Archbishop's web site Denver Catholic Register Parishes Catholic Pastoral Center
March 6, 2002
Catholic social ministers urged to get behind faith-based legislation
Towey: `Government cannot love,' but can work in partnership with faith-based groups
By Mark Pattison
WASHINGTON (CNS) — Jim Towey, the Catholic who now heads the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, asked Catholic social ministry leaders to lend their support to passage of legislation supporting greater federal support for faith-based organizations that are trying to solve social needs and ills.
"Government cannot love. It's hard for government to be neighbor," Towey said. "But government can work in partnership" with faith-based groups, he added.
"We can remove the real-world barriers."
Towey spoke during a general session on the final day of the Feb. 24-27 Catholic Social Ministry Gathering in Washington.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has supported two bills in Congress that respond directly to President Bush's faith-based initiative: the Community Solutions Act in the House, which passed 233-198 last July, and the Charity Aid, Recovery and Empowerment Act now before the Senate.
The House bill expands current charitable choice law, first enacted in 1996, to federal social service programs while protecting the religious freedom of both organizations and individuals; allows seniors over age 70 to make charitable contributions of individual retirement accounts without incurring a tax liability; and provides liability protection for certain corporate in-kind charitable donations.
The Senate bill, introduced in February to deal with the ongoing recession and aftermath of September's terror attacks, includes changes in the tax code to encourage more private charities giving, including a more generous deduction than in the House bill for those who do not itemize deductions; funding for a Compassion Capital Fund to give technical assistance to small charities that may want to try to obtain a federal grant; and more Social Services Block Grant and Second Chance/Maternity Groups Home monies to enable religious and nonreligious charities to provide needed social services.
The charitable choice language in the House bill does not appear in the Senate version.
Towey spoke of a Catholic shelter in South Carolina that gave back a $50,000 federal Housing and Urban Development grant after a HUD representative said the shelter would have to take the crosses off the walls to stay in compliance with federal guidelines.
He also told of a Grand Rapids, Mich., religious charity that runs afoul of federal grantmakers because the charity stipulates that a certain number of members on its board be members of a particular religion.
"You should not be preaching or proselytizing on the federal government's dime," Towey said. "But you cannot strip programs of their religious content, because that is what makes them effective."
He said technical assistance for small religious groups is only part of the solution. Another component is easing the process that would register the groups as federal nonprofit organizations, thus qualifying them for federal grants.
A "massive education program" also would need to be undertaken so that religious charities can see how they can be partners with the federal government, Towey said. He added that some charities still ultimately may decide not to apply for federal money to assist with their programs.
Towey, who served as the Missionaries of Charity's U.S. legal counsel for 12 years, also lived for a year in a home staffed by Mother Teresa's orders in Washington.
Mother Teresa, he said, was one who lived for others. When someone once pointed out to her that, for every person she took off the streets of Calcutta to be cared for by the Missionaries of Charity, another 10 died, her famous reply was, "God did not call me to be successful. He called me to be faithful."
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