As government and other political institutions continue to fail us, people of faith remain the only consistent safety net for those in need. Take, for example, the State of Illinois, which recently passed the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act. The Act requires state-funded adoption agencies to place adoptive children with same-sex couples when they are available. Pursuant to this law, Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois will no longer provide adoption services. This is just one example of what is happening throughout the country: Ideology is beginning to trump the common good.
Catholic Social Services lost funding not because they were ineffective, but because the orphans did not fit the State’s definition of underserved. According to the State of Illinois, same-sex couples are the underserved community and deserve higher priority than the orphans. In general, the government has become a force for “change” instead of a partner of charitable organizations. This was not always the case.
Previously, the government, in realizing that we live in a world of shrinking resources, relied upon the private and non-profit sectors to fill in the gaps where it was not successful. About a decade ago, this idea reached the highest levels of our government and culminated in the establishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.
That Office was established by executive order in January 2001. The purpose was to create a “level playing field” and allow the government to be a partner in recognition that non-governmental organizations are the most effective purveyors of public services. The executive order allowed all faith-based community organizations to compete for government funding and partner with the government.
The next Administration, by executive order in February 2009, took the opportunity for the government to determine what is worthy of public funds, not based on need, but ideology. The new executive order included the following statement: “Faith-based and other neighborhood organizations are vital to our Nation's ability to address the needs of low-income and other underserved persons and communities. The American people are key drivers of fundamental change in our country, and few institutions are closer to the people than our faith-based and other neighborhood organizations.” The original intention of the Faith Based Partnership program was partnership, not control.
The most crucial phrase that is subject to interpretation in the above statement is “underserved,” for each successive administration may re-interpret it as they choose. Whereas the original executive order was formulated to allow civil society organizations to compete for funding, the new order can define “underserved” in any way they wish, providing resources to some and denying them to others. When the government is involved in charity, inconsistency ultimately prevails. Consistency comes in the form of individuals who are in solidarity with others.
A little-discussed teaching in the Catholic Church is the principle of “subsidiarity”. This means that community of a “higher order” should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a “lower order”. The higher order community must support the lower order community in case of need and help to co-ordinate its activities with the rest of society, always with a view of the common good. In the Illinois adoption case, the “higher order community” is the court and legislature and the “lower order community” are the non-profit organizations that serve those in need, such as adoptions agencies. The State of Illinois has broken the principle of subsidiarity. Now the lower order community will no longer be able to serve those in need, but will instead become a tool in service to the higher powers’ agenda.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken a major step forward on this issue and need the support of the Catholics and other like-minded Christians around the country. But the underlying issue in this fight is larger than a single tyrannical court order or an intrusive bureaucratic mandate. The real question is whether social service organizations, especially religiously-infused charities, should be seen as having unique missions which go above and outside politics, or whether these groups are merely associates of the state in a centrally-directed secular welfare scheme. Do charities exist to evangelize, minister to human beings as bodies and souls, or are they merely called to alleviate whatever topical ills rank high on the agenda of the current government?
Unfortunately, religious Americans can no longer rely on government institutions to be a partner in charitable efforts. It is time for us to realize (or perhaps, for Christians, recall) just how fickle an ally government can be. If the government becomes a major provider of assistance to the immigrants, orphans, the elderly and others who are truly underserved, it can also just as easily take the assistance away with (or without) whatever justification it chooses. As Peter Maurin, the cofounder of the Catholic Worker Movement stated, we need to create a society where “it would be easier for men to do good.” This is utterly distinct from legislating charity through political power. The consistent foundation of charity comes from the belief that the rights of men and women, of all different types, are derived from the immoveable Creator, not ever-changing politicians.
Steven M. Perry has a Master of Public Administration from the University of Southern California and currently resides in Los Angeles.
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Comments:
The 10th Amendment is designed to uphold the 10th Commandment. If subsidiarity is upheld by reserving non-enumerated power to the States, the federal government will be protected from the covetousness of its "charity."
Who has done the most good when it comes to helping the needy, government or God's people? Can government match what Catholic Social Services or many protestants charitable organizations have done? What is the government's equivalent of a Mother Teresa, for example? The left never looks at history to see what works best; they use misguided, mindless ideology, not because it works but because they "feel" that this is the way to go.
I defy any true believer in the supposed progress of leftist ideology to find any difference between the sociological nature of those words today and the doublespeak of 1984 or the treatment of the politicization of words in Animal Farm.
People, on the so-called left and the right, everyone, are desperate for some -excuse the cliche - good ole fashioned truth, served cold, unadorned and delivered with unabashed honesty, candor, humility and grace.
Words have meaning. Charity means something. It doesn't mean the unjust enforcement of some ideological committment to equality.
What is to prevent the Church from continuing its adoption services without the government money, possibly on a smaller scale?
The point being that the Catholic Charity could not operate without State funding?
", the government, in realizing that we live in a world of shrinking resources,"
Do we really? Isn't USA the richest nation in history?3
The adage "One who pays the piper calls the tune" will not be denied.
Then explain why people of faith, primarily Christians, are overwhelmingly generous with their own money. People without faith are on the other end of this spectrum, and their charity is using political power to give away other people's money.
You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. Check out Arthur Brooks' recent work on the subject.
The Obama Administration kept the Faith-Based Initiative, despite cries from the secular left to end this failed experiment. Instead, our first Black President installed new guidelines based on the model of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development that had been his employed upon graduation from Columbia. Now, the Faith-based community aid goes to ecumenical coalitions of local organizations so that one denomination (most Evangelical ones under Bush) would not get the money for themselves, but that rather the community and ALL its cooperating faith-based groups would collaborate for the common good as understood in light of the natural law. (That's why even non-religious groups could be included.)
Ironic isn't it that some red bishops want to change CHD so that the ecumenical cooperation is only with non-Catholic groups that don't have non-Catholic beliefs. That stance is silly, of course. This article comes close to that, based as it is on misstatements of fact and ideological twists and spoiled despite (he is "tryantical"?? really?) for our President's leadership according to the principles of Catholic Social Justice.
(1) "Ideology is beginning to trump the common good"? I'd describe it as an extremely depraved form of pagan sex worship (of the kind Caligula would recognize), not "ideaology."
(2) "[W]e live in a world of shrinking resources"? Well, the U.S. is losing its relative position of control over resources, now that WWII's aftermath (where we were left in a position fo extraordinary economic dominance) is long behind us, but the world has plenty of resources.
(3) Subsidiarity is "a little-discussed teaching in the Catholic Church"? Only among left-wing Catholics is subsidiarity not often discussed.
†
“Taking from some and giving to others is not charity. It is theft”
In a state of nature, that would be true, but, under the social compact, “"Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole."
As Rousseau explains, “Each man alienates, I admit, by the social compact, only such part of his powers, goods and liberty as it is important for the community to control; but it must also be granted that the Sovereign is sole judge of what is important,” for “ if the individuals retained certain rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between them and the public, each, being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state of nature would thus continue, and the association would necessarily become inoperative or tyrannical.”
His conclusion is well known, “whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; [« ce qui ne signifie autre chose sinon qu'on le forcera d'être libre »] for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence.”
It is called democracy.
Perhaps you'd care to do the scholarly thing, Professor, and provide some citation to back your statement.
I rather think that when Benedict talks about a "right" it doesn't mean what it does to most secularists. For Benedict, rights come from God, not from government. Government may recognize them, but it does not create them, and often, it's government's duty NOT to meddle with something that is a "right" (religious belief and most forms of religious association/expression).
Furthermore, when Catholics speak of rights, we recognize many varying kinds. One has a "right" to seek certain elective medical procedures and pay for them from one's own pocket. The Church would very much oppose, however, an attempt to force others to pay for the same elective procedure, and would frown on others (like breast or bicep implants, which are sinful when sought as an alternative to what God gave you).
Besides, we have long had in this country the "right" to emergency medical care (ER).
We could also debate whether we truly live anymore in a Representative Democracy. But we have never lived in a "pure" democracy. In many ways, pure democracy and pure capitalism have great similarities, but we won't ever see either anywhere in the real world.
It isn't the individual philanthropist or the many deserving charities that gives me pause; rather, it's the government and the way Congress and state legislatures treat donations to charities.
Poor people in general and the great middle class in particular tend to react favorably to large donations by wealthy individuals and organizations to legitimate charities. Their eyebrows raise at least an inch, inevitably, when I mention my disdain about any particular charitable donation.
True charity has not a chance. However, the issue cuts both ways. Catholic institutions which have allowed themselves to become nothing but extensions of secular social activity, including by adopting immoral practices, need to recognize their own complicity in the process of degrading the concept of charity and messing up the understanding of what constitutes the Common Good. (My observation is that certain departments of both Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services need auditing for this.) The second half of Benedict XVI's first encyclical, "God Is Love", reminds such organizations to maintain a proper sense of their mission.