By CHRISTOPHER MANION
A millennial named David Ian Robin writes that, “When I graduated in 2011, I owed $137,000 in student loans. Today I have $175,000 [in debt] even as I continue making monthly payments. I will never own a home, start a family, or live debt-free.”
“Bernie Sanders is the only person running who will cancel ALL student debt,” he adds.
It would be unfair to examine Mr. Robin’s judgment, his decision-making over the years, even his understanding of basic arithmetic. Our purpose here is to acknowledge the sad fact of the massive ignorance that prevails among millions of America’s miseducated college students. The Democrat presidential contenders, taking the millennials’ illiteracy for granted, are falling over each other promising generous taxpayer-funded gifts which they want to shower upon these young people.
Donald Trump must respond forcefully. Here’s my plan.
The National Debt amounts to some $21 trillion and change. With some 327 million Americans, that’s about $56,000 for every man, woman, and child.
We’re all in Robin’s shoes.
So Donald Trump should beat Bernie at his own game and make a historic promise to every American:
“If reelected, I promise that I will cancel the National Debt!”
He can’t lose.
Catholic Relief Services
In The News Again
“Do not shred,” says the envelope that arrived from Catholic Relief Services today. It made me wonder, is this editorial advice? But no, the envelope is a fundraiser, and contains an “angel medallion” accompanied by a prayer card with the familiar “Angel of God, My Guardian Dear” invocation.
This past March we addressed the character of CRS’s work and concluded that, rather than operating as a Catholic Charity, the organization is in reality a secular government agency. In the main, this designation is largely the consequence of CRS’s decision to accept federal taxpayer funding. According to its 2018 annual report, the agency had an operating revenue of $989,355,000. Of that total, $761,455,000, or some 77 percent, came from “public” (government) sources. And because government funding cannot be used for religious purposes, the agency’s programs abroad and conducted under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) must be limited to secular, not religious, works.
A Wanderer reader writes that, having read our March piece, he wrote his Ordinary to share his concerns. His archbishop wrote a kind reply, assuring our reader that CRS operates under the watchful eye of solid theologians, a couple of whom we know and admire. On the one hand, that is reassuring: CRS will not be teaching any doctrine that is in conflict with the Magisterium. On the other hand, however, it offers small comfort, since CRS doesn’t teach any doctrine at all.
It can’t.
If CRS used taxpayer funds to teach catechism to the poor to whom it ministers, the self-appointed atheist watchdogs — also known as the “usual suspects” — would scream to high Heaven (well, they don’t believe in Heaven; try “to the gods of the stratosphere”). The familiar chords of hate would resound throughout the captive media, as the ACLU, Atheists United, and their imitators raged.
But CRS doesn’t have to worry. The agency does not proselytize, you see: It “evangelizes.” And this notion of evangelization “witnesses” in action, not words. Hence, its programs of service to the poor conform to AID’s regulations in the same way that every other AID-sponsored program does.
The Popes Weigh In
This past May 27, Pope Francis addressed the General Assembly of Caritas Internationalis. He stressed what every Catholic learns as a child: Charity is a theological virtue, in fact the greatest virtue (1 Cor. 13). The Pope told the delegates:
“And speaking to you, Caritas, I wish to reiterate that ‘the worst discrimination which the poor suffer is the lack of spiritual care’ (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, n. 200). You know it well: The majority of the poor ‘have a special openness to the faith; they need God and we must not fail to offer them His friendship, His blessing, His Word, the celebration of the Sacraments and a journey of growth and maturity in the faith’ (ibid.).
“Therefore, as the example of the saints and saints of charity teaches us, ‘our preferential option for the poor must mainly translate into a privileged and preferential religious care’ (ibid.).”
“If we were to look at charity as a service,” Pope Francis continued, “the Church would become a humanitarian agency and the service of charity its ‘logistics department.’ But the Church is not this, she is something different and much greater: She is, in Christ, the sign and instrument of God’s love for humanity and for all of creation, our common home.”
Doubtless the Catholics who work at CRS would agree with Pope Francis, even find his words inspiring. All to the good. But does their work funded by the taxpayer really qualify as “charity,” as he defines it?
On August 2, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler addressed this very question on Twitter: “On December 8, 1975, Pope St. Paul VI said, ‘There is no true evangelization if the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom, & the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God are not proclaimed.’ Let us heed this serious call. Christ the Way, the Truth & the life,” he wrote.
Clearly the theologians advising CRS have a different view of what “evangelization” is all about. There is no doubt that they sponsor good works. But are they a “humanitarian” agency, or a truly “Catholic,” “charitable” one?
The reader can draw his own conclusions. But there is no doubt that CRS advocates for the full funding of AID programs that aren’t charitable by any definition. On August 13, the same day my CRS “angel medal” arrived, the Most Rev. Timothy P. Broglio, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace and archbishop for the Military Services USA, and Sean Callahan, president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services, issued a statement opposing cuts in several AID programs.
“Rescinding some of these and other international poverty-reducing funds will limit the United States’ ability to support poor and vulnerable communities, respond to global health challenges, address root causes of forced migration, and advance international religious freedom, global security, and peacekeeping,” they wrote.
Here CRS succumbs to its familiar temptation of telling only part of the story. Like the letter delivering my angel medallion, the above statement doesn’t refer to CRS’s government funding at all. Moreover, it doesn’t mention that CRS routinely lobbies for “full funding” of foreign assistance legislation that contains hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for “family planning” programs, including abortifacients and other objective evils aimed directly at the “poor and vulnerable communities” that CRS purportedly “serves.”
In fact, during the Obama years, Albany Bishop Howard Hubbard, Archbishop Broglio’s predecessor at the USCCB committee, advocated full funding of AID budgets that included some $65 million for abortion. Those programs are administered by other NGOs, not CRS, of course; but CRS lobbies for their full funding nonetheless.
Perhaps CRS merely reflects the direction that the USCCB is taking in every sector of its activities. Humanae Vitae is dead on the water. Social Justice and the Sodomite Syndicate rule. Most Catholics don’t know that the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, but the bishops ignore that sad fact and lobby for gun control and amnesty for illegals while they condemn “white supremacy.”
After all, they’ve taught for forty years that “most” whites are racists. And isn’t that more important than the True Presence?
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