Washington Catholic Charities criticized

It's time Sawina gets a new job! Good riddance!

This really demonstrates why the Church has such difficulty in persuading
lay people to commit to a life of service to the Church.

Besides the lousy pay, and sometimes treatment where the employer acts as though it's some sort of privilege to be an underpaid lay employee, and now the lack of job security, there is the fundamental disrespect that would lead to a decision such as this.

Is this to be taken as "defending marriage?" To remove spousal benefits from the (if we're to take societal averages into account) ninety percent of employees whose committed unions are heterosexual in order to spite the perhaps ten percent who are same-sex?

This is tantamount to resolving a hostage situation by tossing a hand grenade into the room in which they are being held.

It is ironic that there is a completely different way of looking at the DC law: as freeing.

Catholic Charities could say "Left to our own volition, we would be uncomfortable in extending spousal benefits to same-sex partners. However, due to the law which applies to all employers in the District, we are compelled to do so. Therefore, we will obey the law."

I would be willing to bet that some Catholic Charities employees are in marriages which have not been blessed by the Church of Rome, for one reason or another. I'd also be willing to be that they receive benefits.

This is not "defending marriage." This is simply one more form of aggression against homosexuals. What is worse, it is the sort of aggression that is analagous to "weapons of mass destruction" in that it does not care who gets hurt, including "innocent bystanders."

Will DC Catholic school teachers suffer the same fate?

Employees of Catholic hospitals?

The decision-makers may very well find themselves the subject of an across-the-board, general strike.

All Americans, regardless of their sexual orientation or relationships, have a basic human right to health care. That Catholic Charities should subsidize that care is a different question. I would not have made the choice Archbishop Wuerl is making, but an employer's moral obligation is to provide health care for his employees, which he appears to be doing. If an employer then chooses to subsidize the care of dependents, that too is a moral decision, but not one that necessarily involves a basic human right -- unless we are willing to argue that an employer must provide health coverage for all the uncovered relatives of his/her employees. Again, I would not have made, and do not welcome, this choice by Archbishop Wuerl, but Fiedler's argument that spouses and domestic partners have a basic human right to health coverage is specious and self-serving.

It would be far more sensible to require that employees of Catholic Charities abide by the moral teachings of the Church in their public lives. That would solve the problem of same-sex marital benefits. If Catholic Charities has people living an openly sinful lifestyle, I don't see how they can properly represent the Church in its charitable work. It boggles the mind that it is OK to employ people who witness against you, and yet then deny them benefits. Grow a spine and take the rather more logical all or nothing approach.

The "Social Justice Agenda" cannot be used as an excuse to cave on other Catholic Teachings. Pope Leo XIII didn't tolerate such nonsense, nor should we.

I changed my position on gay civil marriage when I was confronted by 'who cares what happenens in the basement of City Hall when all these years hetrosexuals were married for the ninth or tenth time by someone like an Elvis impersonator'.Who ever heard the bishops uproar then..
as the young say ... 'get over it'

Catholic charity.

Why does that read now in this time of Rode, of Burke, of Morlino, like an oxymoron?

Catholic caring.
Catholic compassion.

Wasn't charity once our theological, our distinguishing, virtue?

What did Saint Paul write to the Corinthians?

And yet we send Mother Shaun V. riding shotgun to our nuns?
frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)