Catholic Diocese of Sacramento Defunds Homeless Ministry: Director Supports Marriage Equality and Is Pro-Choice

And finally this morning, in the religious-freedom-not-so-much category, yet another piece of evidence that, for the current leaders of the Catholic church, religious freedom means freedom and conscience for me and not for thee: as Cynthia Hubert reports in the Kansas City Star yesterday, the Catholic diocese of Sacramento has shut down its funding for a homeless agency, Francis House, because the agency's new director supports marriage equality and is pro-choice.

Francis House is a well-established ministry that has served the homeless for 42 years, and which ministers to some 25,000 people.  After its previous director Gregory Bunker died in December 2010, Methodist minister Faith Whitmore took over the directorship of the organization.  Whitmore has advocated openly, on grounds of conscience, for gay rights and marriage equality within her own United Methodist church.

The position of the Sacramento Catholic diocese: we can't require all the organizations to which we provide funding to adhere to Catholic teaching.  But we can expect them not to oppose Catholic teaching in public ways.

The response of Jesuit Father Tom Reese of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown to such claims: 

Clearly the bishops have been very vocal on their views about some of these issues.  But if the bishops are going to de-fund every organization headed by someone who disagrees with their views on gay marriage, birth control and abortion, they are going to find very few agencies to fund.

And there's just one tiny wrinkle with what the bishops are doing as they shut down Catholic Charities services in this area or that when they're required to adhere to non-discrimination laws, or when they shut down funding, as in this case, to a well-established ministry serving the homeless:

That wrinkle is those 25,000 human beings in need of food, clothing, medical treatment, and shelter.

Whom it's rather difficult to imagine Jesus treating as pawns in cruel culture-war games designed to impose peculiar Catholic teachings on the body politic and assert episcopal clout at a moment at which many Catholics are, with very good reason, deeply disenchanted with our "pastoral" leaders.

The graphic is artist Fritz Eichenberg's famous woodcut, "Christ in the Breadline."