Colorado legislature is considering legislation that would stipulate that any agency that accepts state funding cannot base hiring decisions on religion. Archbishop Chaput is crying foul. He says the state is interfering with the church’s mission. He makes a threat:
When it can no longer have the freedom it needs to be “Catholic,” it will end its services. This is not idle talk. I am very serious.
This is what happened in Massachusetts. Catholic Charities was caught between state law which said state funded adoption agencies couldn’t discriminate against gays (a position which the liberals in charge of Catholic Charities accepted) and church teachings that to do so was morally wrong. So they decided to get out of the adoption business.
Now Chaput says the same thing–give us state money without strings, or we will stop our charitable activities.
Catholic writer Amy Welborn can’t understand this.
But it is, of course, possible to minister to the people of Colorado without state funding.
It would be dramatically different and it would require the religious bodies providing those resources to dig deeper and call on their people to really sacrifice in order to continue serving the needy.
And in a sense, I suppose it would be “unfair.”
But it wouldn’t be impossible.
I suppose what I’m saying is that when religious leaders respond to pressures from governments to conform to certain standards as the price for accepting funding by saying, “Well, then, we won’t do it anymore” puzzles me. And frankly, it bothers me.
Amy’s on target. Doesn’t Chaput remember the saying, “He who pays the piper calls the tune?” If you accept state money, you accept state restrictions. If you want to do your own thing, you find your own money. He wants it both ways–freedom to be Catholic and state money. In other words, he wants the state to subsidize programming and personnel that he wants to be explicitly and intentionally Catholic. He wants the state to fund the Catholic church’s mission–which is directly contrary to the First Amendment.
Something else that is troubling–he throws in a gratuitous reference to the ADL.
But the Colorado Catholic Conference has also heard — repeatedly — that the Anti-Defamation League has been a primary force behind this bad bill. I hope that isn’t true. It would be a very serious disappointment. I invite and encourage the Anti-Defamation League to disassociate itself from this ill-conceived piece of legislation.
He hopes it isn’t true? Did he not think to call them and ask? Such a gratuitous assertion seems only designed to stir up a certain segment of his flock that might be concerned about the involvement of a Jewish organization.
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