Catholic Charities: Why I now care even more about the HHS mandate

Under the HHS mandate, to qualify for the exemption provided to religious institutions, an organization must employ primarily people of its own religion and must serve people primarily of its own religion.

I've thought a lot about Catholic hospitals as it pertains to this... But at least in my personal dealings with them, I've come away unimpressed with their Catholicity. I know I don't get to be the judge on this, but I know they put your bills in collections same as their secular counterparts and they seem to operate mostly the same way...at least the 3 or 4 I've been around do.  I hope there are some serving as a ministry instead of as a business.

For the ones that operate same as their secular counterparts (save contraception and abortion), I have little pity for them as it pertains to the HHS Mandate. It may still force them to violate their conscience, but I don't see them holding the line to Christ's commands anyway.

Catholic Charities, that's different....again, at least to me.

This past weekend I was covering a World Refugee Day event. I was working as a freelance writer for a diocesan newspaper.

There were nearly 300 resettled refugees present at the event, and not one without a smile on. I talked to many of them, some through an interpreter. They all said the same thing.

Without Catholic Charities, they don't know where they'd be, but they know it wouldn't be somewhere better than they are. And most of them, for the record, were not Catholic.

Most of the ones I spoke too were Muslim, or Hindu. A couple were of a faith I never did properly understand the name of but it wasn't Christian.

And Catholic Charities serves them all.

That branch of the Charity had six employees in its division...three were Catholic, three (former refugees) I was led to believe were not.

So here is an organization, doing what it does at the commands of Christ, serving all people without question. It does what it does BECAUSE of it's faith... and under the HHS mandate, it will have to go against its faith by providing (or by proxy providing) contraceptive services for its employees.

While the issue of the contraceptives can be debated many ways, the point is the government is (may be) telling this organization that exists because of its faith, that it isn't religious enough to be called a religious institution.

Catholic Charities handles 24 percent of all refugee resettlement in the United States. They work with numerous federal departments, including Health and Human Services. They do it because they're trying to serve.

And they should have a right to do it according to their conscience.