"Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." --1 Corinthians 13:13, King James Bible
Apparently the Catholic Diocese skipped that part of the Good Book.
Catholic Charities in Rockford, Ill., have decided that rather than abide with the new civil unions law going into effect in Illinois on June 1, they'll end all the adoption and foster care services they provide. This move will displace around 350 children in foster care, terminate $7.5 million in state contracts with the "charity," and lead the organization to fire 58 of its employees who work with their state-funded adoption services.
Not sounding so charitable, are they?
Ellen Lynch, general counsel for the diocese, gave this "loving" excuse when they announced their decision following the failure of an amendment to the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act that would have allowed Catholic Charities use their public funds to discriminate as they see fit:
"It's the moral teaching of our faith that we believe in the natural order of marriage. In order to serve our children best, we believe that they be in that kind of a family."
This move isn't anything new from the Catholic Church. They have a history of simply shutting down services and punishing both those they serve and employees when they are forced to decide between taking millions in public dollars and continuing their faith-based discrimination against a class of people. Just last year, in March 2010, the Washington, D.C. Catholic Charities announced it will no longer offer spousal benefits to any employees to avoid offering benefits to same-sex partners of employees after D.C.'s marriage equality law went into effect.
The church certainly has the right as a private institution to believe what they want and to act accordingly. However, they simply do not have the right to bring that discrimination into the public sphere by taking tax dollars while not serving the entire community, only those they see fit and worthy.
But beyond the actual private belief versus public funding/services issue, the choice of the church to put "faith" (or, rather, faith-based discrimination) over actual charity is a good insight into the priorities of the institution. And this certainly is an institutional Church issue that doesn't represent how polls show the average Catholic feels about LGBT Americans and their relationships. Recent polling from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that Catholics overwhelmingly support marriage or civil unions for same-sex couples by some 74 percent. Yet the church chooses to hurt the hundreds of children in its care, the employees that work for them and the community it supposedly serves.
The Catholic Church is free to discriminate as they please. They can do things like back anti-gay marriage amendments, kick-out foster kids and fight condom use to prevent HIV/AIDS. But all they do is further isolate themselves from not only society as a whole, but from their own shrinking membership, as well as remove themselves and their services form the public sphere. Prioritizing discrimination of LGBT people and holding charity hostage has sadly become their top goal.
As the Bible once again says: "Though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing" (1 Corinthians 13:2, King James Bible).
Faith, hope and charity? Not so much from the Catholic Church.
Follow Waymon Hudson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/WaymonHudson
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See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kuzYwzGoXw
You're just pissed off that they won't play nice with you.
If the Pope and all religious leaders band together to promote birth control and family planning, we could end the cycle of poverty. It seems that most, in not all, religious leads have no real interest in ending poverty. Now Why is that?
P.S. The Catholic Charities Group does nothing more than put a band-aid on the massive problem that they helped to create.
Let them depend on private donations to do their work - not our tax dollars. And if they stick their noses into politics, cut off funding and also their tax-exempt status.
The religious corporations, especially the Catholics, are self-centered, self-absorbed and, well, just plain selfish.
They demand representation without taxation.
Time to repeal their tax-exempt status, which they exploit and abuse.
Pretty sure anti-Catholic mistrust is well-founded.
I hate to get into a whose-science-is-better argument, but those studies have serious methodological problems. However, the good news is we do have tons of good, statistically significant studies that show one man - one woman relationships are significantly better than any alternative. Granted, we may be able to correlate those results with other factors (parental happiness, etc) and obviously NO studies can show causality.
I am sure other organizations will be happy to take over their duties.
Translation: they have been acting on this issue in accordance with their religious beliefs.
I find your argument very poorly reasoned, Mr. Hudson. They are not ignoring the admonition to do charitable work. They have a couple thousand year history of doing charitable work. They are simply trying to do so in a manner consistent with the age long religious and moral traditions.
If we are going to insist that those who receive public money for charitable endeavors follow whatever the current public policy is, we have to expect that those who cannot do so for religious reasons will withdraw.
So why the attack? Really, what else could they do?
And when this was affirmed, they stopped providing the services. Which is absolutely their right. Or should they be forced to provide services in the way you want? You won. They aren't discriminating with public money. You knew this would be the result, so stop your bitching. It's a private organization that is in no way compelled to do things the way you want them too. It's no different than any other number of private organizations who do things according to their beliefs.
Your article is rather pointless. It's just whining and moaning that an event you wanted had a predictable outcome. They are a religion with certain fundamental moral tenets and beliefs. Of course those beliefs come first in their decisions.
Pointless article from a community that feels the need to play the perpetual victim even when they win (correctly) on an issue.
Nobody is forcing the Catholics to do anything.
You really don't think the Catholic charities are the only ones out there, do you?
No loss to society if they quit.