A letter asking for legislation “protecting the lives and dignity of those who are poor and vulnerable” was sent to the U.S. House of Representatives by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on April 13. The bishops also expressed “fear that some proposed changes to Medicare and Medicaid could leave more elderly and poor people without the assurance of adequate and affordable health care.”
Well of course they did. “In a 2008 report from the national Catholic Charities office, from a total income of over $3.9 billion (yes, that’s with a ‘b’) a whopping 67 percent came from government revenues.” Neither could Catholic hospitals and medical centers exist without Medicare and Medicaid.
That doesn’t stop the bishops, however, from taking full credit for “Catholic” charity. As their letter states: “We defend the unborn, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, educate the young, welcome refugees, and care for the sick.”
Are the bishops really as concerned about the unborn, hungry, homeless and sick as they are about the innocent children provided as fodder for the sexual perversions of their clergy and prelates? Regarding Catholic Charities and hospitals, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the USCCB, explained: “[T]hey need to be strengthened because ‘now more than ever does the Church need a public face.’ The Church needs to have a good public profile because there are ‘a lot of people out there who would like to exclude the Church from any type of public witness and we can’t let that happen.’”
Not only are our tax dollars being used so that the bishops can help Republicans create more sick and poor Americans, but also “Catholic Charities regularly violates state and local anti-discrimination ordinances across the country” and Catholic medical facilities “deny emergency reproductive health care for pregnant women.” In fact, on April 14 the bishops sent another letter “urging Congress to vote for a resolution to ban federal funding of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.”
While Catholic bishops are constantly asking government at all levels to care for the poor and sick, they use their money to build up their own institutions. For example, Denver Catholic Charities regularly reports that it receives only 3 to 4 percent of its income from the archdiocese (total $2,609,679 in three years, 2007-2009) while between 2000-2009 Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput spent over $70 million to ordain 58 priests and one set of liturgical vestments for Cardinal Raymond Burke costs over $33,000.
Mainstream Catholic media such as the National Catholic Reporter may find the bishops’ call for government to do more of what they should be doing themselves as admirable and selfless, but this Catholic stopped believing in fairy tales along time ago.
(Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America.)