I’m not sure which information you are referring to. As far as the amount of dollars Catholic charities get from federal funding, I posted a link earlier in this thread that is from a Catholic lobbying group. As far as anything stated in the immediately preceding post, everything stated is public information from various media reports covering the merger of St. Mary’s Hospital and Baptist Hospital in Knoxville TN into a new entity called Mercy Hospital and the subsequent buyout of that chain by a for profit now named Tennova.
I understand that there are pamphlets of the nature you refer to but I haven’t seen anything like that in decades. To say I have spoken ill of others when I have only said I was opposed to ANY church receiving government money seems a stretch.
You posted a link from Network, home of the nuns on the bus tour. Not exactly a group known for its orthodoxy. (Salvation, here's their Catholic Culture rating).
So I take it the answer to my question, gypsylea, is that your church would close its hospital or sell it to secularists? I can respect that choice if your church chose to make it. I disagree though if you're implying that a faith based group automatically fails or is deficient in charity if they continue health care ministries.
two religiously affiliated hospital chains— one Baptist, one Catholic—have been taken over by one for profit chain. In both instances, the percentage of services provided without reimbursement has actually stayed about the same.
The operative words there being "for profit chain." Catholic facilities I'm familiar with are nonprofit although I don't know that all are. The ones I'm familiar with outpace their secular counterparts by a mile in the uncompensated care they provide.
their disappearance has not created any new holes in the safety net.
How do you know by looking at the dollar amount? You have to examine whether particular services were discontinued. For example, a mobile outreach to homeless shelters might be discontinued and the funds spent on a different initiative. There's a hole in the safety net for homeless people that you wouldn't see looking at the dollar amount. Or a program that provided medication assistance is cut to help balance the budget. You wouldn't know there's a group of people who no longer get medications just by looking at the dollar figure.
No one tells us who we can serve or how.
Not to be argumentative, but yes they do. Try not serving people of a particular ethnic group. Or making people memorize scripture as a condition of receiving assistance. Or serving food that's spoiled. Not that you would do those things, of course. But you do have rules with which you must comply or face consequences.
I suppose the buildings have to comply with the building codes and so forth, but that doesn’t really seem on point.
Of course it's on point. You must meet various laws to operate a physical structure just as a hospital must. There's so much govt creep into our lives! Therefore I say it's hard to imagine a ministry that has no federal regulations impacting it in some way.
I appreciate hearing your views on the topic. Peace be with you. And know that I appreciate what your church does to feed the hungry :)