Using charitable works as a bargaining point to further their anti-gay agenda? Oh, Catholic Church, I'm ashamed of you, I didn't think you could sink any lower since you protected all those child molester priests or elected a Nazi Pope, but you've proved me wrong.
Despite growing up Catholic, I'm not exactly sure how the whole Catholic Archdiocese system works. I would assume it is like owning a franchise. You know, like how sometimes a McRib at one McDonalds costs a dollar but at another it may cost a dollar fifty? Same sandwich, different cost, same guilty disgusting feeling you get after you eat one which interestingly is the same feeling I get thinking about the 20 years I was catholic. So, what holds in the Washington D.C. Archdiocese will not be true across the board, however, it would be nice if Catholic Leaders speak out against this particular 'franchise owner'.
The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.
Okay, I get it, Jesus said to help people and he also said that gays are bad, bad for bein' gay. What is a poor Catholic church to do? Ah HA! Make what essentially mounts to a threat to withhold important aid to the homeless and sick, you know, just like Jesus would have done.
"Catholic Charities...serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington's homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church. City leaders said the church is not the dominant provider of any particular social service, but the church pointed out that it supplements funding for city programs with $10 million from its own coffers.
"All of those services will be adversely impacted if the exemption language remains so narrow," Jane G. Belford, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, wrote to the council this week.
68,000 people. That's a lot. A lot of people to leave bleeding by the side of the road while the Church tip-toes by on its way to the Anti-Gay carnival that it's holding to raise money to help the home...never mind.
Fortunately, all is not lost, there are people who recognize that what the Catholic Church does to help does not outweigh all the ways it royally screws everyone over.
Council member, David A. Catania (I-At Large), said he would rather end the city's relationship with the church than give in to its demands.
"They don't represent, in my mind, an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure," said Catania, the sponsor of the same-sex marriage bill and the chairman of the Health Committee.
Notice the phrase, "give in to its demands" like the church is some kind of terrorist that's taken a hostage which, in a sense, they are, and they have. To me, this is a clear example of a church trying to influence politics and there is only one cure for that. Take away the Catholic Church's tax exempt status. Oh, and not just in D.C., nation-wide baby. Going back to the McDonalds analogy, if I eat a McRib and get e coli (not so much a question of 'if' as 'when') I go after not just the McDonalds that served it to me, I take it straight to the top, the head clown.
The archdiocese's statement follows a vote Tuesday by the council's Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary to reject an amendment that would have allowed individuals, based on their religious beliefs, to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings.
"Lets say an individual caterer is a staunch Christian and someone wants him to do a cake with two grooms on top," said council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 6), the sponsor of the amendment. "Why can't they say, based on their religious beliefs, 'I can't do something like that'
You can't see why that would be a bad thing Yvette M. Alexander? You can't take your beady little eyes off your bible and look around at the real world for once? If you let people do whatever they want based on religion, then they will do exactly that and it's never good. Oppression, bigotry, these are the things that pushed me away from my Catholic upbringing to the point that I wrote a letter to the Pope asking to be excommunicated. Religion at its core is intolerant: of other religions, of new ideas, of freedom and you want to tell people it's okay to be that way? No no no.
And here, of course, is the whole article, thanks for stoppin' by.
Catholic Church threatens to let homeless die in street