Catholics in the Public Square

The struggle around the issue of government funding of Catholic and other religious organizations is led by those who feel religious influence degrades public policy, which is a stance built on something other than the historical development of America—which is clearly founded upon the principles embodied in Judeo-Christianity.

In Colorado, where the issue is coming to a head, Archbishop Chaput addresses it in this excerpt from an article in First Things.

Protecting the Church’s Freedom in Colorado
By Charles J. Chaput
Wednesday, February 6, 2008, 7:06 AM

On January 30, a coalition of social service providers gathered on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol. Ranging from Avista Adventist Hospital and the Denver Rescue Mission, which helps the homeless, to the Handprints Early Education Centers and Focus on the Family, the group had one thing in common. All of them were religiously based nonprofits offering some form of service to the general public. Among them was Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Denver, the largest nongovernment provider of social services in the Rocky Mountain region. And the source of their concern was a seemingly modest piece of state legislation, House Bill (HB) 1080.

Colorado HB 1080, pushed by the Anti-Defamation League after failing in a similar attempt last year, presents itself as an effort to bar discrimination. But the so-called “discrimination” HB 1080 targets is actually the legitimate freedom of religiously affiliated nonprofits to hire employees of like faith to carry out their mission. In practice, HB 1080 would strike down the freedom of Catholic Charities to preferentially hire Catholics for its leadership jobs if it takes state funds.

Of course, Catholic Charities can always decline public funds and continue its core mission with private money. In the Archdiocese of Denver, we’re ready to do exactly that. But the issues involved in HB 1080, and the troubling agenda behind it, are worth some hard reflection.

Religious groups have been delivering services to the poor a great deal longer than the government. The government uses religious social service agencies precisely because they’re good at it and typically more cost-effective in their work than the government could be. In fact, groups like Catholic Charities often lose money on government contracts, and the government knows it. Religious agencies frequently accept these losses as part of their mission to the general public. But their mission depends, of course, on leaders who share and safeguard their religious identity.

Bills like HB 1080 proceed from the assumption that public money, in passing through religious agencies to the poor, somehow miraculously commingles Church and state and violates the Constitution’s establishment clause.

This view is peculiar on at least two levels. First, accepting public money to perform a government-desired service does not make a private agency part of the government. Nor does it transform the government into a catechism class. But insofar as any “debt” exists in a government and religious agency relationship, it’s the government that owes the service provider, not the other way around. Obviously, if the government wants to carry the social burden it currently asks religious-affiliated groups to carry, that’s the government’s business—and so are the costs and problems that go along with it.