The following excerpts are from a Washington Post opinion article entitled “The poor pay the price for Obama’s politics” by Michael Gerson. The emphases are mine:
- Take the case of one city: Philadelphia. There are about 2,000 such faith-based institutions, many of them Catholic. Replacing them would require about a quarter of a billion dollars every year. Catholic Social Services helps more than 250,000 people a year in soup kitchens, shelters and centers for the disabled. Its Community-Based Services division runs adoption and foster-care programs, staffs senior community centers and supports immigration services. The Catholic Nutritional Development Services, working in partnership with public agencies, delivers nearly 10 million meals a year — accounting for about half of all meals delivered to poor children in Philadelphia in the summer months when school is out.
- Much of this good work — and similar work across the country — is now threatened. If federal policies make it impossible for religious nonprofits and hospitals to work in conjunction with federal, state and local agencies in providing social services, millions of poor and vulnerable Americans — Catholic and non-Catholic, religious and nonreligious — would suffer. The task of building alternatives would cost hundreds of billions of dollars — and then lack the distinctive human touch provided by religious groups.
Read it all here:
The poor pay the price for Obama’s political calculation - The Washington Post
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