by Datechguy | December 29th, 2011
Every single day the Catholic Church feeds more people, houses more people , clothes more people, visits more imprisoned people and educates more people than any other institution on the planet earth can ever hope to.
Matthew Kelly Worcester Mass. March 20th 2010
But I’ll tell you what it can’t do any more, it can’t offer adoption services in Illinois:
Roman Catholic bishops in Illinois have shuttered most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in the state rather than comply with a new requirement that says they must consider same-sex couples as potential foster-care and adoptive parents if they want to receive state money. The charities have served for more than 40 years as a major link in the state’s social service network for poor and neglected children.
The bishops have followed colleagues in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts who had jettisoned their adoption services rather than comply with nondiscrimination laws.
As you can guess our friends on the social left are all atwitter:
The most important point, though, is that religious liberty does not mean the right to take public money without having to comply with the law because the teachings of your faith tell you those laws are wrong. That’s not how you live in a civil society, and if the Church cannot comply with that simple rule then it needs to rethink its priorities.
In other words, either change your definition of sin, violate your faith or get out.
Mind you the fact the Catholic church did a great job placing kids, but that is not relevant, the goal of enforcing the new societal rules of diversity. NRO takes things to their logical conclusion:
Because of the massive expansion of government, religious organizations are often unable to even conduct their traditional charitable functions without heavy state regulation. In other words, the “government contracts” or “government benefits” at issue are a required component of the charitable work. Don’t believe me? Try running a foster-care program independently. Try offering a health-insurance plan for your employees without dealing with a maze of federal regulations. So this is not a simple matter of a private organization trying to feed from the federal trough but instead of a religious organization trying to carry out a mission that predates the very formation of our nation and being barred from doing so because the state has decided it knows best.
In other words, it’s not “You can’t have government money to do this charitable work” It’s “You can’t do this period!” The trick is to attempt to get people to decide that the individual mission transcends the sin and the scandal of said sin.
Quite a few bishops made that mistake since the 60′s.
C.S. Lewis saw this coming:
…we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything—even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist’s shop. Fortunately it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that “only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilisations”. You see the little rift? “Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.” That’s the game,
The truth, this is all just narcissism, the state feels better about themselves, they feel superior to the church and all those who oppose the church get to do the same.
And if kids don’t get adopted it’s a small price to pay for that satisfaction.
And the Church? As Matthew Kelly points out there is plenty of good to do out there and if they can’t do it in one place, they’ll do it in another…
…until the state stops them that is.
