WASHINGTON (EWTN News/CNA)—The Obama administration has cut funding for the U.S. bishops’ campaign against human trafficking, which had been challenged by the ACLU for avoiding contraception and abortion.
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said there was “no reason given” by the Department of Health and Human Services for rejecting the conference’s application for a new grant at the end of September.
She said the bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services work had previously been “well regarded.”
However, in a Sept. 29 letter to the U.S. Catholic hierarchy, Archbishop Timothy Dolan had warned that the administration was “requiring that Migration and Refugee Services provide the ‘full range of reproductive services’ to trafficking victims and unaccompanied minors in its cooperative agreements and government contracts.”
The U.S. bishops’ conference president indicated that the “full range of reproductive services” was a veiled reference to contraception and abortion. He stated that this new federal requirement followed “exactly the position urged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the ongoing lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of MRS’ contracts.”
In its written instructions to groups requesting grants through the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the Department of Health and Human Services states that “strong preference” will be given to organizations that offer referrals for the “full range of legally permissible gynecological and obstetric care.”
Sister Mary Ann explained that Migration and Refugee Services could have been denied funding under those instructions because of the Church’s opposition to abortion and contraception.
In a 2009 lawsuit, the ACLU of Massachusetts claimed that the contract with the Catholic bishops was unconstitutional because the group would not aid or refer individuals for services that violate Church teaching.
The lawsuit is still pending, with oral arguments in federal court scheduled for Oct. 18.
Sister Mary Ann, however, said that in six years of providing food, clothing and medical care to human-trafficking victims, Migration and Refugee Services has been “very well received” and was “seen as one of the best programs.”
The organization has served more than 2,700 people since 2006, when it entered a five-year contract to offer services with a federal grant. After a brief extension, the contract ended Oct. 10.
Sister Mary Ann said the bishops are “concerned” about the situation.
Freedom of conscience for religious organizations has become a heated topic in recent months, after the Department of Health and Human Services released regulations that would require the coverage of contraception in most new health-insurance plans.
In his Sept. 29 letter establishing a new committee on religious freedom, Archbishop Dolan told the U.S. bishops that believers’ rights were “increasingly and in unprecedented ways under assault in America” from an “assault which now appears to grow at an ever-accelerating pace in ways most of us could never have imagined.”
HHS did not respond to CNA/EWTN News’ inquiry about the defunding of the bishops’ refugee program.
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We should be praying for the souls of those in thevACLU and Adm who implemented this. It cries out to God. And zhe will not be mocked. Day after day it is building. And the fall will be great.
Yes, please, let’s cut off our nose to spite our face!
Nota bene: the administration has given up the charade of caring about human trafficking or its victims. Forget results; ideology is paramount. Well, this should be a boon to bed-buddy Planned Parenthood.
When are the bishops going to learn that this administration, and for that matter the modern Democrat Party, are not their friends, and that party doesn’t really care about helping those in need and the poor. They use those issues only to get people like Catholics to vote for them. Now their true colors are showing as Catholics have helped elect the first pro-abortion, pro-infanticide President of the United States. They have the power they want and they are fighting to keep it. Look at this mob they support in NY City; and the union mob in the capital of Wisconsin earlier this year. These mobs are this president’s weapons to attempt to force America to become something that it isn’t. How could anybody believe a political organization that fights to keep abortion-on-demand the law-of- the-land like the Democrat Party has is serious about the sanctity of life and caring for the poor? They use the poor to get what they want, and that is power. They have it now and they will fight like hell to keep it, believing the Catholic laity will not desert them because of the historical support the bishops and clergy have given that party and still give them. This president beat the bishops on his healthcare overhaul which the bishops support now regardless of the abortion and the conscience clause problems. I say that because the president of the USCCB, Archbishop Dolan, said, in essence, that they are not going to work to repeal it.
If the bishops and clergy really wanted to end abortion on demand and stop these leftist, Democrat attacks on the work of the Church, they could do it within a couple months, legally and without fear of losing their tax exempt status. Spiritually, there is no reason for any Catholic to give his or her name to a worldly organization that is diabolically opposed to what those Catholics profess to believe and pray for in church every Sunday. Catholics say they believe God is the giver of life and they pray for God’s will to be done on earth in the Lord’s Prayer. What? God gives life so it can be aborted? Is God in contradiction with Himself? Or, are Catholic Democrats in contradiction with what they say they profess to believe and pray for? And that includes the bishops, clergy and religious registered in the Democrat Party which is the majority of them. Don’t those Catholics realize they are the main reason the Democrat Party has any power at all? All that is needed to have a powerful, positive impact on our culture and society far greater than the mobs in Madison and New York City could dream of is to just have each Catholic Democrat decide for themselves whether they really believe what they profess to believe and pray for with their own mouths in church on Sundays. Are they true to their word to God, or are they just mouthing words? Is it more important to them to be a Democrat, or a Catholic – because you can’t be both? You can’t be both any more than a person registered in KKK could be real Catholic. And just like a business that sees customers not coming into their stores or buying their products any more will be forced to look at why that has happened all of a sudden, so the Democrat Party will have to exam why their voter registration rolls are declining all of a sudden. When they realize Catholics are abandoning the party, especially at this time, the party leadership will be forced to reverse its attack on the Church or face becoming an insignificant political organization.
I couldn’t be happier! I don’t agree with the ACLU or support abortion but these bishops are so misguided on immigration (and let’s do be honest this is not “immigration” which implies some kind of orderly and legal process, but rather an invasion of the uninvited) someone needed to slap them upside the head. They won’t listen to the laity in their churches. They won’t listen to anyone who isn’t Hispanic. IMHO, they are bigots and they are part of a criminal conspiracy. I think along with cutting off funding some of them need to be jailed, or defrocked for these misadventures which DO NOT serve Catholics. They pit one group against another - that doesn’t serve the mission of the the Church. They refuse to listen because they are so arrogantly mistaken. They do not fulfill their primary mission which is the salvation of souls, not getting involved in purely temporal political issues such as “amnesty”. When the Catholic bishops start paying taxes, they can have a voice, OK?
This issue of Hispanic invasion of our country is one on which Catholics can disagree. Abortion and Euthanasia and gay marriage are not. They are different issues and people need to stop conflating them.
No comment from Martin Sheen who encouraged so many Catholics to vote for Obama??
Why does this surprise anyone? This prez. was committed to abortion and all its politics from his political beginnings.
The bishops should start a nation-wide fundraiser, and let’s show that WE faithful Catholics can support work for the needy without government money!
Nobody can force the Catholic Church to provide abortion counseling services or anything else that violates their own beliefs. They can still provide whatever services they want as long as they do it with their own money.
This is the United States. We were most fortunate that the wise founders of this country, familiar with the long and sordid history of abuses by European churches with political power and guaranteed access to tax money, wrote a Constitution that keeps churches out of government and the government out of churches.
Above all our Constitution says that no church, not even yours, gets to decide how to spend government tax revenues. Only the elected governments of this country do that—and religious tests for government participants are specifically prohibited.
Now if the government wants to purchase a Constitutionally permissible service from a church that’s willing to provide it, great. But in any financial transaction it’s the party with the cash who decides what they’re buying with it. The provider of the service can either agree to provide what’s requested or they can walk away. They don’t get to unilaterally dictate the terms of the deal.
So stop whining and accept it. This is how the modern world works and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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