A while ago, Lincoln my ex-boyfriend told me he was receiving ongoing rental assistance from Catholic Charities. Almost immediately 2 trains of thought collided in my head*, I could use the help, but it’s from the Catholic Church.
Let me state here that as long as a charity complies with the law, I have little problem with what they do with their money. The problem for me is that I’m an Atheist and also not a fan of the Catholic Church, so it seems like it would be hypocritical of me to accept any help from them. As it turns out I don’t qualify for any rental assistance from them or any other group, and that’s fine.
I still don’t know if I would have taken the help, so I’m curious as how others might handle this. This assumes you meet the requirements of the organization/agency and you need/could really use the help.
*The trains collided on a rickety bridge over a huge & deep ravine.
There was much black smoke & huge fireballs. Some screamingwas heard also.
If you can afford to turn down assistance, do you really need it? (Beggars can’t be choosers, in other words.)
By the way, the Wikipedia article on them says, “In 2010, Catholic Charities had revenues of $4.7 billion, $2.9 billion of which came from the US government.” So it’s not as if the money is entirely coming from the collection plate.
The Salvation Army likes to say that they don’t discriminate, regarding whom can receive their services. But that doesn’t negate the fact that people have been fired who don’t appear to be heterosexual. The S.A. still has a policy of firing people who are “suspected” of being LGBT.
Their service-related non-discrimination policy is meaningless to me; I’d never turn to them for assistance. And yes, beggars can be choosy.
If you’re the sort of atheist that really hates all religion and thinks it’s causing the downfall of humanity and the source of all the ills in this world, I think it would be hypocritical to take charity from a Christian charity.
If you’re a “I believe what I believe and they can believe what they believe” kind of atheist then I don’t see a problem with taking charity from a Christian charity, Catholic or otherwise.
But if you are a person (atheist or not) who has problems with the Catholic church, I think it would be hypocritical to take charity from a Catholic charity.
Remember, every dollar they spend helping you is one less dollar to spend on buggering altar boys.
(Or defending priests who do that. Or fighting against equal rights for GLBT people. Or fighting against a woman’s right to choose. Or fighting condom use. Or birth control. Etc.)
I actually faced a similar dilemma, though smaller in scale. There are many, many church groups in the US that send various comfort items to deployed service members. The Chaplain’s office collects them, and in my location, distributed them via a “Chapel Mart”, where you could go and select whatever sorts of things you found useful…shampoo, writing materials, books, etc. Once, perusing the Chapel Mart, I found a pair of really fluffy jammie pants. Now, while I was not in a particularly primitive location (I had an indoor bed and a guarantee of hot meals), I still appreciated the odd luxury, and those jammie pants were really, really fluffy.
However, they were sent by Christian groups, no doubt meant for good god-fearing service members, not the heathen likes of me. I pondered it for a while, but decided that charity was charity, and I had as much claim on it as anyone. So, I took my fluffy jammie pants and enjoyed them in the 6’x2’ space that I called mine. They were actually rather the morale booster, too.
It depends what exactly the help is. If the help is the difference between feeding my kids and not feeding my kids then I don’t get to have sensibilities about where it comes from. Enjoy that Nazi chow girls
The various Catholic Charities affiliates are entities separate from the Church itself, and if I’m not mistaken, they raise funds separately. Accepting funds from Catholic Charities probably has no effect on the Church’s expenditures.
Catholic Charities, in my experience, is a decent organization that really follows Jesus’ message and not always the Catholic Church. They are good people. I would try not to take religious aid but if I had to, Catholic Charities would be one of the few I might go to.
If I am totally at the end of my rope, I would probably even take Klan money. If I had a meal for today and a good underpass to sleep under, maybe I would pass it by. I just hope I never have to find out for sure either way.
The funds come from the same place – parishioner’s pockets. So using up Catholic Charities’ money means less left to donate for more objectionable church activities.
And besides, I wouldn’t trust their accounting to keep these funds ‘separate’. There’s no real legal requirement for that.
Here in Minnesota, the Catholic church spent a whole lot of money on fighting gay marriage – including over a hundred thousand dollars that they took from the parochial schools funds – because they were ‘educating’ voters on the evils of gay marriage. I doubt that’s the kind of education parishioners had in mind when donating to this fund.
Regarding the sources of funding for Catholic Charities, Wikipedia says, “In 2010, Catholic Charities had revenues of $4.7 billion, $2.9 billion of which came from the US government. Only about $140 million came from donations from diocesan churches, the remainder coming from in-kind contributions, investments, program fees, and community donations.”
Think of it this way: You’re taking money from people you don’t like to live in a lifestyle they object to. I’m fine taking charity or whatever from groups I don’t agree with, its less money for them to spend on trying to convert people
