OPINION:
The story of Robin Hood creates a fascinating legend but makes for lousy social policy. Charity is the sacrificial giving of one’s own resources for the betterment of another. The parable of the Good Samaritan comes to mind. He used his own resources to care for a man beaten by robbers. He didn’t run off to lobby a city official or create an NGO to help the man. He didn’t solicit funds from the local town’s treasury, nor did he shame someone else into helping. He gave of his own time, his own talents and his own resources until the man was healed. This is a timeless parable from which the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops should learn (“Trump prevails over Catholic bishops in court battle over refugee money,” Web, March 11).
The story also exemplifies the principle of subsidiarity, upon which Catholic teachings on social justice are predicated. Throughout Scripture, we are taught that we have a personal responsibility to act charitably toward our fellow man. Why? Because charity in its essential form is a selfless act of love. Substituting more remote and impersonal organizations, such as NGOs or governments, to perform ‘charitable’ acts on one’s behalf may temporarily make one feel good, but it removes love (and thus God) from the equation. Simply put, A government can supply basic needs, but a government cannot love you.
Given this subsidiarity principle and the personal responsibility attached to charity, I was appalled when I read that the the USCCB was suing the Trump administration for suspending funding to “settle refugees in the U.S.” President Trump was right to suspended this program when he took office. In the past four years, the U.S. has been inundated by up to 20 million illegal aliens. Suing the “charitable donor” when he or she stops giving is a clue that this is not really charity at all — it is larceny masquerading as such.
Since 2009, Catholic Charities and its network of NGOs have been granted $5.2 billion of our hard-earned tax dollars for providing “immigration services” to the federal government. That buys a lot of silence on other moral issues, like abortion. But what about the violent criminal illegal aliens who have run rampant in our nation? They have murdered, raped, participated in and profited from sex slavery and child and drug trafficking.
There’s no mention in the Gospel of federal grants to NGOs being critical to charitable acts. The USCCB should ditch its Big Government emulation of Robin Hood in favor of Christ’s personal mandate to love one’s neighbor.
MIKE HADRO
Manassas, Virginia
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