Could the US Conference of Catholic Bishops be using federal funding for the settlement of sexual abuse cases?
It isn’t such a farfetched question. Remember in early 2010 we posted charges by a man closely connected to the Episcopal Church who alleged that it is the federal funding for refugee resettlement that is keeping that cash-strapped church afloat. See those posts here and here.
As I said at the time and still say today—there needs to be a regular annual financial audit (available to the public) of each of the nine major federal refugee contractors. Their hundreds of subcontractors should also be audited (financially!) on some regular schedule. They will tell you they are audited, but its largely a “programmatic” audit that looks at how well they are doing getting the refugees jobs or hooked up with social services.
And, here is a question that continues to perplex me especially at the Christmas season when groups like the ACLU come alive and demand that there be a separation of church and state, why are they silent on federal funding of the Catholic Church?
Here are some key points from Thomas Allen’s definitive post on funding for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops entitled, Is The Refugee Racket Helping Pay For The Catholic Church’s Child Abuse Settlements?
~2011 revenue for Migration and Refugee Services, USCCB’s refugee contracting arm: $72.1 million.
~[I]n fact USCCB independently raises only about 2% (two percent) of its $72.1 million total revenues. The rest comes from contracts, grants and earnings from federal programs.
~“Affiliate funding” does not mean voluntary donations. This is not charity. The USCCB and its Catholic Charities affiliate assist refugees only when paid by the U.S. government.
~Even volunteer time and donated items given by local community members turns into money for USCCB. It imputes a dollar value to all volunteer activity and gives the bill to the feds under the misnamed Federal Matching Grant program.
On this last point, I gotta laugh. I knew a young man who volunteered at one of the major refugee contractors here in Maryland. He received no pay (as I said he volunteered) and used his own old car (got no repayment for mileage) to be the one-man “welcoming committee” to pick up newly arriving refugees at the airport. Often one will read about the lavish welcome refugees get upon landing in the US, not so in large numbers of cases. Little did this young man know that his hours and his mileage were being turned into the federal government for repayment to the contractor from the US taxpayer.
Read the whole VDARE article and save it!
Oh, and one final outrage—word is that the US State Department pays for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Washington, DC office! And, they use your money to lobby for things like Obamacare and Amnesty for illegal aliens, here and here.
Don’t cry now for the Catholic Churches predicament with Obama. Apparently they haven’t learned the lesson well enough yet—when you take Caesar’s money, Caesar owns you!