Your tax dollars:

Here is one more whiny opinion piece by a Catholic ‘leader’ about the Obama Administration order that says if you get federal money, you have to offer abortion services.  That puts the US Conference of Catholic Bishops between a rock and a hard place doesn’t it?  They can’t take care of the ‘unaccompanied alien children’ they have been paid for years to shelter, unless they provide access to abortions.

It is a very simple concept that every one of these Catholic writers try very hard to muddy the waters on:  If you take Caesar’s money, you have to follow Caesar’s rules!

From Catholic News Service where author John Garvey starts out with a little sobbing for the “children.”

 Last year a crisis unfolded as thousands of children, some as young as 6, made their way alone from their Central American home countries and attempted a dangerous crossing into the United States. Many little ones died lonely deaths in the desert. Thousands were fortunately rescued by federal authorities and now fall under our government’s care.

It’s an open question whether — or how many — of these children should stay, but they are children. The federal government cannot simply house them in prisons. It must find ways to occupy them constructively — to educate them, even — while they await final disposition of their court cases.

Uncle Sam outsourced this work, as he often does, to the U.S. bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services*** and other experienced refugee organizations, some of which are faith-based. That made sense.  [Outsourced is, of course, a nice way of saying the feds PAY us!—ed]

But on Christmas Eve (presumably to avoid attention), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services published an interim final rule that could disrupt this arrangement. It is designed to guarantee abortion access for minors in this precarious position, on the off chance that any of them might have become pregnant as a result of having been sexually abused.

[….]

“This,” the coalition of Christian groups wrote, “will have the effect of disqualifying our organizations from being primary grantees, the very organizations that have the most experience in providing services to unaccompanied minors and are best qualified to serve as grantees. Such a discriminatory effect would immediately work to the detriment of the children who are the intended beneficiaries of the program.”  [It is all for the “children” except that it isn’t, it is about the Bishops’ money!—ed]

*** We examined the USCCB’s Migration Fund here and learned that the majority (98%!) of their millions and millions of dollars each year comes from you—the US taxpayer!   Of course Catholics are free to care for migrant children, refugees and immigrants generally with their own private charity and thus not have this rule, that flies in the face of their supposed religious beliefs (from the guy the majority of Catholics voted for) dictating what they do.

But, alas in order to hold on to their principles, they would have to dig into their own private pockets instead of stealing from the taxpayer.