The whining continues from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) about being cut out of the federal largess via those lucrative Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) human trafficking grants awarded at the start of the new fiscal year.

I told you about the controversy, here, two days ago.   The USCCB is saying those secular agencies that did get the millions of taxpayer dollars have no experience in the field, AND that the ORR was responding in advance because the ACLU had filed suit claiming the Catholic agencies weren’t offering the “full range of reproductive services” (code of course for birth control and abortion).   On whose side did you think the Obama Administration would be?

From Catholic Culture:

The director of media relations of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is charging that the new recipients of a federal grant to assist victims of human trafficking lack experience.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement declined to renew a grant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services (MRS) to aid victims of human trafficking–likely because of the agency’s refusal to offer trafficking victims a “full range of reproductive services.” MRS has assisted 2,700 victims since 2006.

Bishops, when you take money from government it’s a form of sleeping with the devil and, if you have a conscience, the consequences are usually not happy ones in the long run.  There is no law against helping victims of trafficking all by yourself you know!

Update October 14th:  More boohooing from the Bishops on losing some of their cut of your money, here.  And, more here!

According to Catholic News Service the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has lost a LUCRATIVE federal grant for their CHARITABLE WORK to help victims of human trafficking.

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Since 2006, the U.S. Catholic bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services has helped more than 2,700 victims of human trafficking obtain food, clothing and access to medical care.

That service came to an abrupt halt when the agency recently learned that it would no longer receive a federal grant for this work from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

MRS officials had no immediate comment on the contract’s discontinuation.

Mercy Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told Catholic News Service Oct. 11 that she hoped the Catholic Church’s “position against abortion, sterilization and artificial contraception has not entered into this decision, especially since this administration has said it stands fully behind freedom of conscience.”

She noted that the MRS’s anti-trafficking program “ran quite well without these services” and said it would be “tragic if abortion politics harmed the men, women and children already at risk because of the crime and scandal of human trafficking.”

$5 Million dollars per year per group!

Three groups were awarded federal grants for anti-trafficking programs. The groups are Tapestri, based in Atlanta, Heartland Human Care Services in Chicago and the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants based in Washington. The groups have each been awarded $5 million contracts per year with the possibility of adding two additional years.

By the way there are critics of this program who contend this is just one more racket for non-profits to get taxpayer dollars, that there aren’t even that many people being trafficked in the US!  But, that is a story for another time.

Here is an idea for the Catholic Bishops!

Maybe if you did your charitable good works WITHOUT A FEDERAL GRANT then the federal government would in no way have its hooks in you, your conscience and your good people.   Wasn’t there something I recall from the old days—something about Caesar and taxes and not mixing government and God—who said that?  Of course, rendering unto Caesar was about paying taxes, but I suspect that the church taking peoples’ money indirectly by taking taxes from the unwilling might be viewed similarly.

New readers should know that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops gets many millions of dollars from taxpayers every year and then uses the money, not just for refugees, but to promote their many political agenda items.  Here is just one of many posts on the subject.