Seeing that the threat to prevent it from performing adoptions at all hasn’t deterred Massachusetts bishops from seeking an exemption from the law that requires Catholic Charities to allow gay adoptions, the radical lobby is ramping up the pressure. They’re now making threats that if Catholic Charities isn’t bent to their will, they’ll be cut off from millions of dollars. Fine, good riddance, I say.
I’ve said it before: True Christian charity, i.e. caritas, is not found at the end of a pen writing a check. Charity is an act of love from one person to another. A huge bureaucracy only absolves our consciences from the necessity of having to do the work of bringing Christ to another personally. I think the presence of a diocese-wide charitable agency that takes money from the state and secular agencies like the United Way creates a dampening effect for charity at the local level. There was a time when a family in need in a parish went to the pastor for help, or even more often, their neighbors knew it about the need before being asked for help. Now it’s often to Catholic Charities, a quasi-state agency where you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish it from any other non-Catholic, non-Christian agency.
So if the bishops continue to seek an exemption from the law, the United Way “will seriously review continued funding,” which was $1.2 million last year. Fine, keep your blood money. Who are you really hurting? The Church or the people in need? Interesting that United Way and its liberal buddies would hurt all those people who receive aid from Catholic Charities each year over just 13 adoptions in the past 20 years.
Why all the fuss over a few adoptions?
Technorati Tags: adoption, Boston, Catholic, Catholic-Charities, dissent, homosexuality, politics
Right on Dom!! Here in Europe the Church is awefully complacent because of the fact that the state pays their bills in most countries.
As the good book says you can’t serve both God and mammon.
Dom, this comes back to the issue of who/what is Catholic. Joan Vennochi wrote in Sunday’s Boston Globe about her resentment that “the people who make the rules” don’t consider her a Catholic in good standing because she is pro-choice, pro-homosexual, pro-gay marriage, pro-female priests, and pro-married priests. Universities like Georgetown want to carry the name Catholic without supporting Catholic teaching. Catholic Charities wants to be considered a Catholic social service agency without adhering to Catholic principles. Catholic is not a brand name that can be purchased. It is a faith that must be lived. In his Lenten Message, Pope Benedict XVI warned against compromising our principles to more quickly alleviate suffering on earth: We cannot ignore the fact that many mistakes have been made in the course of history by those who claimed to be disciples of Jesus. Very often, when having to address grave problems, they have thought that they should first improve this world and only afterwards turn their minds to the next. The temptation was to believe that, in the face of urgent needs, the first imperative was to change external structures. The consequence, for some, was that Christianity became a kind of moralism, ‘believing’ was replaced with ‘doing’.
“I’ll turn that back on them. Why are they making such a big stink over such a tiny fraction of all adoptions?”
There are so many opportunities of turning it back on them…
“why is the Church so obsessed about sex?” Well, I hear the Pope and bishops speak out each week on a number of issues such as war, immigration, workers rights, etc. It seems to me that the crtics of the Church are sexually obsessed.
“If they are so concerned about unwanted babies, then pro-lifers should adopt more.” If pro-choicers are so concerned with ‘choice’ then they too ought to be knocking at the doors of adoption agencies. Don’t they support the choice of a mother to give up a child for adoption.
Unfortunately, we live in an age where the Church has little moral authority—thanks to too many bishops failing their duties related to pervert priests. Secular, civil and media critics will be on the offensive for many years to come.
The challenge for Catholics is to live the “Gospel of Life”, where every person is honored and revered as a member of the Body of Christ. Such dedication and perseverance will eventually strengthen the Church and our leaders, and allow them to fight the good fight.
How about:
1) For every dollar that is not given to Catholic Charities, actual Catholics give 2 dollars.
2) For ever dollar that the United Way denies from Catholic Charities, actual Catholic reduce their donations to the United Way by $5 and re-route it Catholic Charities.
JBP
True Christian charity, i.e. caritas, is not found at the end of a pen writing a check. Charity is an act of love from one person to another. A huge bureaucracy only absolves our consciences from the necessity of having to do the work of bringing Christ to another personally.
Contrast that with the passages from Deus Caritas Est, specifically #31 and #32 from which these are taken:
From #31(a):
Individuals who care for those in need must first be professionally competent: they should be properly trained in what to do and how to do it, and committed to continuing care.
From #32:
In conformity with the episcopal structure of the Church, the Bishops, as successors of the Apostles, are charged with primary responsibility for carrying out in the particular Churches the programme set forth in the Acts of the Apostles (cf. 2:42-44): today as in the past, the Church as God’s family must be a place where help is given and received, and at the same time, a place where people are also prepared to serve those outside her confines who are in need of help.
I think this can be taken to mean that Benedict approves of signing the check, since professionals and bishops cannot act on behalf of those in need without cash, and since the cash must come from the pilgrims in the pew.
When the Encyclical was issued and I read that second part, this explanation struck me forcefully, as I had previously thought in the terms you have stated, Dom. Now I am much less bothered by simply signing a check than I was prior to the issuing of the encyclical.
There is no disagreement between what I said and what the pope wrote. I have no problem with professional aid agencies in their proper place. I would be hardpressed to provide one-on-one charity to earthquake victims in Pakistan, for example.
On the other hand, if all my charitable action consists in writing a check to Catholic Charities and feeling self-satisfied, then I’m fooling myself. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.
Here are some exercerpts from various discussions:
See the discussion at Family Scholars Blog:
http://familyscholars.org/?p=5572#comment-40345
http://familyscholars.org/?p=5572#comment-40633
http://familyscholars.org/?p=5572#comment-40768
“The Bishops have proposed an exemption based on conscientious objection. Would you retaliate by forcing them out of adoption and other services?
“The exemption is the pluralistic approach; the other option is sectarian and highly divisive.
“The legislature did not decide that Catholic agencies would be required to implement anti-Catholic policy on adoption. The legislature represents a pluralistic society that does not exclude the Catholic Church in Massachusetts.”
And at Opine Editorials
http://opine-editorials.blogspot.com
“You take a small pebble, hold it up close to your eye and it looks like a large boulder.
“Through myopia and narrow-mindedness Walter and others argue with the perspective that their issues are a boulder. Getting them to see civil rights in a circumspect (as in for everyone not just homosexuals) is a rather difficult task”
And related:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/001547.html
“But what is happening is that same-sex couples are actually being preferred to heterosexual couples who are being turned down as adopters—because the new law means that if adoption panels chose heterosexual couples, they might be accused of discrimination against same-sex couples. Or at least, that’s the excuse that’s been given.
“Of course, such panels would never be accused of discrimination against heterosexual couples even though that is patently what is happening. That is because anti-discrimination doctrine is intrinsically skewed against majority attitudes.”
When was the last time anyone saw a real poorbox inside a Catholic church?
In my parish, Immaculate Conception in Salem, Mass. Ironically, they were broken into last Friday because my pastor refuses to lock the church during the day which would keep people from praying there. Unlocked churches are another relic of the past.
1. Don’t give to United Way.
2. Don’t give to Catholic Charities.
3. Starve the bishops out. They deserve it.
4. Give to EWTN, the poor and the real needy.
By “the bishops” I mean the USCCB.