Keeping Christian Charity Christian
by Fr. Roger J. Landry - February 8, 2008
In his Lenten Message this year, Pope Benedict has written on the nature and the Christian imperative of almsgiving. "According to the Gospel," he stressed, "almsgiving is not mere philanthropy; rather it is a concrete expression of charity, a theological virtue that demands interior conversion to love of God and neighbor, in imitation of Jesus Christ, who, dying on the Cross, gave his entire self for us." Almsgiving, in other words, is far more than a kind deed; it is an act of love for God and for those in need.
There are many in our culture who fail to appreciate this difference. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to insist that she and the Missionaries of Charity would never participate simply in social work, and she repeatedly threatened to close down convents in which her sisters, either by outside pressure or an internal loss of focus, were being tempted to lose the specifically Christian meaning of their work. A prominent official once referred to her famous homes for lepers and told her that even for a million dollars he would not touch a leper. Mother Teresa shocked the official by her reply: "Neither would I. If it were a case of money, I would not even do it for two million. On the other hand, I do it gladly for love of Christ."
During last Tuesday's Vatican press conference that presented and discussed Pope Benedict's message, Cardinal Paul Cordes, the president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, took a question from an American reporter asking about the tendency in the United States and in some western countries for civil officials to try to eliminate this distinctively Christian notion of charity from the Church's charitable work. The reporter made particular reference to a bill before the Colorado legislature that would prevent any organization that receives state money from hiring or firing employees based on the organization's religious beliefs. Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver wrote a column in response to the bill threatening that, if the bill passed, he would have no choice but to shut down Denver Catholic Charities, which is by far the largest non-governmental social service provider in the state. Several commentators, Coloradan and national, Catholic and secular, said that Archbishop Chaput was overreacting. Cardinal Cordes could not have disagreed with them more.
"The bishop is doing the right thing," Cardinal Cordes affirmed. Christian service "is always tied to testimony to the Word of God," he explained, "and no one must break this connection." He added that the Colorado controversy "points to a great contemporary problem. Thanks to the generosity of many donors, the charitable agencies of the Church are able to do their work. But this carries a risk that the spirit of a Catholic agency can become secularized, doing only what the donor has in view."
We have seen an example of the same tension closer to home when the Archdiocese of Boston opted to get out of adoption business work than violate prudence, Christian charity and Church teaching by following an unjust state law mandating all agencies to offer children to same-sex couples. Cardinal Cordes' statement, Archbishop Chaput's actions, and the Archdiocese of Boston's decisions all illustrate a principle that it seems may unfortunately need to be applied with greater frequency: when forced to choose between keeping the faith or keeping state money or licenses, the Church must and will choose God over Caesar and mammon. The Church cannot and will not be bought, even if new Pilates, Herods and Sanhedrin still bribe.
Archbishop Chaput's public response is not just a model of episcopal courage but a clear application of Church teaching to the matter of just versus unjust discrimination in the workplace and to the cooperation between Church agencies and the government. His arguments are those every Catholic should know.
"Many non-Catholics," he writes, "already work at Catholic Charities. But the key leadership positions in Catholic Charities obviously do require a practicing and faithful Catholic, and for very good reasons. Catholic Charities is exactly what the name implies: a service to the public offered by the Catholic community as part of the religious mission of the Catholic Church. Catholic Charities has a long track record of helping people in need from any religious background or none at all. Catholic Charities does not proselytize its clients. That isn't its purpose. But Catholic Charities has no interest at all in generic do-goodism; on the contrary, it's an arm of Catholic social ministry. 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."
He then calls "nonsense" the argument, fostered by groups like the ACLU and Colorado's Anti-Defamation League, that governments "unconstitutionally support religion" when they fund some of the work of charitable groups like Catholic Charities. This assumption, he says, "is completely alien to American history and flatly false in light of the Constitution. Catholic confirmation classes don't swell with new recruits because of Catholic efforts at Samaritan House or the migrant and low-cost housing run by Catholic Charities. In fact, Catholic Charities — and similar religious groups — often lose money on government-funded projects, and government bodies know it." Many times government agencies are the ones who seek to collaborate with Catholic Charities because the government has realized, he says, that it "gets much more for its dollar by working through Catholic Charities to reach the poor."
Catholic organizations like Catholic Charities, the archbishop of Denver concludes, "are glad to partner with the government and eager to work cooperatively with anyone of good will. But not at the cost of their religious identity. Government certainly has the right and the power to develop its own delivery system for human services. But if groups like Catholic Charities carry part of society's weight, then it's only reasonable and just that they be allowed to be truly 'Catholic' — or they cannot serve."
Pope Benedict wrote in Deus Caritas Est, "It is very important that the Church's charitable activity maintains all of its splendor and does not become just another form of social assistance." For the Church to do this, it must be able to run its social services according to Church teaching, which involves the ability to ensure that those who lead it believe and live Church teaching.
To compel the Church to have to hire those who disagree with or violate Church teaching is an attempt to bully the Church and religious groups out of the public square or force them to convert to an increasingly militant, politically-correct, secularist pseudo-religion. This is just a new spin on the third temptation Jesus faced in the desert — which Catholics will hear about on Sunday and must, like Jesus, unshakably resist.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
