How do you feel about the Catholic church refusing to do any futher charity work if D.C. passes gay marriage law?

I honestly doubt this will happen and here is why….its all about the money.

Start charging them taxes.

@john65pennington you doubt D.C. will pass the law or that the Church will stop doing their charitable work?

@johnpowell exactly…which we should be doing anyway but certainly with the ‘charitable’ portion gone, it’d be a good idea…at least money can be made on their ignorance…hm, maybe that’s what they say about their followers

I think it shows that the current leadership of the Catholic Church is more interested in power than it is in gospel and good works.

I’m not surprised, considering how many thousands of charitably donated dollars they spent repealing gay marriage in Maine.

@Mamradpivo was that ever different?

@lefteh but many donate that money knowingly…in that people know they want to support this anti-gay movement

I find this very dissapointing. I have always credited Catholic Charities as being rather religious “blind” meaning they do not only help Catholics and don’t ask a lot of questions before helping others.

Mamradpivo, that is how the Catholic church has always been.

I think the Catholic church needs a reminder of what “Separation of Church and State” means.

Remind me, of what “Separation of Church and State” means.

We are talking about the same church that was behind the Crusades and the Inquisition. You can’t let the shitty actions of others get you down. When you do you give the very things you hate power over you.

@Blondesjon yes I know, but I wonder…there has to be something good for all the bad…or there wouldn’t be so many Catholics out there…charitable work, helping others – these are good principles, they’re attractive to people…but if these fall away, what is left? how can anyone defend catholicism…they can’t…

Can’‘t say that I can say anymore than was underlined in the original question. Seems contrary to everything Christ is supposed to stand for.

Go figure.

I’m not surprised.

I have nothing against Catholicism, nothing against Catholics – but the Catholic Church has never appeared to me to embrace the spirit of Christian charity, or the idea of loving and caring for even those who may not share your views. It’s so crazily wealthy, I don’t see how any Christian body could in good conscience be that wealthy. If it has that much money, it means that surely it can’t be doing all it can to help those in need anyway

This is just another version of the elementary playground attitude of “If you don’t play according to MY rules, then I’ll take my marbles and go home”

You aren’t surprised much when a spiteful 3rd grader pulls this crap and you try to educate the little snot.

But, when a mature organization which is espousing that others should follow it’s ideology of love and compassion to others, it is the highest degree of hypocrisy on the planet. Do as we say, not as we do.

Whatsoever you do into the least of these, you have done unto me….........Jesus

I always chuckle when the sex abusers Catholic Church postures as if it is relevant.

I think the Catholic Church should be ashamed of themselves for even thinking about doing such a thing. It’s unchristian and ridiculous besides. How dare they attempt to use their supposed “charity” as political leverage? If they follow through I hope that the Catholic Church looses a lot of respect from the American public.

Remember there are hypocrites everywhere. This is for the DC area only. Now, how are they going to stop all Catholics from doing charity work? They’re not. What money DC has for charity will be held for a while to see if they have any influence. Then it will be business as usual. Those few men are trying to make a point and their tactics are already backfiring.

This makes me sick. It is typical, but it just makes me sick.

I still can’t figure out why married homosexuals are so dangerous.

Maybe I missed the ant-gay clause in Christ’s teachings of tolerance and charity. No other group has given Jesus a bad name like the good old Catholics.

Matthew 25: 35–40 ”‘For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; 36 naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ 37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? 38 ‘And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? 39 ‘When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 “The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’ ”

Perhaps they are less interested in serving Christ than they used to be?

How do I feel? I think they should not let the door hit them in the butt on the way out.

Seriously, I’m sure there are many other social service agencies who would love to bid on contracts currently held by the Catholic Church. I’d rather give my tax dollars to those other agencies than one with such a strong track record of discrimination.

Just another example of the extreme hypocrisy of the Catholic church and Christian churches, in general.

Really. What the fuck would Jesus do? Huh?

@Dr_Dredd oooh, you touched on something that really bothers me, we give tax dollars to religious organiations now. How the hell did that happen?

I thought Jesus loved everybody.

It sounds just like children in a schoolyard to me. “If you’re not going to play the game my way, I’m taking my ball and going home!”

I feel that it indicates this archdiocese is a selfish bastard.
And although he undoubtedly wants to make the powers that be feel responsible for a loss of charity work if the law is passed, it is he alone who will be to blame for the people his inaction will get killed.

Not to even mention that clerics have no business with politics.

It makes me sick and, I’m a Catholic. There are many, many about the Catholic Church that I’m not proud of.

churches make me laugh

There are many, many things, I meant to say. Too late to edit.

It’s the Catholic Church, are you honestly surprised?

My answer… take away their tax exemption status. If they do this, they aren’t a charitable organization anymore, so I don’t see why they shouldn’t be paying fair taxes like the rest of us.

@JLeslie: I’m not happy about it either, but it’s pretty widespread.

The Catholic church needs to learn from some of its followers.

it sounds christian to me !!! Ive lived my life fighting against them and there closed minded ideals, I say take there charity and shove it were Jesus don’t shine

Does this mean it is supported by the Vatican? Or, is this particular Catholic church doing this on their own? The majority of my Catholic friends are pro gay marriage, or at least are fine with us legalizing it.

It honestly doesn’t bother me. They do not wish to be forced by law to do something they feel is immoral. I don’t happen to agree with their position but it is a venerable position, indeed everyone here has or had grandparents who took the same position. The Catholic Church has no specific obligation to help people in the DC area over any other area but they do have an obligation not to do things they feel are sinful.

@Factotum they do not have to support gay marriage (though they should) but they shouldn’t use charity as leverage or in their threats to influence politics (in which they have no business)

@JLeslie
It seems to be a decision form a local archdiocese.
I don’t suppose the Pope bothers with Washington’s marriage policies. As he shouldn’t.

@Factotum
The problem I have with this is how deviously they’re trying to force the politicians to give them their way. They’re not saying “we refuse to marry gays”; that might arguably still be considered respectable, for the reasons you mentioned. But instead, they’re saying “if you pass this law, we’re going to stop helping the poor.”
This is freaking blackmail.
In the service of someone whom the constitution forbids to meddle with political decisions.
To sabotage the love lives of homosexuals.
At the expense of the poor and the homeless, who don’t even have anything to do with it.

Doesn’t any of that bother you?

@Fyrius there is no arguably – it is not respectable

Blackmail is definitely a good word for it.

@Factotum to pick up on @Fyrius point, forced by law to do what? Do you mean marry gay people? Priests would NEVER be forced by law to do this. The church is trying to control what they consider to be morality in this situation through law. It is unAmerican in my opinion. I think the goverment should say back to the church if you speak out against civil rights, including gay marriage we will, stop funding you. Turn the table.

I’m referring to being forced by law to give adoptable children to gay couples and to hire gay people. And it’s not that I agree with their position from a moral standpoint. I simply feel it is their right to decide how to proceed.

As I mentioned it is a matter of the church picking different homeless and poor.

The government doesn’t second guess you when you pull money out and hand it to a homeless person. They don’t stand around saying, ‘hey, you gave money to that one guy but not the other so you’re in trouble’.

Nor should they intrude on the hows of religious non-profits giving. But once they do, once they make it difficult through zoning, permit costs, or yes, laws that will make them do something against their beliefs, it’s pretty remarkable when the villain of the piece is the one who decides to do their charity work somewhere else and not the government that made their work harder.

But this is part and parcel to the strange idea of entitlement – that somehow the DC poor are ‘owed’ the voluntarily given money of Catholic practitioners. They are not. Rather than hearing ‘thank you for the hundred-plus years of helping the poor of DC and we’re sorry that we can no longer work together’ we hear ‘childish’ and that they aren’t ‘an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure’. That last really displays that government’s view of outside charity work: just another piece of their infrastructure. Not feeling the love here.

It would have been easy enough – it still is – to write an exemption into the bill for certain long-standing charities. Congressmen write exemptions every day – mostly for themselves of course.

Some people really want to see walls between church and state. Well, this is what they look like.

@Factotum He who holds the money has the power. If the church wants government money, I guess you are right, they run the risk of being dictated to, because they have then become a public entity. Also, I would guess the Catholic church does charitable things for the poor in many countries that have by every objective measure some totally f**ked up laws. This power struggle between church and state in the US is mystifying. I say lets not give tax money to the religious organizations, and come up with some secular organizations to help out instead.

We already do give money to secular organizations. They use it poorly compared to religious organizations which contribute additional money, workers and expertise for free or greatly reduced cost. The effect of throwing even more money at non-religious non-profits while diminishing what goes to religious non-profits will be to add considerable cost to the cost of caring for the poor, once the province of religious charity, soon to be a wholly owned subsidiary of government.

And it will cost more while doing less. Not my idea of progress.

@Factotum Being held captive by a religious organization doesn’t sound much like progress to me either.

@Factotum can you provide a side by side comparison of these secular orgs that you think are wasting money next to religious orgs you think aren’t?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
^ What she said. Statistics plz.

And for that matter, why is this even relevant? They’re abusing their charitable reputation to meddle with politics.
To sabotage the love lives of homosexuals.
At the expense of the poor and the homeless, who don’t even have anything to do with it.

@Factotum – I seem to recall that faith-based charities became “just another piece of their infrastructure” around the time that Bush the Elder gave his thousand points of light speech. Basically, this was George H.W. Bush’s excuse for cutting budgets for programs to help the poor, because Catholic charities and other church programs like the Salvation Army would be there to pick up the Government’s slack.

Then, Bush the Younger’s “Office of Faith-Based Initiatives” moved the implication of the church charities being part of the infrastructure into a government-funded, accepted, acknowledged part of the infrastructure.

Isn’t there some rule that if a church gets into politics it can no longer be tax exempt?

@laureth And when Obama was asked about faith based intiatives he was ok with it. I was dissappointed.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir You asked for stats. This is the best I could do:
As a result of the “charitable choice” provision of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, more faith-based organizations were given equal footing to receive federal funding for social service delivery. Since then, studies have examined whether FBOs were more likely to access public funds in this “post-charitable choice” era. The results are notable, but perhaps not surprising; they suggest that most faith-based organizations still receive few public dollars and remain largely dependent on support from congregations and religious institutions. Moreover, most FBOs might prefer to keep it that way, expressing a “clear preference” for religious sources of funding, according to at least one study.9 Conversely, secular organizations were more likely to receive funds from government sources. For example, in the 2001 study of faith-based and secular organizations providing services to the homeless in Houston, almost half (47%) of FBOs received no government funds.10 On the other hand, over half (51%) of secular providers received 50 to 100 percent of their funds from government sources.11
http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/cache/documents/11120.pdf

My claim that secular charities use money poorly compared with Catholic charities cannot be substantiated although I would note that it costs Catholic charities nothing to raise money in that they already have regular donors and can target them for more money on any given Sunday without spending a dime of donated money. They also have a large group of people willing to work for free. Point being that they have extra resources and they bring them to the poor.

@Fyrius Perhaps they are ‘abusing their charitable reputation’ but it is theirs to abuse after all.

@laureth You’re quite right about Bush I’s thousand points of light and I suppose you have a point about Bush II cementing the perception that church charities are part of the infrastructure. But they’re not. They are their own infrastructure regardless of whether a president lobs money at them or not.

As it happens I thought the Faith Based Initiative was a bad idea at the time. It sets churches and government against each other. Whether the issue is proselytizing the needy as a part of filling some of their needs or government rulings on whether or not you should fork over a child to a gay couple or hire a transsexual there is going to be friction between two groups who properly have absolute authority over their respective domains.

One side or another is going to have to give way here. My thinking is that it should be the government through an exemption clause.

@Factotum wait, what you’re showing with your evidence is that non-faith based orgs receive money from the government – that’s how it should be, no?

Yes, that is how it should be.

@Factotum – Okay, if having a governmental department for faith-based initiatives doesn’t make those initiatives part of the infrastructure, what does it make them?

Well, I guess we’ll see if the Catholic church was all talk. I’m betting they are.

@laureth Allies.

I’d expect my allies to have my back, then.