Feed the poor

[rolanni]

In a classy, not to say compassionate, move, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland (Maine) had demanded a refund of its charitable giving to a Portland homeless shelter.  Read all about it.

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[muehe.livejournal.com]

You can hardly fault the church -- the homeless organization miss-represented itself. This is just publicity hype now. "Look at the big mean church".

If it was an animal shelter and you found out that they were putting the animals down – you would be upset at the shelter.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Perfectly within the church's right to refuse any more donations. Not Cool to demand a refund of monies already given.

IMHO.

[ebartley.livejournal.com]

If the church had forgotten to ask about the organization's beliefs, and it turned out to be supporting things the church disapproved of, then I'd agree with you precisely. Given that they were lied to, they *have* to ask for the money back; to do otherwise would be unfair to all the organizations who didn't get money because they were honest. (And because it would be encouraging people to defraud those moneys from the church, not penalizing the liar would mean that the diocese would have to spend more money out of that bucket checking the bonafides of organizations applying for donations, penalizing all of the organizations who otherwise would have gotten funded.)

It's Not Cool to profit by deceit, even if you Do Good with your ill-gotten gains.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

It's not actually clear that the church was lied to. The question was whether the homeless shelter "promotes or advocates" same-sex marriage. At issue appears to be whether seeking justice and equality for marginalized groups is "promoting or advocating."

There's also the little question of the Huge Amounts of Mone$y the catholic church spent on a political campaign to crush same-sex marriage in Maine. Last time I looked, as I've said here before, church and state were supposed to be separate. Speaking of misrepresentation and dishonesty.

[ebartley.livejournal.com]

If an organization collected donations with the agreement containing the provision "All volunteer labor: 100% of donations will go to promote same-sex marriage" and then spent its entire budget opposing Question 1, and someone cash-strapped sued to get his donation back on the grounds that opposing Question 1 wasn't promoting for same-sex marriage, I would expect the lawsuit to go down in flames.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

It's not at all clear to me that they were "lied to". According to the article (which is all the information I have on the matter; if you have more then please point me to it) at the time they filed the grant application they were truthful, some 9 or 10 months later they joined the coalition. (According to the article, it may not even be the same organisation, they say that they operate under different boards.)

Whatever, it is Seriously Uncool of the Church to ask for the money back (giving with 'strings' attached is a lot like bribery, and the RC Church does it a lot; Christ didn't say "feed the poor only if they agree to your narrow ideology"), and I suspect that what the article says is correct that people will think twice before putting their money in that direction.

[n6vfp.livejournal.com]

I read the eligibility document referenced in the article (they are in the sidebar of the news article) and on page one, they list the moral and social teaching of the Catholic Church. They seem to forgot that they (the church) in items 3 and 4 of this section of the document state that people have freedom of conscience and the ability to live free of unfair discrimination. They also go on to talk about respecting the rights of others. I guess the Catholic Church finds that they are the final arbiter of what is right, thus society cannot make same sex marriage legal. My question to the Bishop would be that your policies may be good in a theocracy, but we aren't there yet.

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

demanded a refund

they probably needed the money to pay restitution for sex abuse victims.

the Catholic Church finds that they are the final arbiter of what is right

[elgordo303.livejournal.com]

... ummm yeah. Hasn't that always been the case?