Catholic Charities are losing state contracts for providing foster care and care for victims of sex trafficking because they won’t place foster kids in gay households and don’t believe in contraception, and the cries of the butthurt are legion:
“In the name of tolerance, we’re not being tolerated,” said Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill., a civil and canon lawyer who helped drive the church’s losing battle to retain its state contracts for foster care and adoption services.
But Anthony R. Picarello Jr., general counsel and associate general secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, disagreed. “It’s true that the church doesn’t have a First Amendment right to have a government contract,” he said, “but it does have a First Amendment right not to be excluded from a contract based on its religious beliefs.”
That last bit is one of the dumber things I’ve ever heard. Isn’t it obvious that the Church’s First Amendment right to hate and discriminate against gays ends where the awarding of government contracts begins? Other charities seem to understand that and have decided to, well, be charitable:
Gene Svebakken, president and chief executive of the agency, Lutheran Child and Family Services of Illinois, visited all seven pastoral conferences in his state and explained that the best option was to compromise and continue caring for the children.
“We’ve been around 140 years, and if we didn’t follow the law we’d go out of business,” Mr. Svebakken said. “We believe it’s God-pleasing to serve these kids, and we know we do a good job.”
“Catholic Charities do good work” is a common response to criticism of the Church. I agree, they do, but much of that work is in service of government contracts. If Catholic Charities can’t meet the reasonable standards of those contracts, other charities will. If your need to hate is greater than your desire to help, then your charity will have to be financed solely by private contributions, so you can deny help to those you deem not worthy, just as Jesus did.
Nemesis
St Timmy Teblow should be engaged as a mediator. He knows what bebeh would do.
Cat Lady
Live by the butthurt, die by the butthurt.
ice weasel
Awwwwww, poor catholic priests will have to be content raiding their own congregations for potential victims and not have the government providing new ones for them (and paying for the victims).
The less money we give the catholic church overall, the better. It’s an organization that, by its very nature, does more harm than good. No more special exemptions for these people. No more money. No more support.
West of the Cascades
Ouch, that will leave a mark.
Litlebritdifrnt
Not to be crass but doesn’t it strike anyone else as odd that the government would be paying the Catholic Church to provide any sort of services having to do with at risk children? I mean it is not like they have a stellar reputation with regards to children at risk seeing as their employees put them at risk in the first place. Or am I missing something?
MattF
So, if someone’s religious beliefs required sacrificing orphans to Moloch, would that disqualify them from running an orphanage? Ya think?
Vince
Good article except for this part:
That’s the same argument Republicans make against safety net programs, i.e. “Government doesn’t need to help people with medical care/retirement/unemployment/etc., we should let private charities/citizens to fill in the holes.”
rea
@MattF: This is just bigotry agasint Moloch worshippers. Moloch requires sacrificing your children; using orphans is cheating.
dwreck
@ice weasel. Yeah, that was actually my first thought. It’s not a church, it’s a criminal fucking conspiracy (sorry to whomever I am stealing that line from).
sherparick
This goes back to the blogs that Noah Smith at Noah Opinion and Mike Konzal at Rortybomb wrote that much of the right-wing antagonism against the Government is that it interferes with their freedom to bully others, to be mean and vicious as a way of imposing what they believe on others and to coerce the vulnerable to conform their behavior or face punishment.
The freedom to bully. The freedom to be mean and vicious. That is how we should phrase it.
By the way, as a RC, I know the rules pretty well, and there is in fact no “rule,” commandment, or such that would prevent two compassionate, ethical, adults from fostering a child or becoming adoptive parents of a kid. This is simply a Pope/Bishop directive that was created to hurt gay people and mark them as “unfit,” especially after it was decided that “gays” would be the scapegoat of the Church’s child sex abuse scandals (apparently the heterosexual abusers were written out of the record).
John PM
When I was in (Catholic) high school lo these many years ago, I had to do a speech on an organization that others should support. I was going to say Catholic Charities, but I changed my mind and went with the National Endowment for the Arts. This was during the whole Robert Maplethorpe/Andres Serrano/Karen Finley “controversy.” Given everything that has happened since, I am glad I made the choice I did.
Napoleon
I left the church over religious doubts but still held a soft spot for them until stuff like this started bubbling to the surface.
Fuck them.
Yevgraf
Once upon a time, Catholic Charities was awesome. A bunch of social justice types quietly working.
JPII and Benny wrecked all of it.
Bruuuuce
When churches (ALL churches) and their personnel and businesses are taxed, then churches might be entitled to a political voice. Until they pay, they have no business playing, especially with public money. (And even when they DO pay, they still ought not to expect to be exempted from the specs of a contract.)
Odie Hugh Manatee
Fix’t that for the Bishop. Poor guy just couldn’t spit it out.
They can do whatever they want, as long as they do it without government money. Ok, government money or not they have to leave the little boys alone.
Let them diddle each other.
Villago Delenda Est
Damn lion shortage. Damn arena shortage. We need more of both to deal with asswipes like the bishop here.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Napoleon:
Same here. Former altar boy and all. Glad I got the duck out of Fodge as a teenager. At that young age I could smell the rank hypocrisy and I didn’t care for it a bit.
mistermix
@Vince: I’m taking as a given that government contracts out services to private charities, and making the point that there are plenty of fish in that ocean. I think there’s too much privatization going on and we’d probably be better off if government just did the work rather than contracting it out.
Bud
This was 40 years ago now, but Catholic Charities took my niece from my oldest sister because she was an unwed mother. One of my earliest memories is a room full of priests and men with suits in our living room while I was brought forward as an example of how my family could care for a child. I came to think this was a standard procedure…that you gave birth to a baby and had to fight a room full of men to get your child.
It was years later that I got the story that my sister had gone to a place affiliated with Catholic Charities, had her baby, and the baby was simply taken from her and placed in another home.
Of course, we got our niece back. But my parents are devout Catholics and never gave another penny to Catholic Charities.
Soonergrunt
@MattF: Only if they used orphans that were under the government’s contract. Orphans from outside the system, or the orphans of deceased Moloch worshipers could still be sacrificed on church property as long as it’s done without government money.
Violet
Nicely done.
Ken
@West of the Cascades:
Sadly, no. That’s kind of the heart of the problem.
jon
I can’t wait until the Amish put in the low bids for all the Federal Highway contracts and make the roads fit for buggies only.
Ken
@mistermix:
Don’t be ridiculous. The government is a vast bureaucracy running by inflexible rules. Obviously a private organization like the Catholic Church can be more efficient.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ken:
I saw what you did there.
Napoleon
@jon:
The Amish are good quality craftsmen. They would be embarrassed to make a half-assed road.
Dustin
You think that’s bad? Be glad you didn’t live in Spain. They’d have just stolen your niece and told you she died at birth.
The Catholic church, and all of it’s subsidiaries, is an entirely top-down organization. They all answer to the Vatican. Child molestation, cover-up transfers, Irish forced labor laundry houses, baby stealing, it’s all on them. Why their upper heirarchy aren’t all sitting in prison right now can only be attributed to fears of “religious pursection”. Well fuck that. They’re criminals, and if not their trial should sort them out.
Catholic Charities is complaining that they can’t get paid to discriminate; they should consider themselves lucky their files haven’t all been seized and combed through at this point.
Holden Pattern
And this will join the other three stories that the anti-gay lobby tells over and over again to show how people who hate teh gay will be the real victims if gay people are allowed the same freedom to marry that straight people do.
Dustin
pursection = persecution. Stupid autocorrect
geg6
Catholic Charities can just DIAF. Catholic Charities is known to kidnap pregnant teenage girls, force them to give birth in captivity, and then steal the resulting baby. They will claim that they had the parents’ permission, but they don’t always have that of the pregnant teen. I know this because it happened to me.
Fuck Catholic Charities.
Scott P.
Would like to see the response on the right if a company run by Quakers won a Pentagon procurement contract and started delivering dummy ammunition.
gaz
I do not think it’s safe to keep children around catholic charities.
That is all.
toujoursdan
To be fair, most of the staff of Catholic Charities are laypeople and many chafe under their Bishops. When this happened in Boston:
Boston Catholic Charities Stop Adoptions Because of Gay Parent Law
It’s the bishops who live in a bubble. Catholic laity tend to be more gay friendly than the general population. Still, this is a perfect example why handing over government services to the private sector and faith based services is a bad idea.
rb
@Bud: Thank you for sharing that. The one regret I have in leaving the RCC is not burning it down on the way out the door.
rb
@geg6: I’m sorry. I sometimes feel it’s a shame that the hell the RCC believes in isn’t real. Some of those fuckers surely deserve it.
Menzies
This is why I’ve stuck with only a couple of orders – I work for the Jesuits, and they’re usually all right. But when I brought up things like getting married in the chapel, I get told to pick a parish . . . which there is no way in hell I’m doing.
Actually, this Paprocki guy studied under the Discalced Carmelite who taught me advanced Latin – he mentioned helping the guy present his dissertation in Latin. This priest – he’s the one in Religulous – almost got thrown out of the RCC, but his order’s superior put his foot down.
Allan
This seems like the perfect place to drop some Karl Popper.
From The Open Society and Its Enemies
Commenting at Ballon Juice since 1937
@Litlebritdifrnt: Don’t worry, Catholic priests never do any of the heavy lifting. They leave that to the wominz and the secular employees.
stormhit
@geg6:
Sounds more like you read it in one of Ron Paul’s newsletters.
Redshift
@Vince: The difference is that the position stated here is that if government provides the money to address a need, there will likely be a variety of organizations that are willing to serve, and they can choose one that best meets the requirements of society. Conservatives are saying that if government doesn’t provide the money, someone else will, which is patently false, since most charities providing social services couldn’t keep doing it without government grants.
Lee
Glad to see Lutherans are doing the right thing (raised Lutheran)
Ed in NJ
Having done extensive work with Catholic Charities helping to administer their benefits, I can tell you that most workers there are not involved with the politics at all, and are just working in very low-paying jobs helping kids, the elderly and the mentally ill.
It’s a shame that some of them will probably lose their jobs over CC’s policies. But at the same time, consider the good work that Planned Parenthood does, or programs such as the National Endowment for the Arts or NPR, who are constantly under threat or have had funding cut for their liberal views.
gelfling545
Another side to this is that I live in a largely RC area and the Catholic Charities is a really big deal – “The Drive That Never Fails”. Now I expect that there was a time when contributions funded the whole CC operation but I really don’t think that most of the folks who are putting together their contribution from limited incomes realize that now what the CC does is mainly manage government grants. Hence, you get this highly inaccurate idea that if gov’t funds are cut “the private charities will take up the slack.” For the CC like most NFP agencies, no gov’t money means essentially no agency. Other charities will take up the slack in this case, though. They will get the gov’t money & do the work left undone by CC.
Someguy
Actually, you hit on the right solution, Ed. Take the money that would have gone to Catholic Charities, and give it to Planned Parenthood.
It will take a couple years but eventually you’ll achieve equilibrium – not as much need for Catholic Charities placement services for unwanted ankle biters. Win-win.
shortstop
@Ken: Awesome.
Tern
“It’s true that the church doesn’t have a First Amendment right to have a government contract,” he said, “but it does have a First Amendment right not to be excluded from a contract based on its religious beliefs.”
However, if they can’t perform the required job, they have a right to be excluded from the contract! If their religious beliefs prevent them from fulfilling the requirements, no contract. Very simple premise.
Tern
“It’s true that the church doesn’t have a First Amendment right to have a government contract,” he said, “but it does have a First Amendment right not to be excluded from a contract based on its religious beliefs.”
However, if they can’t perform the required job, they have a right to be excluded from the contract! If their religious beliefs prevent them from fulfilling the requirements, no contract. Very simple premise.
gnomedad
Chicago Cardinal George compares gay parade organizers to KKK.
Mnemosyne
@stormhit:
Allow me to be the first one to say go fuck yourself, you fucking asshole.
shortstop
@gnomedad: In addition to the rank homophobia and general obnoxiousness George shows, there’s this: I happen to live a few blocks from the church in question. Those loudass old-lady worshipers and that place’s cheesy campanile (seriously, Cat Stevens’ “Morning Has Broken”–kill us now) have been interrupting the neighborhood’s sleep every Sunday morning since forever. I think they can have their Mass slightly inconvenienced once a year for the sake of a pride parade. It’s not like their Massgoers can’t get to the church via a slightly different route.
I will also note that there’s a Presbyterian church and a United Church of Christ located smack in the middle of the traditional parade route. Neither of them has ever complained. Surprise.
Darkrose
@gnomedad: This is one of those times when I truly appreciate the irony that my college education was funded in part by a scholarship I got from the Archdiocese of Chicago. And what am I doing with that expensive education? At the moment, working on filing the serial numbers off some of my fanfic so I can try to get it published as professional kinky gay porn.
Gex
Both the institution and the laity have put more money and effort into preventing women from having reproductive health options and gays from having civil rights than they have in dealing with the child-rape cult strain of the institution.
Some will complain that I said that. But just look at the efforts in terms of money and on the ground that has been spent on each. Look at what has most changed over the last 10-15 years. It’s not the child-rape tolerance that’s diminished.
Gex
@toujoursdan: So and what? They *pay* for the political campaigning against gays and they’ve succeeded quite well, regardless of how they personally feel about gays.
Gex
I can randomly spill out Scrabble tiles and come up with a better moral code than these fuckers have developed over millennia.
Mnemosyne
@Gex:
If one decides to go the “God works in mysterious ways” route, one wonders if He’s trying to destroy the Catholic Church. Joseph Bernardin, the one cardinal who seemed to get that the child abuse scandal was a really, really bad thing, died at 67, but Cardinal Law is enjoying his nice, cushy job at the Vatican.
sal
Of course not, they keep the kids for themselves.
toujoursdan
@Gex: The pay for the church to do its ministry, which is a mixture of good (feeding the homeless, educating inner city youth, etc.) and bad (anti-gay and anti-abortion campaigns). In that respect, it’s no different than what we do with our taxes as Americans.
Thoughtcrime
@geg6:
John Waters knew about this sort of thing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9wE9Fm8xoA
Menzies
@Mnemosyne:
That’s quite likely exactly what’s happening. I love how to be a “traditionalist” Catholic you just have to shut your mind off and pretend that things were fine when women wore mantillae and Mass was done in Latin.
Me, my “traditionalist” Catholicism says we somehow fucking forgot what the Church was supposed to be doing. Yes, there are plenty of people doing good work – Sisters of Saint Joseph, Jesuits, Carmelites, the laypeople at Catholic charities, the nuns at the home where my grandpa used to do the accounting pro bono – but you’ve got to be kidding me about the rest.
Chuck Butcher
This kind of shit is exactly why the government has no business providing material support to religion. No, that isn’t just about CC, it is also about the Lutherans and all the others. The outcome of government money is that “approved” religion gets money that “unapproved” don’t get.
The government has no business in religion, it is the other side of the “no theocracy” coin. I could care less about the “money is kept separate” kind of arguement. It certainly may be sequestered but that has not spit to do with how other monies get allocated.
Putting govt. money into religion also guarantees this kind of horseshit push-back from CC. They become the victims of the government in the eyes of their believers and others. The separation of state and church doctrine is as much about protecting religion from government as it is about barring a theocracy. Both are important goals and I say that as one who is decidedly non-religious.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
Did you ever consider that the lions might spit them out as being unsuitable? A food problem not a eater problem.
FuzzyWuzzy
Butthurt is kind of an insensitive term to use in relation to Catholics and children, isn’t it?
Ruckus
@FuzzyWuzzy:
Insensitive maybe but a real ring of truth.
Debbie(aussie)
Wouldn’t it be wonderful of the catholic church acctually used some of its’ $billions to ensure the health and well being of its’ congregation, instead of stacking it up in the vatican vaults or using it to live like princes/emperors. All religions suck, not all religious persons do. But the RC hierarchy, really suck.
Robert Waldmann
yep that quote was dumb. I think it has potential. For example, the American Friends Service committee doesn’t have a first amendment right to defence contracts, but they do have a right not to be excluded from the contract just because they are absolute pacifists who refuse to have anything to do with weapons of war (except for taking the money).
Kosher and Halal butchers must be allowed to get contracts to supply the US army with ham, which they will fulfil consistent with their first amendment rights to have nothing to do with pork.
The Church of Scientology does not have a first amendment right to a contract to provide psychological counseling but their religious belief in thetans can’t be a barrier.