San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer, apparently reacting to the email from his predecessor, Archbishop William Levada, now head of the CDF, announced today that Catholic Charities SF won’t be placing adoptive children with gays. Catholic Charities in SF has placed five children with gay couples since 2000, a practice which the current head of the agency defended as required by non-discrimination laws.
SF CC gets eighty percent of its funding from the government, which in itself should be a scandal as it should be for all Catholic Charities agencies in the US. What will gay-happy Gavin Newsom, the Catholic mayor of SF who finds the Church’s teachings so troubling, do now?
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“SF CC gets eighty percent of its funding from the government, which in itself should be a scandal as it should be for all Catholic Charities agencies in the US.”
Why exactly?
Most of us are taxed very heavily. I surely would give more to charity if I wasn’t.
I’d guess they’re probably funded about the same level they would be either way, just through different sources.
What will gay-happy Gavin Newsom, the Catholic mayor of SF who finds the Church’s teachings so troubling, do now?
He’ll call wifey who is a CNN talking head they will go off to rhetorical war against the Church.
It’s time to choose sides and arm ourselves spiritually.
Being forced to fund social programs under pains and penalties of the law is not charity. It is taxation. Charity is giving willingly with love. Deus Caritas Est is a good explanation of the difference.
You are right that high taxes are a barrier to charity, which is why taxes should be lowered, but regardless we are told to give from our need, not our excess, anyway.
If he has so much trouble with church teaching, he may not know it yet, but he’s an ex-catholic.
Samuel, the channel the funding comes through is everything in these matters. They need to stop taking money from the feds. If it’s not important enough for Catholics to fund, it’s not important enough to be funded.
I think Gavin Newsom and his wife are actually getting a divorce…
That wasn’t my reason for posting, though.
“SF CC gets eighty percent of its funding from the government, which in itself should be a scandal as it should be for all Catholic Charities agencies in the US.”
“Why exactly?”
I had the same reaction. Do you mean most funding should come from Catholics? If so, are you aware of how liberal Catholic Charities is in the U.S.? It’s basically an arm of the Democratic Party within the U.S. Church. (Maybe people think that’s not a bad thing… I don’t know people here. I’m not saying to give it to Republicans either.)
I suspect many branches of Catholic Charities would be just as progressive if they got 100% of their funding from Catholics.
Besides that, the way so many priests and bishops waste so much of the money we already give them (teaching little of the faith in return) while living upper middle class lives (and the lives of millionaires for bishops, and some priests) makes me think they should stop asking us for more money and start taking less of what we give them for themselves and giving more of it to the needy. Most dioceses give a portion of their take to Catholic Charities. I wouldn’t feel bad about the bishops and priests living more frugally and giving more of what we give to God to the poor.
Does that sound too harsh?
Regarding Fr. Stephanos’s comments about praying to Charles Lwanga for his intercession, I wish priests in the Boston Archdiocese would encourage devotion to St. Charles Lwanga and the 22 martyrs of Uganda.I don’t think many know why he was killed. An excellent, very well documented book about Charles Lwanga and the 22 martyrs of Uganda who served in the court of Mwanga, the king(Kabaka) of Buganda, who demanded that they accept his policy of promoting homosexual acts, is AFRICAN HOLOCAUST by J.F. Faupel,of the St. Joseph’s Society for Foreign Missions. The incredible bravery of these young martyrs, many of whom were recent converts to the Catholic faith,was noted in the evidence about their lives given given by witnesses: “At that time the Kabaka(King Mwanga) practiced the works of Sodom. Muslims and pagans were prepared to do those things with him, but the Catholics absolutely refused. For that reason, the Kabaka began to detest us, and deliberated with the pagans and Muslims about putting us to death, us the Catholics. With my own ears I heard him utter words of anger because the young Catholics refused to sin.”(p.83)
When the Mass for the feast day of Charles Lwanga
is celebrated, I have never heard a priest mention his refusal to obey the king’s order to engage in homosexual acts as the main reason why he was martyred. I wonder why.
Our priests don’t take vows of poverty, therefore, we have no right to tell them to live more frugally. They might as well point right back at any of us and say the same thing. (Maybe they should…)
Infanted raises an interesting point…the Church needs its leaders to be greater advocates of living a Christian life and, to support and to encourage us each week in their homilies and preaching to do so.
I’m paraphrasing, but in the Gospel of Life, Pope John Paul II called on us to live a new way of life where the primacy of our lifes is “on being, not having…on the person, not on things.”
There would be a tremendous revolution in our Church, in our lifes if our Catholic neighbors(and broader Christian community) lived and practised the Gospel more. There are many temptations and distractions in the materialistic, secular world that limit all of us.
I believe if our bishops sincerely started preaching about and living their own lives better aligned with the Gospel and less so to pop culture/popular opinion, then the Church can regain its voice and credibility that has been weakened by the scandal. I believe enough of the laity would respond to this with their support.
Regarding Fr. Stephanos’s plea to the laity to do the job of instructin our children. I totally agree! God grant that we have the courage to do our job far better than in the past!!!
Richard, are you forgetting that it is from our families that priests come to take on the responsibilities of their Holy Orders? If we, as mothers and fathers, fall down on our job of raising courageous men willing to take on the full responsibilities of the priesthood, we have only ourselves to blame. I plead guilty to that and I’m sure there are many other parents who wish we had done a better job. Let’s hope and pray that the next generation does a far better job!!!
That human beings come from the family, which is necessarily lay, is not an excuse for the malfeasance of bishops and errant priests.
The fact is that people don’t get taught, don’t get led by clergy in many cases and it is at least partially responsible for the terrible condition of most peoples’ knowledge of the faith.
Many clergy simply refuse to teach the faith. Period.
There is not a lot of social support for faithful clergy out there.
That’s because we see a lot of nonsense and we can do darned near nothing about it. Most of our priests think they’re dentists or something: 9-5 days and golf as usual, going along with whatever seems like a good idea at the time. And they have no time for people who really want to live the Catholic life. If we could find priests who we thought actually valued holiness, trust me, we’d cherish them.
I’m sorry, Father, that you have to be the first to insist that people don’t co-habitate, but lay Catholics aren’t so sure about any of it anymore. We don’t ever hear any sermons on it. We don’t ever hear much about morals at all, in fact. And we certainly don’t hear what the Church teaches unless we go on the Internet and look it up. Trust me when I tell you that for the purposes of most middle-class parishes, Rome no longer exists. We hear platitudes, jokes and nicey nicey nice mush, designed to disturb no-one and make everyone as comfy as possible because dontcha know, religion is an “experience.”
To whom, Father?
If you say anything about holiness or doing things right to the priest, he dismisses you as a stupid layperson. And nothing changes. Nothing. Half the time, we can’t even get a decent respectful mass. That’s how bad it is. And you know who’s in charge? A clique, often a dissenting clique.
If you write to the bishop, you will never hear back. Dead end, just like that.
Don’t get me wrong, Father. I think the laity have to raise a stink about the things that are wrong. But that means raising a stink about what isn’t getting done by the clergy as well as raising a stink about what isn’t getting done by the laity.
And respectfully, the clergy are supposed to be teaching what the Church teaches and ministering accordingly as a way of life, day in and day out. They’re supposed to be the front line of the Catholic Church—you know, the one in Rome. They don’t have other jobs to attend to and when they can’t even carry this one out, they’re worse off than the laity who raise kids and at least hold down a 9 to 5 like we’re supposed to.
I find myself on both sides here. As a member of the laity and one who thought about the priesthood for a long time I have to say that both of us are at fault. Firstly it was the clergy (with apologies Fr Stephanos) who led the faithful astray in the dark years of the 70’s and 80’s. Who moved the Tabernacles into dark corners, who omitted the identification of sin. I was reading through my missal the other day .. the official one for the Australian Church. I noticed that where short readings of the Gospel were permitted they almost always omit the hard stuff, the bits about sin and judgement, the bits where Our Lord is not “charitable” in the modern humanistic sense. Laity that were brought up on this have no real faith. It is easy to lose your belief in the Real Presence when there is no Presence there. It is easy to forget confession when you are not being taught that you are a sinner. So yes, the clergy were to blame for much that is wrong because the faith was not taught. Equally however I am with you on OUR responsibility as laity and especially as parents. For many years I did not insist my son attend mass with us. Now I do. At 16 it is a long haul to recover lost ground. We were at fault in that 1)we did not take the responsibility to stand up for the faith (Father says it’s alright so it must be) 2)we let our own faith lapse and did not pass it on to our children. There is no us and them. We are all guilty. There was a time when you knew you were in a Catholic house, a Catholic school, a Catholic hospital byt the crucifixes that greeted you everywhere. I now have one where it is seen on entering the house. But how many years did I neglect this and how many did I fail in so doing. Let us all look to the motes in our own eyes before muttering about the beams in others.
Samuel:
One of the problems with government funding for Catholic charities is that it comes with conditions attached. Usually that involves upholding whatever government policy of the moment happens to be and spending the money in a way which the government deems appropriate.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that this will inevitably lead to conflict over certain Church teachings and pressure on the Church to compromise its own doctrine in order to accept the money. It’s already happened in the area of homosexual adoptions.
The end result is that the Catholic charity loses its Catholic character.
::::I have watched laity walk out of Mass when I have had occasion to mention the wrongs of artificial contraception. :::::
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I have to commend you for even stating this, Fr. Stephanos, because the ONLY time I’ve ever heard it mentioned was in a homily given by a transitional deacon. He tied the whole Faith together in the Eucharist. He stated (among other things) that lack of Faith in the Eucharist leads to lack of faith in other things – notably artificial contraception.
I caught up with him the following week walking in to Mass, and told him that I thought his homily was wonderful, and that it was good that he said what he said. He had tears in his eyes as I shook his hand.
I don’t know if it’s because they don’t get enough pats on the back or, as I suspect, he was probably told to shut up about those things. I’m sure plenty of irate liberal Catholics complained on him. My guess is he was grateful that someone wasn’t ragging on him for preaching the FAITH for once.
Fr. Stephanos,
Thank you for your words. Parenting is a challenging and the Church’s teaching that parenting is one way that parents share very closely and specially a relationship with the God, our Creator, is—I find—a beautiful reminder of our vocation.
I was at a event recently held by a lay group, and it was noted to us (the laity) that priestly and religious vocations come from families. How many vocations will there be if children hear bad things from their parents, again and again, about our bishops, priests and religious?
We need to be very careful and thoughtful when we level any criticism against our clergy. I know there are plenty of opportunities, given the frailities of the human condition and ego, to do so but we need to consider how we are delivering that criticism and who else may hear it or read it.
Also Father Stephanos, …I am not always very diligent and consistent in my prayer life, but I do pray for our priests and religious…I pray for their faith, their hope and their charity.
peace!
Yes, Fr, some not all. There are still a few priests out there willing to stand up for what is Catholic, as the priest described with tears in his eyes, above. There are still laypeople willing to stand up for the faith. But much has been squandered—pure and simple—squandered. And there is much confusion out here. People no longer believe that the church stands for anything and when they hear an assertion of morals—ie. something like the objections to Kerry—many of them no longer interpret it correctly.
Dunno, Richard. I’d like the budget of the USCCB to take a hit. A lot of hits.
What I really object to is the idea that the “fundraising drive for the school” or the “collection plate” *is* our religion. I think that we should be telling the truth and letting God take care of us.
Fr, you must live in a monastery where you don’t have to put up with what the laity puts up with—that’s all I can say about this.
You don’t have to live in a monastery to know you can’t make blanket statements.
Fr. Stephanos is not denying that there’s a problem. He’s not denying that there are unfaithful clergy and perhaps even a lot of them. You can’t deny that there are lots of unfaithful laity. You point that out yourselves in many comments.
You’re all disagreeing over something you don’t disagree with. This is a silly argument!
Agreed, Richard. I have a problem with the issues the USCCB champions and doesn’t champion. I have a problem with their disobedience. I have a problem with their arrogance toward Rome on one hand and us on the other. I have a problem with the vast amounts of money they spend on nonsense. I have a problem with them.
I’m sorry to be difficult, Fr. Stephanos, but it’s a desert out here for laypeople. There is very little to the Church here. It simply doesn’t consist of much in most peoples’ lives. And if you are a person, like me, who would like to be closer to the Church, there is no way to do that the way it is now. There are cliques and structures that get in the way. It’s just about that simple. So, most people who’d like the Church to be more of their life make do and go away.