And one that I ask hesitantly.
There is controversy brewing in Colorado about charities that receive state funding and employment practices.
Archbishop Chaput lays it out:
The Colorado General Assembly handles a vast amount of work every year. Nearly all of it is principled and well-intended, and most of it serves the common good. But every session has a few truly bad bills. House Bill 1080 is near the top of this year’s list.
In its effect, HB 1080 would attack the religious identity of religious nonprofits serving the wider community. And since Catholic nonprofits play a major role in serving the needy through organizations like Catholic Charities — in fact, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Denver is the largest non-government human services provider in the Rocky Mountain West — Catholics will bear a disproportionate part of the damage.
House Bill 1080 would greatly hinder any Catholic entity which receives state money from hiring or firing employees based on the religious beliefs of the Catholic Church. Many non-Catholics already work at Catholic Charities. But the key leadership positions in Catholic Charities obviously do require a practicing and faithful Catholic, and for very good reasons. Catholic Charities is exactly what the name implies: a service to the public offered by the Catholic community as part of the religious mission of the Catholic Church.
Catholic Charities has a long track record of helping people in need from any religious background or none at all. Catholic Charities does not proselytize its clients. That isn’t its purpose. But Catholic Charities has no interest at all in generic do-goodism; on the contrary, it’s an arm of Catholic social ministry. When it can no longer have the freedom it needs to be “Catholic,” it will end its services. This is not idle talk. I am very serious.
snip
What I hope Catholics and the wider community clearly understand about HB 1080 is this: Catholic organizations like Catholic Charities are glad to partner with the government and eager to work cooperatively with anyone of good will. But not at the cost of their religious identity. Government certainly has the right and the power to develop its own delivery system for human services. But if groups like Catholic Charities carry part of society’s weight, then it’s only reasonable and just that they be allowed to be truly “Catholic” — or they cannot serve. And that has cost implications that the public might prudently consider in reflecting on HB 1080.
In a press conference today in Rome devoted to Pope Benedict XVI’s message for Lent, which is on the subject of charitable giving, Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, head of the Vatican’s main charitable organization “Cor Unum,” expressed support for Chaput’s position. In response to a reporter’s question, Cordes said: “This bishop is doing the right thing.” (In Italian, his response was “questo vescovo fa bene.“)
“Theologically, charitable activity and the good deeds of the faithful are always connected to the proclamation of the Word,” Cordes said. “Jesus performed his works because he was moved by mercy, but also to proclaim the gospel. Service is always tied to testimony to the Word of God, and no one must break this connection.”
“This points to a great contemporary problem,” Cordes said. “Thanks to the generosity of many donors, the charitable agencies of the church are able to do their work. But this carries a risk that the spirit of a Catholic agency can become secularized, doing only what the donor has in view.”
Cordes then invoked the encyclical letter of Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, which dealt among other things with the Catholic identity of church-run charities.
“The pope’s encyclical was not just put together out of thin air. It was a response to a development in society,” Cordes said. “Catholic agencies have to be very careful not to lose their liberty, taking money from donors who later try to introduce a mentality that does not correspond to ecclesiastical objectives.”
In fact, Cordes said, “Cor Unum” will be sponsoring a spiritual retreat for the directors of Catholic charities in North and South America in June in Guadalajara, Mexico, precisely as a response to this perceived threat of secularization – which Cordes described as “not the fault” of the directors of Catholic agencies, but rather the surrounding culture.
Capuchin Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the Preacher of the Papal Household, will lead the retreat, Cordes said.
To put his point into a sound bite, Cordes said, he wants the world to understand “that there’s a difference between Caritas and the Red Cross.”
Late last week, Cordes also gave an address to the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, a Vatican body that deals with implementation of the Code of Canon Law,, in which he suggested that bishops may need more precise canonical tools to oversee and defend the Catholic identity of church-run charitable agencies.
Meanwhile in Colorado, the president of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Denver, Christopher Rose, published a letter in the current issue of the archdiocesan paper defending Chaput’s position.
Hiring religious believers to operate charities sponsored by those religious bodies, Rose argued, is not discrimination, but rather “the legitimate practice of faith-based agencies seeking to hire people of like faith to ensure that their mission of serving the poor is faithfully undertaken.”
This, of course, is not a new problem, nor an American one. It is popping up all over the place, and is felt most acutely in the area of adoption, as well as in hiring practices and insurance coverage for contraception. We’ve seen it in New York, San Francisco and over in England, most notably.
The Archbishop is, it should go without saying, absolutely right to fight this kind of encroachment. What else can the Church do?
But here is my question. I understand there is political maneuvering going on here, and I get Archbishop Chaput’s case -that the people of Colorado depend on the Church (and other religious bodies, of course) to deliver social services and thus help the…people of Colorado. Therefore it makes sense for the people of Colorado, via their state governments to support the religious bodies in providing these services.
But it is, of course, possible to minister to the people of Colorado without state funding.
It would be dramatically different and it would require the religious bodies providing those resources to dig deeper and call on their people to really sacrifice in order to continue serving the needy.
And in a sense, I suppose it would be “unfair.”
I suppose what I’m saying is that when religious leaders respond to pressures from governments to conform to certain standards as the price for accepting funding by saying, “Well, then, we won’t do it anymore” puzzles me. And frankly, it bothers me. Perhaps there are nuances I just don’t understand, so if that’s the case, please feel free to explain.
(Cut services yes – I can see that threat being held up. And in some areas, the government is, frankly, heavily dependent on religious groups – refugee resettlement in our area, for example. The government doesn’t do it (although they fund it) – the churches do. So, yes, I see that. But the complete withdrawal? As a commentor remarks, it begs a bigger question.)
(A commentor suggests that I’m misreading Archbishop Chaput – that he’s not saying that CC would shut down – just those activities that utilize CC would shut down because they wouldn’t be taking government funding any longer.)
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