Charity must begin at home, because one cannot count on it beginning at church. Perhaps I should say, one cannot count on charity beginning at the Roman Catholic Church. Not if one is gay. You may recall that, in November 2009, the city of Washington D.C. passed a law recognizing gay marriages, a law that was opposed immediately by the city’s Catholic Archdiocese. An objection raised at the time was this:
Under the bill…religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.
It didn’t take long for Catholic Charities to devise a solution to this dilemma (and keep government funds flowing their way): as of March 2, 2010, employees of Catholic Charities are not allowed to add spouses to their health insurance plans. This applies to the spouses of straight and gay employees alike. Since the charitable organization can’t blatantly provide benefits to one group (straights) and deny said benefits to the other (gays), it will simply deny said benefits to all of them. Equal opportunity exclusion. Because that’s what Jesus would do.
The policy applies to new employees enrolling for benefits after March 2; spouses covered before that date will retain their benefits. The group explained its decision in a memo:
We sincerely regret that we have to make this change, but it is necessary to allow Catholic Charities to continue to provide essential services to the clients we serve in partnership with the District of Columbia while remaining consistent with the tenets of our religious faith.
The tenets of their religious faith. Those include tenets allowing the Church to shelter priests who rape children and shuffle those rapacious predators from one traumatized diocese to another unsuspecting diocese, to another, and another ad infinitum. They include tenets allowing the Church to purchase abuse victims’ silence, or, when that fails, pay them large financial sums in legal settlements. They include tenets allowing Church leaders to lie to millions of African AIDS victims about the efficacy of condoms in reducing the spread of that dreadful disease. And they also include tenets that oppose the rights of men and women to control their reproduction via contraception and abortion. Do you look at those tenets and see anything worth preserving? I sure as hell don’t. If you agree with me and you want to donate some time or money to a charity, you may want to consider giving to a secular charitable group. Contrary to the myth that many fundogelicals are peddling (along with the rest of their bullshit), churches are not the only charitable organizations in town, and Christians are not the only people who give time and money to their communities.
For this atheist, charity must begin at home because religious charity often comes with strings attached. And if those strings can’t be attached, then some groups (like Catholic Charities) cut off both the strings and the gifts. Their thinking seems to be that ’tis far better that no one get anything at all than that some of the wrong people get a little bit of something from them. That may be the Catholic Charities way; it certainly is not my way.
– the chaplain
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