Lay Responsibilities and the Order of Charity

By Michael Pakaluk. I take it that charity has to be freely given by the person who shows charity. If I steal someone's credit card and purchase all kinds of goods with it for a homeless person, I am not showing charity, because that other person never gave his consent. If we are being strict about it - and why not be strict? - the $100 million that the U.S. bishops received in Federal money last year to resettle refugees was not theirs and does not even exist. At least, you'd need a good argument for why that sum shouldn't be assigned to the Federal government's roughly $2 trillion dollar deficit last year. So, not only does the money not exist, many of the people who will be obliged to pay it, your grandchildren and mine, may still not exist. They certainly did not give their consent. Charity should be ordered. There is something called an "order of charity." Giving that is disordered is not charity. If I am reading the USCCB's financials correctly, the bishops added in $4 million of their own to resettle refugees, from monies taken in weekly collection, for a total of $104 million. One cannot argue from this (as The Pillar has done) that they took a loss on the program, because it was their free decision to add the $4 million. And who knows what amount they would otherwise have spent if they had not received the $100 million? But for the program to be in the strict sense a work of charity - and, again, why not be strict? - they would need to have persuaded parishioners to give 25 times more than the $4 million they were already giving to assist refugee resettlement. Who believes that they could have succeeded in doing this, when - for instance parochial schools are woefully underfunded? There is an order of charity. Vice President J.D. Vance wondered aloud on CBS Face the Nation last week whether the bishops' criticism of Trump's executive orders on immigration wasn't motivated by their desire to protect their bottom line. The claim I take it is not, of course, that they pocket any of the Federal grant but rather: Who wouldn't want a flow-through stream of $100 million? The bishops take a 20 percent cut of that money before passing it on to lower-level entities that deal with the refugees (grant for purposes of argument that they are all "refugees" and not merely economic migrants). Let's say optimistically that those entities take a 20 percent cut too. Let's say, also optimistically, that the Federal government took a 20 percent cut before the money even got to the bishops. Then of the roughly $120 million that never existed and was taken from my descendants without their consent, only half of it anyway gets to actual refugees. $60 million evaporates for no lasting good purpose, if it does not underwrite mischievous purposes. If you are beginning to wonder what any of this has to do with charity and Matthew 25, you are not alone. Doubts have already been raised about "the Church as NGO" by Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. Whether the bishops or some bishops like to see the consequences of $100 million in flow-through monies may be the least of the worries. In administering the Federal funds, the bishops made themselves agents of the government and collaborators in the Biden administration's policies. If they are agents and collaborators, by no reasonable standard accepted anywhere else can they be accounted disinterested or dispassionate. Moreover, recipients of Federal funds know that with grants come strings. It proves very difficult to avoid falling into an across-the-board culture of compliance. Do all of the subsidiary entities, in their expenditure of these funds, follow a Christian inspiration, or do they rather follow Federal codes of compliance? The question answers itself. Does a culture of compliance in one domain have overflow effects in other domains? This question remains to be investigated. An entity receiving many millions of dollars in Federal monies will typically find it difficult to re...