“Catholic Charities USA”
Perhaps you meant to say that Catholic Charities USA receives money rather than Catholics receive money.
Catholic Charities USA does not restrict itself to Catholics, nor, best I can tell, does it even favor Catholics in its charitable activities.
Catholic Charities is for anyone in need. They do not ask you your faith. The Salvation Army also received Federal money. All faith-based charities do.
By the way the Knights of Columbus does not get a cent from the Federal government and has no overhead. Every penny goes to helping those in need.
Catholics in need as well as others do get services from Catholic Charities. This is a Catholic organization and an agent of the Catholic Church,
Do not lose sight of the subject of this thread ie the conservatives disappointed in Cardinal Dolan. The Catholic Church taking federal money poses dangers as illustrated in a comment from another source.
“Re: 62% of Catholic Charities $ from US Gov’t?
I have no reason to doubt the 62% number.
However, I do have concerns about the wisdom of it from the Church’s point of view. There was a time when Catholic institutions of all kinds received nothing from the government, relying entirely on donations, and, to all appearances, did a pretty good job of charitable works.
Lots of things changed, including the shortage of priests and nuns who often staffed the institutions. But also, the governments at every level have progressively increased taxes, so (or so I believe) charitable giving is getting “crowded out” by governmental entities.
So, government handles the money and gives some of it to the entities to which people might have otherwise donated but for the ever-increasing taxation. It does not, to me, make a lot of sense other than from the government beaurocratic point of view.
But increasingly, we’re also seeing governmental interference in the expression of the charitable missions. Catholic adoption agencies are defunded unless they place children with homosexuals; Obama requires that they pay for contraceptive and abortion insurance coverage; Obama disqualifies a Catholic organization from providing refugee aid because it won’t refer them for abortions.
In other words, it appears to me the Catholic organizations are now progressively being “crowded out” of charitable enterprises from the other side as well. The future of such organizations does not look all that rosy to me unless individual Catholics decide to change their “giving” habits significantly.
Yes, one gets a tax deduction for charitable donations. But that isn’t dollar for dollar. To “replace” government defunding of Catholic organizations, Catholics would have to reduce their personal consumption, which is hard in a consumerist society. But in my opinion, it’s going to come to that, probably along with a significant reduction in the number and missions of the various Catholic charitable organizations. Some of the existing ones will elect to “go secular”, as some of the “Catholic” hospitals have done, and more of which appear to be on the cusp of doing it.”