{"id":705,"date":"2008-06-18T23:14:11","date_gmt":"2008-06-18T23:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/catholic-charities-and-abortion.html"},"modified":"2008-06-18T23:14:11","modified_gmt":"2008-06-18T23:14:11","slug":"catholic-charities-and-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/catholic-charities-and-abortion.html","title":{"rendered":"Catholic Charities and Abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Catholic Charities, in its various local diocesan forms, has long represented both the best of Catholicism and its potential worst.\u00a0 The best is obviously and simply the corporal works of mercy. The worst has usually involved two things that are also, often interetwined: a shaky Catholic identity and government funding.
\nAs I noted, Catholic Charities offices are a function and expression of a local diocese, so one must be careful with generalizations. But it is also true that problems have arisen time and time again – the most recent, highly publicized example was probably the situation related to adoption placement with homosexual couples in San Francisco, one which was “resolved” – but not really.
\nThis horror, exposed by Julia Duin of the <\/a>Washington Times<\/a> <\/em>surprises some and doesn’t surprise others at all. There have been firings, but is that enough?
\nI’m on the road<\/a> and the computer on which I am typing hiccups regularly and is a real\u00a0hassle to type on. I encourage your comments, but remember, there might be a few hours delay between when you enter them and when they appear.<\/p>\n

“We have also requested several corrective actions be taken by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops … in order to prevent this type of abuse from happening again,” Mr. Wolfe said. “Our agency is one that supports human life, and we take that responsibility seriously.”
\nIn a three-page letter dated April 23, David Siegel, acting director of the HHS Refugee Resettlement Office, criticized the Catholic bishops group.
\n“USCCB’s inability to direct the actions of its sub-grantee was a failure of management, oversight and monitoring,” he said in the letter to Johnny Young, executive director of the USCCB Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) agency.
\nIn addition, Mr. Siegel noted in the letter, CCR staff used the wrong medical authorization form to justify the abortion, adding that if his agency had received the correct form, “it would not have been approved.”
\nRoman Catholic doctrine condemns deliberate abortion as a mortal sin in all cases and imposes automatic excommunication upon anyone who obtains one or knowingly helps someone else do so. The excommunication usually can be lifted by ordinary confession and appropriate penance.
\nThe church also teaches that knowingly using contraception is a mortal sin, although it does not incur automatic excommunication. Moreover, the church objects to some methods of contraception – those that prevent a fertilized embryo from implanting in the uterus – as forms of abortion.
\n“Some members of the MRS staff were not sufficiently aware of church teaching and [USCCB] policy regarding these matters to take stronger and more appropriate actions,” Bishops DiLorenzo, Wester and Driscoll said in a letter to their peers.
\n“This incident is a most regrettable stain on the record of excellence in the work both of MRS and of Catholic Charities,” they said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The ignorance plea is getting really <\/em>old. No one knew pedophilia was incurable, our employees were unaware of the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion and contraception. Nonsense. Do a Jay Leno and take to the streets and ask John and Mary American…”What does the Catholic Church say about abortion?” I’m pretty sure, unlike Leno’s other questions, you’d get a 100% correct answering rate.
\nNo – a more honest answer might<\/em>\u00a0 – note I say might <\/em>be willing to suggest: “Evidently in this Catholic Charities office, fidelity to Church teaching on life was not part of the criterea for hiring and retention and the offices were not run in a way in which employee action was clearly an expression of the Church’s commitment to life. We’re going to have to re-evaluate the sensibilities, presumptions and environment in which CC and the MRS office operates to mamke sure this is not systemic. ”
\nAnd for homework: Read this. <\/a>Several times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catholic Charities, in its various local diocesan forms, has long represented both the best of Catholicism and its potential worst.\u00a0 The best is obviously and simply the corporal works of mercy. The worst has usually involved two things that are also, often interetwined: a shaky Catholic identity and government funding. As I noted, Catholic Charities…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCatholic Charities and Abortion - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/06\/catholic-charities-and-abortion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Catholic Charities and Abortion - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Catholic Charities, in its various local diocesan forms, has long represented both the best of Catholicism and its potential worst.\u00a0 The best is obviously and simply the corporal works of mercy. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}