FFRF is concerned about a Catholic organization possibly being given charge of a public center for the homeless in Wisconsin’s capital.
Dane County is planning to contract with Catholic Charities Madison, a religious group, to provide a publicly paid and affiliated resource center for the homeless. The Catholic Charities Inc. Diocese of Madison has an explicitly religious mission, stating in its tax return that it “serves as a visible presence of the Catholic Church of the Diocese of Madison by providing services that effectively address the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of individuals and families.”
While it is laudable that Catholic Charities works to address community needs, it has a distinctly Roman Catholic affiliation. The organization was recently described by the Wisconsin State Journal as being the “outreach arm of the church.”
Despite assurances from Catholic Charities that it “serve[s] and employ[s] persons regardless of sexual orientation, religious, ethnic, racial or social background,” FFRF questions how the organization can do so and remain true to church doctrine. It also wonders whether the resource center will be used to proselytize. Such a use of this publicly funded facility will be contrary to the dictates of the Wisconsin and U.S. Constitutions, FFRF asserts.
The homeless include women of childbearing age who are in need of reproductive medical help, as well as the LGBTQ community. Catholic ideology is officially at loggerheads with both reproductive and LGBTQ rights.
Catholic Charities has said it would not allow Planned Parenthood to provide services in the proposed center.
Catholic-related entities have refused to subscribe to the rules promulgated under the Affordable Care Act to ensure that women employees have access to contraceptive insurance. “The homeless come in all religious and nonreligious stripes, who, regardless of affiliation, are in desperate need of even-handed and secular facilities without fear of religious coercion or expectation of worship in order to utilize such services,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor writes to Dane County Executive Joe Parisi.
“Those of us taxpayers who are nonreligious, comprising 24 percent of the population, today outnumber rank and file Roman Catholics. Non-Catholic believers — Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Wiccan, Hindu and others — are equally concerned with our tax dollars being used wisely and equitably to ameliorate conditions for the homeless in our county.”
