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How "Catholic" Are Catholic Charities?

Frustrated to see Church officials lobbying against his plans for reforming the welfare system, a Catholic legislator has given new life to an old debate.

At the turn of the century Rose Hawthorne Lathrop went through the streets of New York looking for cancer victims, the lepers of her time. The daughter of author Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Yankee agnostic, Rose had converted to Catholicism and founded a community of sisters to care for the cancerous poor on the Lower East Side.

"Rose Hawthorne would carry them up to a fourth-floor tenement apartment," said Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, "and nurse them not with medication but with love. How quickly would she be impeded by government restrictions today!"

The cardinal made that remark in his homily at a Mass in 1995 celebrating the 75th anniversary of Catholic Charities in New York. From the beginning of his tenure in the archdiocese, he had warned Catholic Charities and Catholic hospitals that "dependence on government is fraught with peril and that I saw this creeping dependence. I saw us going after the money, wherever the money is, to tailor programs accordingly, to fit our charity into the requirements of governmental regulatory procedures.

"Ten years have passed," the cardinal went on, "and what I feared, I think, is now an even greater peril." He contrasted the situation of 100 years ago with that recently encountered by the Missionaries of Charity:

The bureaucrat would not budge; charity's way was not the American way. The homeless didn't get their homes.

"There is always a risk," Cardinal O'Connor concluded. "Has Catholic

Charities fallen prey to this risk?"

Rick Santorum, the junior US senator from Pennsylvania, thinks they have.

Santorum was in New York in February to receive an award from the Catholic Campaign for America, a lay organization whose board

includes notable Catholics like William Bennett, author of The Book

of Virtues, and Tom Monaghan, the millionaire founder of the Domino's Pizza empire. The 38-year-old Santorum was lauded as "Catholic American of the Year" for his role as the Senate manager of the legislative effort to outlaw partial-birth abortion.

"As the floor leader of the legislation in the Senate," the Catholic Campaign's citation read, "and in numerous activities beyond his duties as a senator, he supported the authentically Catholic pro-life position. By taking on this demanding and often thankless responsibility, and by supporting our bishops and our Church, he lived out his Catholicism in a most public way, and for that we salute him."

Santorum thanked the Catholic Campaign, observing that the group had taken a chance by "honoring someone who is only 38 years old and has many years to prove to you that you made a bad decision."

Actually, in the opinion of Father Fred Kammer, SJ, the head of Catholic Charities USA, Sen. Santorum proceeded to demonstrate that point in only a few minutes. Because in his acceptance speech, Santorum leveled the remarkable charge that Catholic Charities should not be called Catholic.

Reaction to Santorum's charge was swift and angry, with Father Kammer saying that he was "shocked that the senator would take the occasion of an appearance before a Catholic audience to attack us and by implication to attack the Catholic bishops."

In his speech, Santorum charged that "because they receive 65 percent of their money from the government," Catholic Charities "can do little that is uniquely Catholic. They have to do what the government dictates, which means they can't talk about the Catholic part of the charity."

That "is just not true," huffed Msgr. James Murray, head of Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of New York. Each office of Catholic Charities is based in an individual diocese, with Catholic Charities USA serving as what one official described as a sort of a trade association for all of the local groups. When Sen. Santorum said that 65 percent of all funding for Catholic Charities came from government sources, that statistic reflects an overall figure for all of the local offices. In New York, Catholic Charities has held public contracts down to only 20 percent of the overall budget.

But of course if the New York agency keeps down the percentage of government support, other dioceses must have unusually a high percentage in order to bring the overall figure up to 65 percent. Colleen Anderson, who handles statistical reports for Catholic Charities USA, declines to give specific information as to which dioceses have the highest proportion of government funding. But she does point out that that overall dependence on government is falling, so that in one year the overall percentage of government funding has fallen from the 65 percent quoted by Sen. Santorum to slightly under 62 percent.

Sharon Daly, director of government relations for Catholic Charities USA, adds that her colleagues share the senator's belief that, under ideal circumstances, Catholic Charities should find their support elsewhere than in government contracts--from private foundations, bequests, and traditional fundraising events. "I think that every Catholic Charities director in the United States would probably agree with that message," she says, "and in fact that's the direction we're going in."

On one point, officials at Catholic Charities are adamant: their activities are not government activities, but the official work of the Church. "It's the charitable arm of the Catholic Church," Msgr. Murray maintained. His lieutenant, Father Kevin Sullivan, expanded on that statement: "Our Catholic Charities agencies operate clearly in accordance with the religious and ethical directives of the United States bishops ..."

In his speech, Sen. Santorum called upon the Catholic Campaign to reclaim "our communities, our parishes, our diocese, Catholic charity again.--not Catholic Charities, but Catholic charity."

The national ecclesiastical advisor to the Catholic Campaign for America is none other than Cardinal O'Connor, who had given the opening remarks at the banquet but left before Santorum's speech. Contacted by Catholic News Service for a reaction, the cardinal said that he "could not join in or support an attack on Catholic Charities."

Even the Catholic Campaign for America--which after all had just dubbed him "Catholic American of the Year"--carefully distanced itself from Santorum by issuing a subsequent public statement:

How did Sen. Santorum manage to draw (as he put it) "some pretty tough salvos" not only from his opponents but even from his erstwhile supporters? What is "Catholic"? And what is "charity"? Who decides? These questions are the heart of the debate which the senator provoked.

In one sense, the answer to the question of Catholic identity is simple: the Code of Canon Law says that "no association may call itself 'Catholic' except with the consent of the competent ecclesiastical authority." For universal and international associations, that means the Holy See; for national associations, the national bishops' conference; for diocesan associations, the diocesan bishop. On the question of whether a charity can legitimately call itself Catholic, it seems, no matter who pays the piper, the bishop calls the tune.

But Santorum, in his speech, took another approach to finding a definition for the word "Catholic." Coming with a good definition often requires beginning with what something is not. So Santorum noted that:

Santorum took another stab at the true meaning of the word "Catholic" when in he noted that "we've already let Catholic higher education go. There are few truly Catholic colleges left in America. We've allowed most of them to become co-opted and become completely secular." He also expressed the growing concern of many about Catholic hospitals in an era of mergers into conglomerate health-care systems. "Many of you serve on boards of health-care organizations which are fighting this incredible battle to preserve the Catholicism in our health-care system," he told the leaders of the Catholic Campaign. "If we're not on our guard, they'll gobble us right up."

When all else fails, Santorum seemed to suggest, to be Catholic means to be willing to close down an organization rather than compromise on fundamental questions of principle. For example, in 1993 Cardinal O'Connor warned President Bill Clinton that he would shut down the entire Catholic health-care system of the Archdiocese of New York rather than comply with any proposed federal health-care plan which would have required Catholic hospitals to pay for abortions.

Santorum reported that just before his speech to the Catholic Campaign, he had discussed the status of Catholic Charities with Cardinal O'Connor, who recalled being told by an official at Catholic Charities, "If we didn't have public support, if we didn't have the support of the government, we couldn't exist." As Santorum recalled it, the cardinal said he had answered: "Perhaps if you can't exist without public support, then maybe you shouldn't exist." Cardinal O'Connor later said that he did not recall such an exchange, and regretted if the senator had misconstrued any of his remarks as unsympathetic toward Catholic Charities.

Finally, in his speech, Santorum offered a positive definition of what it means to be Catholic. Any Church agency, he suggested, should be actively involved in sharing the faith.

"How can Catholics talk about love without talking about Jesus Christ?" he asked. "We can't do it... We deny everything we are as a faith if we don't go out and preach that faith to people who desperately need it in our culture."

On that very point, however, Cardinal O'Connor disagreed. When many Catholic churches in his archdiocese shelter the homeless, he said, "we don't do that to teach them about Jesus. We do that because they're homeless... I have not thought of Catholic social services as a medium for direct, oral teaching about Jesus."

Catholic Charities USA has cited this principle in an anonymous apologia released for its 1,400-plus local agencies in answer to the senator's charges. "Sen. Santorum is correct," it ran, "in pointing out that Catholic charities which accept government contracts to provide service may not use those particular programs as a way to talk to people 'about Jesus.'" But, the agency insisted, "he's wrong that it's always necessary to talk to people about Jesus to help them... Catholic Charities, like Catholic hospitals and schools, believe that it's not enough to talk about Jesus, but that we must act like Jesus."

But the statement that it is "not enough" to talk about Jesus suggests that Catholic Charities do talk about Jesus. And Sen. Santorum doubts they do that very often. "I've visited a lot of Catholic Charities, and they do tremendous work," the senator told CWR. But he recalls a particular visit to a program designed to help alcohol and drug addicts. Knowing that many successful addiction programs make religious faith an important component of their method, the senator inquired whether the Catholic Charities counselors talked about God to their clients, "Isn't that a core part of what you do?" he asked. "Some of our counselors aren't comfortable talking about God," he was told.

The Pennsylvania senator repeatedly insists that agencies of Catholic Charities do a great deal of good work. His fundamental problem, he says, is with the evangelical opportunities these agencies miss, because "Catholic Charities is in a unique position to be a hero in providing all the things government doesn't provide."

This heroic side of "Catholic" is brought out by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In its section on the Church, under the subheading "Mission--a requirement of the Church's Catholicity," the Catechism allows that this "missionary task implies a respectful dialogue with those who do not yet accept the Gospel." Nevertheless, believers are to "proclaim the Good News to those who do not know it, in order to consolidate, complete, and raise up the truth and the goodness that God has distributed among men and nations, and to purify them from error and evil for the glory of God, the confusion of the demon and the happiness of man."

In explaining the Church's perennial preferential option for the poor, the Catechism explains that "it extends not only to material poverty but also to many forms of cultural and religious poverty." Thus the works of mercy include not only feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and clothing the naked, but also "instructing, advising, comforting"--the spiritual works of mercy.

In the third chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, Christ begins his public life by appropriating the prophecy of Isaiah as a description of his mission on earth: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor."

Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Sullivan of Brooklyn, the bishops' liaison to Catholic Charities USA, exhorted Sen. Santorum to read another Gospel passage before raising any further criticism of Catholic Charities. "Go to 25th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew," he said, and "discover what Jesus said about feeding people."

"You really think he just meant food?" Santorum retorted. "I question your own understanding of the Gospel."

Secular sciences such as psychology and sociology are beginning discover the spiritual dimension of the human person and the importance of faith in his life. Even in non-religious social-service agencies, Santorum has found, God is mentioned; faith is encouraged. But when it comes fighting for social justice with this more holistic approach, "the charitable arm of the Catholic Church" is tied behind her back.

Officials at Catholic Charities naturally had a different view. In their op-ed response to the senator's attack, they wrote:

But if that is true, supporters of Santorum's position might cite the facts as all the more reason to engage in what Dorothy Day called "indoctrination." In her "Aims and Purposes of the Catholic Worker Movement" (see CWR for December, 1996), Day wrote:

Sen. Santorum accuses Catholic Charities officials of measuring their success by purely empirical standards. ("'We were feeding 100; now we're feeding 400.' But are you changing their lives at all?") He also questions the underlying assumption that "the answer to social problems is social-justice legislation--which means income transfer." If social justice can only be built up by collecting taxes and redistributing income, the senator warns, ultimately Catholic Charities will become irrelevant, because only the government will have the authority to preside over the income transfers.

So ironically, while leading Catholic churchmen downplay what is distinctively "Catholic" about Catholic Charities, a layman immersed in the highly secular world of politics warns them that they may lose what Catholic identity they have.

James McCoy is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College, one of the "few truly Catholic colleges left in America."

When Senator Rick Santorum led the fight against partial-birth abortions, the US Catholic Conference was a powerful and energetic ally. But then the senator attacked the country's welfare system, and found: "The number one opponent, and perhaps the most effective opponent, of welfare reform was Catholic Charities..." In his speech to the Catholic Campaign for America, the senator asked how Catholic Charities could staunchly defend the status quo.

"In fact, we never did," replies Sharon Daly, director of government

relations for Catholic Charities USA. "We have never defended the old system. Catholic Charities USA was one of its fiercest critics."

The key to the disagreement, Daly says, is the fact that "Sen. Santorum originally proposed that babies born to teenage mothers or mothers on welfare would be barred from ever receiving welfare." Fearing that such a policy would only increase the number of abortions, the US bishops lobbied strenuously--and in the end successfully--against this policy. The senator denies that his proposal would have any important effect on the abortion rate.

Santorum, on the other hand, believes that current federal welfare policies have fueled the explosion of illegitimacy in the United States. In the early 1960s, he points out, federal policy was changed to allow federal welfare benefits to the parents of children born out of wedlock. He continues: "In the early 1960s the out-of-wedlock birth rate in this country was one in every 20 children. Today it is one in every three children.... I ask Catholic Charities and Catholic social-service organizations whether a program and a system which has enabled this to occur is one we should staunchly defend.

Now it is Sharon Daly's turn to disagree. She acknowledges that welfare policies may be a factor in the rising of illegitimacy, but "only one--and a relatively small factor at that. If you look at international comparisons, you have the same trend, no matter what kind of welfare system."

So the dispute between a Catholic senator and Catholic Charities officials boils down to a disagreement on the impact of different welfare policies. As the senator sees it, "we had an honest disagreement with what was the best way to help people." And Sharon Daly admits, "overall the relationship between the Church and Senator Santorum has been very good...We do of course agree... on pro-life issues, where he's been very strong and outspoken."