The Freedom of the Church

Archbishop Chaput’s article on the First Things homepage deserves broad dissemination. It’s a welcome follow-up to the issue that I blogged about last week .

When I reviewed John DiIulio’s new book in National Review , I closed with this:

The health of America’s religions lies precisely in their independence from government. This is one reason religious leaders should be wary of faith-based partnerships: The more they depend on government funds, the less freedom they will enjoy to minister, even for social purposes, in the way they see fit. Consider how Boston’s Catholic Charities was forced either to leave the adoption business or to violate its firm conviction that every child deserves a mother and a father. With government money comes government meddling.

And might faith-based initiatives simply create ever more entitlements, swelling an already strained welfare state while also weakening civil society? Since one of the most important checks on government is a robust, independent civic sphere, we should be concerned when private organizations sup at the teat of Uncle Sam. Furthermore, as DiIulio notes, since the 1950s the federal government has assumed responsibility for problems that were previously considered outside its purview. DiIulio thinks this is good. Many do not. For if seeing a panhandler on the sidewalk causes you to say “government should do something about that,” then you already suffer from the morally corrupting consequences of the welfare state. This also applies to foundering faith-based organizations whose first response is to turn to the government, not the faithful. Wouldn’t it be better if all of the vital organs of civil society that DiIulio admits best serve the poor were sustained directly by their benefactors? Might faith-based initiatives encourage the opposite? If government is responsible for fixing the poor, then I’ve done my part by paying my taxes — especially if they leave me with little for private donations .

We’re seeing this play out in Colorado right now. If you were a cynic, it seems that you could describe the situation in this way:

The State claims to have the institutional wherewithal—and the moral duty—to provide for those in the “shadows of life” (to quote Hubert Humphrey). Of course the State is nothing without taxpayers, so to fulfill its mandate to care for the poor the State levies taxes. The State then discovers that it, in fact, isn’t all that good at serving the poor. It discovers that faith-based groups, like Catholic Charities, do a much better job—they get better results, serve tougher cases in rougher neighborhoods, and do it all on a much smaller budget. But these faith-based groups can’t even keep their small coffers full—possibly as a result of the burden that the faithful have simply in meeting their obligations under welfare-state taxation. So the State, in her overflowing generosity, partners with faith-based social-service providers: We’ll give you the money that we collected by taxation (money which could have gone directly to you if people really understood that you were better than we were at serving poor, and money that people would have to donate if we didn’t tax them so much), and you’ll serve the poor for us. Then, as the forces aligned against religion (or, purportedly, simply against religion in the public square) gain control of the levers of power, they create rules demanding that those who accept State money must abide by State non-discrimination laws—including religious non-discrimination (i.e. religious identity and the free exercise of faith-based groups).

What a racket.