contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion inducing drugs. It is contrary to their conscience to buy such insurance. Consequently, they will not. In not providing the insurance, they will be in violation of the HHS mandate, and will be subject to federal fines. The same will apply to any employer, whether or not the employer receives any government funding. Hobby Lobby, for example, has said that they will also not provide the insurance because it is in violation of their religion, and they will be subject to fines in the amount of millions of dollars a day.

 

[JimG]

From the Sisters of Life website:

Response to HHS Mandate
The Sisters of Life join with the Catholic Bishops of the United States, and leaders of many other religious communities, in strongly objecting to the Department of Health and Human Services rule for “preventative services,” and the “compromise” announced by President Obama regarding religious liberty. This mandate will gravely violate the individual and collective religious liberties of the Sisters of Life and millions of others by forcing us to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and artificial contraception against our conscience. (more)

sistersoflife.org/

 

[ProVobis]

The sisters, because they provide services to non-Catholics, must provide health insurance which covers contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion inducing drugs. It is contrary to their conscience to buy such insurance. Consequently, they will not. In not providing the insurance, they will be in violation of the HHS mandate, and will be subject to federal fines. The same will apply to any employer, whether or not the employer receives any government funding. Hobby Lobby, for example, has said that they will also not provide the insurance because it is in violation of their religion, and they will be subject to fines in the amount of millions of dollars a day.

Let’s not forget the real issues here. Will they be denied medical treatment if they get sick? Can single-payer be that far away? Or will health insurance become like flood insurance and available only from the government?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Let’s not forget the real issues here. Will they be denied medical treatment if they get sick? Can single-payer be that far away? Or will health insurance become like flood insurance and available only from the government?

Possibly I misunderstand what you mean by the “real issues”. The most significant issue here is the religious oppression of these sisters and all Catholic employers and all but a handful of Catholic institutions by a government that demands a sharia-like tribute from all who do not adhere to its pagan religion.