Catholic Charities competes with private and nonprofit agencies for these contracts with the government deciding which organization will provide the best services for the money. This is a good deal for state and local governments because these Catholic Charities programs are efficiently and effectively run with both professionals and volunteers.

Meanwhile, the City Council for the District of Columbia has decided to enact legislation forbidding discrimination against those in gay marriages. This legislation would not force churches to perform gay marriages or to change their moral doctrines, but it would require any organization with a contract with the District to provide medical benefits to a gay partner just like it provides them to the heterosexual partner in a marriage. It would also require adoption agencies to sponsor children to gay couples if the agency is under contract with the city.

The archdiocese says that it cannot do this because of its moral opposition to gay marriage. This is not new. The Archdiocese to San Francisco had the same fight with its city council, and the adoption programs of Catholic Charities in Massachusetts were shut down because the state legislature insisted that they sponsor adoptions to gay couples while the bishops insisted they would not.

It should be clear from this review of the facts that the church is not threatening to withdraw its money from the poor. It is simply pointing out that it cannot observe these new requirements and therefore the city will cancel its contracts. It is in fact the city council that is closing down these programs, not the archdiocese.

[Read more →]

Now the Catholic Church in Washington D.C. is being told that in order to receive government funds, they must abide by a new D.C. anti-discrimination law in all their charities and employment practices in those charities.  The Church in Washington – part of a much larger, global organization – feels that it cannot submit to those rules and therefore will be forced to refuse said funds and close the doors on a number of the charities they currently run.

Liberals are once again up in arms.  ”What about the homeless?” they cry.   “How dare they not change their fundamental religious beliefs when that means leaving more homeless and poor without charitable services!”

Something about this smacks of double standards.

And thus we come to a very fundamental aspect of government involvement in just about everything.  The government limits choice.  The trade-off can be worth it.  It may mean less affordable abortions but more people covered.  It may mean gay people are given the right to wed, but religious charities have fewer dollars to provide for the poor.

The point I’m making is that there is such thing as consensus, but it usually comes at a cost.  It can’t simply be that everyone gets what they want, nor is it merely a question of ethics.  Reasonable people disagree on issues like abortion.  And we have a system of government that separates church and state, for better or worse.  This leads to concessions and compromises and trade-offs and people are always unhappy at the end of the day.

If we want government health care, maybe we have to give up federally subsidized insurance plans that cover abortion.  If we want gay marriage in D.C. and we also want religious charities to keep doing their good work, maybe we have to make exceptions for those institutions on religious grounds.  Or we can refuse them funding and find ways to implement those charities via the state or some other private charity.

Either way, I see pro-choice advocates and the Catholic Church doing very similar things here.  They’re both up in arms about the government making rules about how they spend the government’s money.  But it’s the government’s money, or rather it’s our money.  And that’s the way it rolls in a representative democracy.  Deal with it.

” The premise of today’s story was that the Catholic Church was threatening to cease to provide charitable services if the law legalizing gay marriage is passed. In point of fact, it is the DC government that would cease to license or contract with the Church unless the Church conformed to a definition of marriage that violates its faith tradition. Without a set of broader legal exemptions allowing for the Church to remain faithful to its definition of marriage, it will cease to be permitted by the City to provide the contracted and licensed services that it has for well over a century. The Church’s fundamental desire in this controversy is to continue its desire and freedom to serve.” ~ Patrick Deneen, responding to news that the Catholic Church will end social services in D.C. if a gay-marriage law is passed there

I think the Catholic Church is wrong about a lot of things, including its stance on gay marriage.  I also think that they’re wrong when they go political and actively seek funds to oppose same sex marriage at the ballot box.  But on this one, I think they have a pretty valid stance.  Religious liberty is a fundamental American value, and even the ACLU thinks the D.C. gay-marriage law goes too far, and provides too few religious exemptions.  For instance, any church that hosted any public event at all would be required to also host events for gays.  This includes weddings.

John Wimberly, the president of the ACLU in Washington and a pastor, agreed the current phrasing could cause problems. He told the council that while the ACLU supports the bill he would recommend taking out part of the exemption to avoid confusion.

“A church shouldn’t have to host a wedding it doesn’t want to host,” said Arthur Spitzer, an ACLU attorney who reviewed the legislation.

This isn’t the Catholic Church simply saying that if gay-marriage is passed in D.C. they’ll stop providing services.  They’re saying that they won’t receive contracts for services that they won’t provide due to religious conflicts of interest.  The Church hasn’t stopped providing services in all the states where gay marriage has passed, after all.  In New Hampshire the religious exemptions are written in such a way to avoid these conflicts. In Massachusetts, on the other hand, the state has pulled many contracts from the Catholic Church because their exemptions are not as strong.

So I have to disagree with Jamelle on this one, who writes:

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has always been a bit more measured in its approach.  This might be my naivety talking, but I expected a bit more of the Catholic leadership. Sure, the Catholic Church isn’t particularly enamored of gays, but as an institution (and at least in the United States) it’s always seemed much more concerned with fighting the war on poverty than the war on gays.  What’s more, unlike evangelicals – who are overwhelmingly Southern and conservative – Catholics represent a wider geographic and ideological cross-section of America, which had a moderating influence on the church’s leadership.

But things changed, and in the past decade or so, Catholic leadership has become more and more committed to a socially conservative political agenda.   If given the choice between saving the needy and sticking it to the gays, these Church “elders” would rather let 68,000 of the most vulnerable Washingtonians suffer in the dead of winter than have to extend basic legal protections to gay people.

The misreading of what’s actually going on aside – this is not a simple threat, as many are painting it – I think Jamelle makes a good point.  The Church has become too politically involved in all of this.  But they’ve done so because they’re legitimately worried about religious liberty, and moves like this reaffirm their fears.  Gay marriage advocates, and I am one myself, need to craft legislation that doesn’t impinge upon one set of liberties in favor of another.  This is a matter both of respect and practicality.   The Church shouldn’t be politicized, but its leaders will continue to take on political causes if they feel their own rights are threatened.

I hope that one day the Church will change its positions on many things, but until that time it isn’t the job of the state to do it for them.  There are devils in all the details here, and turning it into an Us vs. Them moment only helps to avoid addressing those devils we don’t know, in favor of the ones we do.

Update.

Commenters are pointing out that there have been some revisions to this bill.  That is true.  Religious organizations would not be forced to provide space or perform marriages for gay couples.  They would still be required to do a number of other things, including provide benefits to gay couples, offer other charitable services to gay people, and so on and so forth.  Again – I think they should do this, but what I think really isn’t the issue here.  The issue is whether they should be required to by law.  If they are required to follow specific rules in order to receive federal funds, and they believe that those rules are in conflict with their beliefs, then they will have no choice but to refuse those funds.

You can’t really have it both ways.  These funds are used to provide for the poor.  You can’t complain that the Church is awful for receiving the funds on the one hand and awful for not providing these services on the other.  The two are connected, and if the law makes it impossible for the Church to do both, then there really is little that can be done except change the law.  Or change the Church.  And so this comes back to a question of religious liberty.

Maine proponents of gay marriage rights woke to defeat today, which is a shame and another signal that the country is still bitterly divided on this issue.  The New York Times reports:

“The Catholic Church was a leading supporter of the repeal campaign, even asking parishes to pass a second collection plate at Sunday mass to help the cause.”

Which makes me sad as well.  I support religious institutions’ beliefs, however wrong-headed I think they may be, but I wish they’d afford the same dignity to others.  Nobody is trying to force the Church to support gay marriage, to allow gays to be married in its churches or by its priests.  What business did the Church have interfering with civil marriage laws – passing out second donation plates to oppose equality?

This is especially difficult for me because I’ve been taking RCIA classes at our local parish, which lead in April to confirmation in the Catholic Church.  I’ve always loved catholicism.  My family is largely Catholic, though I was raised non-denominational.  I went to Catholic school for a year, and always loved the saints, the rosary, the colors, the solemnity and the joy involved in the liturgical year, the intellectual and mystical traditions of the Church.  It all felt, and still feels, more real to me somehow.  Catholicism has a communal and spiritual depth to it that I never experienced at the Methodist or any other protestant church.

There are things that bother me about it, though.  I am a decentralist at heart.  I believe in the decentralization of power, no matter what the organization.  If there is to be a hierarchy, I want it to be a hierarchy that is still very flat, with power spread as far and wide as possible.  The very Catholic notion of subsidiarity plays a very strong role in my thinking on this – and, paradoxically perhaps, a very weak role in the Church itself. I’m not against the papacy.  I’m just against the level of power the Pope seems to wield.

Then, too, I think the treatment of women and gays is wrong.  I think women should be able to be priests.  I think, if Jesus were alive today, he’d agree.  I just find the notion that Apostolic succession ought to be confined to men a bit outdated.  Like a great misunderstanding of the universality of Christianity and Christ and what it means to be human and in communion with God.

I’m a little mixed on married priests, though I think by and large marriage should be allowed.  I just know enough pastor’s kids to know that dividing your life between God, your flock, and your family can be extraordinarily difficult – especially on your children.  Maybe there’s some wisdom in wedding priests to God only.  Maybe not.  People divide their lives similarly in a host of other professions.

In any case, the fact that the Catholic Church was instrumental in defeating marriage equality in Maine is saddening to me.  The Mormons did it in California, and they were an easy target for my ire, I have to admit.  I’ve always had issues with Mormonism, whether that’s fair or not.  But Catholics?  I mean, here is an institution devoted to peace and justice!  Catholic priests were at the vanguard of the anti-war movement during Vietnam.  The Pope came out against the Iraq war.  Catholics were social activists against slavery, against the slaughter of native Americans….

But not for the gays who want – shudder – to marry.  To become families.  To join one of the most important social institutions our civilization has to offer.

It’s a shame, and it makes me wonder at the thrust of my heart.  It makes me question whether I should be in this RCIA class at all, whether I should join an organization which I simply want to change.  Is there a conflict of interest here?  Should someone join a cause or a religious group or any other affiliation if one has such fundamental disagreements?

Update.

Andrew has a few more things to say about this:

The hard truth is: people are still afraid of this, and our opponents knew how to target their fears very precisely. They have honed it to an art – their prime argument now is that although adults can handle gay equality, children cannot. And so they play straight to heterosexuals whose personal comfort with gay people is fine but who sure don’t want their kids to turn out that way. One way to prevent kids turning out that way, the equality opponents argue, is to ensure that they never hear of gay people, except in a marginalized, scary, alien fashion. And this referendum was clearly a vote in which the desire to keep gay people invisible trumped the urge to treat them equally.

The truth about civil marriage – why it is the essential criterion for gay equality – is that it alone explodes this core marginalization and invisibility of gay people. It alone can reach those gay kids who need to know they have a future as a dignified human being with a family. It alone tells society that gay people are equal in their loves and in their hearts and in their families – not just useful in a society with a need for talented or able individuals whose private lives remain perforce sequestered from view.

This is why it remains the prize. And why our eyes must remain fixed upon it. In my view, the desperate nature of the current tactics against us, the blatant use of fear around children (which both worries parents and also stigmatizes gay people in one, deft swoop) are signs that what we are demanding truly, truly matters.

There’s a danger in a self-conscious tradition, and a tradition in which it’s acceptable to toss off a limb for the sake of the whole — traditions, in addition to being billion-headed rabbis (not letting that analogy go, folks), are like starfish: limbs re-grow after time. (But a limbless tradition, like a limbless starfish, is less likely to survive: it’s probably more a danger with tradition than a starfish.)

The problem, on the other hand, with an ossified tradition is that it has ceased to live and lapsed into reflexive (more or less) dogma. An ossified tradition fails because the existence of a tradition within history inherently causes changes to the circumstances of that tradition — and that can necessitate changes to the tradition itself. To borrow (again) from Eliot’s imagery, the creation of a new work of art, by its existence, alters the relation of all previous works of art within the tradition to one another, even if imperceptibly.   Any tradition that is not dying or dead is a living tradition.

So now on to William Brafford’s debut post here at the League.  In his grappling with the concept of ideology, he writes:

We all need some kind of framework for interpreting the world around us and for guessing at the consequences of our actions, and we need to acquire these frameworks from those who came before, even if we modify them in the process of application. Such a framework I prefer to call a tradition. The key feature of a vibrant tradition is its continued grappling with its own internal problems and contradictions. Traditions always change and grow over time. A tradition that ceases to do this is a dead tradition, and a tradition that is dead or near death I will call an ideology.

So this becomes an exercise in connecting-the-dots.  On the one hand we have Scott urging conservatives to embrace “self-reflective traditions.”  But while this can be necessary and good, J.L. Wall also urges caution against cutting off the “limbs” of our traditions lest they become too fragile to survive.  Then again, a tradition that cannot continue “grappling with its own internal problems and contradictions” risks dying and transforming into an ideology rather than a tradition. [Read more →]

1. Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, and Dan Cloves are the League of Extraordinary Freelancers

Last night, which happened to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I attended a lecture by Pulitzer prize winning comic book artist (or graphic novelist) Art Spiegelman.  It was supposed to be a talk on tolerance and art, but he self-deprecatingly waved away these weighty subjects.  “Everything I know I learned from comic books,” he said.  “So I’m going to talk about comic books.”

And for the next two hours, that’s exactly what he did, talking and joking his way through a brief history of comic books, from the first old French comic strips to the now critically acclaimed “graphic novels” like The Watchmen, or his own masterpiece, Maus, which grapples in alternating humor and horror with his father’s memories of surviving Auschwitz, and his own turmoil in understanding that history.

Fortunately for the audience, the talk, like Spiegelman’s work, was not limited to words.  On a giant screen Spiegelman guided us from one comic to the next–some his, many from others who he took inspiration from.  And bit by bit, as he traversed the world of comics from the early days of racial caricatures to the modern world, where entire populations were subdued by the fear of Islamist reprisal over the Danish cartoons, (a subject he did a cover-story for Harper’s magazine on and which was subsequently banned in Canada) to the propaganda posters the Nazi’s used in the lead-up to the mass-execution of the Jews in Europe, Spiegelman drove home his overarching point:

These are not just lines on paper. [Read more →]