I take it that charity has to be freely given by the person who shows charity. If I steal someone’s credit card and purchase all kinds of goods with it for a homeless person, I am not showing charity, because that other person never gave his consent.
If we are being strict about it – and why not be strict? – the $100 million that the U.S. bishops received in Federal money last year to resettle refugees was not theirs and does not even exist. At least, you’d need a good argument for why that sum shouldn’t be assigned to the Federal government’s roughly $2 trillion dollar deficit last year. So, not only does the money not exist, many of the people who will be obliged to pay it, your grandchildren and mine, may still not exist. They certainly did not give their consent.
Charity should be ordered. There is something called an “order of charity.” Giving that is disordered is not charity.
If I am reading the USCCB’s financials correctly, the bishops added in $4 million of their own to resettle refugees, from monies taken in weekly collection, for a total of $104 million. One cannot argue from this (as The Pillar has done) that they took a loss on the program, because it was their free decision to add the $4 million. And who knows what amount they would otherwise have spent if they had not received the $100 million?
But for the program to be in the strict sense a work of charity – and, again, why not be strict? – they would need to have persuaded parishioners to give 25 times more than the $4 million they were already giving to assist refugee resettlement. Who believes that they could have succeeded in doing this, when – for instance parochial schools are woefully underfunded? There is an order of charity.
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