Catholic Charities of Washington DC will cut off spousal benefits to all its employees. Why? Because DC is about to start permitting same-sex marriages, which aren’t valid in the eyes of the Church. From the Washington Post:
“We looked at all the options and implications,” said the charity’s president, Edward J. Orzechowski. “This allows us to continue providing services, comply with the city’s new requirements and remain faithful to the church’s teaching.”
This is the only way they can legally deny benefits to same-sex spouses. So what is this — a brave commitment to religious principle? Craven homophobia? You decide.
As I’ve reported before, same-sex marriage isn’t the only invalid marriage under Catholic doctrine. For instance:
- A Catholic and a Jew married by a rabbi and not a priest.
- A Catholic and a Baptist married by a minister and not a priest.
- A Catholic and anybody not married by a priest.
A Catholic must be married by a priest for the marriage to be valid in the eyes of the Church. Interestingly, this requirement doesn’t apply to non-Catholic couples — the Church is fine with marriage outside the Church as long as neither partner is Catholic.
So Catholic Charities would insist on denying spousal benefits in the three cases above, right?
Right?
Except that the cases above would be toxic PR, requiring the Church to say:
We won’t give the same employment benefits to Catholics married to Jews (in a Jewish service) as we do to Jews married to Jews (in a Jewish service) or to Catholics married to Catholics (in a Catholic service).
It’s hard to spin religious discrimination as a moral principle. Anti-gay bigotry’s a lot more palatable.
Don’t let Catholic Charities get away with claiming a principled stand in the fight for religious liberty. They’ve been giving spousal benefits to legal but “invalid” marriages for years. This is about targeting the gays.
[Tip of the hat to Joe.My.God.]
My Dad was a staunch Catholic. He put money in the basket every Sunday even though we were not a wealthy family. I wonder how he would feel now (he is deceased) knowing the money he gave was being used to discriminate against his son-me? The Catholic church gave over $150,000 to defeat gay marriage in Maine-yet they are closing parishes everywhere due to dwindling funds. I am not a “rocket scientist” but if I were the head of ANY church I would accept EVERYONE!!! More people means more MONEY. Right?
Don’t forget remarriages. They aren’t recognized by the Church either. It was quite a delight to hear Andrew Sullivan bring up this very point in reference to DC and the Catholic Church when debating Maggie Gallagher at CATO a few weeks ago.
While most objective people can look at the actions of the Church and see them as animus toward gays and not privileged stand by doctrine, social acceptance will dictate that those in power can write it as principled…even when they found it more pragmatic to ignore the principle in the past.
If they followed their principles, they’d never have hired in the past a divorcee for the same reasons that allowing a gay man or woman to give spousal benefits to their partner “sponsors” the sin.
The catholic church is one of the most bigoted, right up there with Mormans and baptists. With the catholic church it is all about the POWER. The Catholic Church has ALWAYS had alot of power in this country & around the world; And have always wanted to keep the people in their tight grip, “with their outdated old fashioned rules from about 6000 yrs. ago.” The Pope and his clan thinks they can make the world stand still, and never change, just to suit their benefit, and keep their POWER. They can sense they are losing some of their power now, & they are pissing mad! “Tooo Bad”; The Catholic Church is WRONG in their evil attempt to take away a minorities equal civil rights; And thank God D.C is not taking their evil treats to stop charity work, deny benefits etc. (Afterall they get tax deferments) That they really don’t deserve! District of Columbia gave the gay people the legal and equal right to marry. And there is nothing the Powerful “and Evil” catholic church can do about it.
Let’s don’t even get started on the question of annulments, which allow influential Catholics like Teddy Kennedy to remarry and stay within the Church. And let’s overlook serial adulterers like Newt Gingrich, who was welcomed into the fold after two divorces and X number of affairs. Of course those were heterosexual sins and apparently those don’t count. Oh wait, homosexual rape of little boys doesn’t count either. It certainly is complicated.
I think they forget where their money actually comes from. So an organization that is 100% reliant on cheritable donations wants to take a political stand on this? Donate your money to more worthly organizations that don’t play politics. I have been donating to the Red Cross rather than the church.
KL, actually the roman cult owes much of its wealth to shrewd real estate development. Much of the donations go to the charities group or local parishes.
It is quite funny, and depressing to watch this sad, hate filled cult die a slow long death here in our country while the nazi-pope-in-drag in Rome sits comfortable knowing it all can fail but the central “holy see” will be just fine. probably why the send the rapists to Rome, beyond the reach of the law in countries where the sheeple are waking up and demanding justice.
this is simply organized crime with a religion pass. Without the so-called morality, we would have gotten rid of them a long time ago.
i can’t wait until people can no longer say “good christian” without being laughed at. When I here “christian” I think evil, or simple minded, depending on the position.
I find this to be about as logical as the state of Utah making miscarriages a criminal offence. I saw on the news tonight that a pregnant woman was arrested because she fell down the steps. At the time of this post, it is not known if she miscarried.
In the defense of the Catholic church, any Catholic couple, not just famous or influential ones, can get an annulment provided an issue has come to light in their relationship that, had it been evident prior to the marriage, would have prevented the union from taking place. The Catholic church holds pretty backwards positions on a whole slew of issues, but at the very least, they do sanction the dissolution of marriages ruined by things like domestic violence or addiction.
Nevertheless, this decision to shut down all marriage benefits just to make sure that gay people don’t have the slightest chance of benefiting from them is completely stupid, and as Rob pointed out, logically unsound. These discriminatory positions backed up by fake dogma are a big part of why I left the Catholic church I grew up in.
Never ever donate to the Catholic group. Never ever. The priests & the bishops take advantage of the money. They continue to destroy our world by forcing women to have more babies, even the ones who have been victims of rape & incest. The reason? because the Ten commandments said “Thou shalt not kill”. Rather than using their own common sense, they choose to be biblical literal; thus, it makes them the stupidest people on earth.
Not only that, these priests & bishops would rather spend half of the money on beautifying their cathedrals than to give the money to the poor.