Are We Getting The Truth From Catholic Charities?

Up to now, I've been following what seems to be the received total of something over $100 million as the annual amount the Catholic Church gets in US government grants. For instance, Vice President Vance used this number in a speech reported by America magazine:

And I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?

I mentioned the same amount in this post, but so far I haven't been able to find the source, and the vice president doesn't list it, either. The problem I'm beginning to have is that the actual amounts in grants from all US government sources to the Catholic Church are starting to look much, much larger. I linked to a story from Just the News in yesterday's post that said in part:

. . . For example, the endowment associated with Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Fort Worth in Texas experienced a more than 34 fold increase in funding from government grants from FY 2021 to FY 2023. In FY 2021, at the beginning of the Biden administration, the group had only received $11.7 million in grant money. By FY 2023, that amount had ballooned to $401.7 million. A majority of that funding was earmarked for a “Refugee and Entrant Assistance” program, according to the financial records.

. . . For example, Catholic Charities of Louisville, Kentucky also experienced a similar growth in funding over the same period. In FY 2021, the group took in roughly $10 million in federal grants, but by FY 2023, that number had exploded to about $122 million.

. . . Catholic Charities San Antonio, which received more than $27 million in total from FEMA, was accused by a Democratic congressman of misusing funds it received for the program by purchasing airplane tickets for migrants in its care.

Clearly if the Diocese of Fort Worth alone got $401.7 million in FY 2023 and Catholic Charities of Louisville, KY got $122 million, the number going to the US Church as a whole is far larger than $100 million, and whatever sources are citing this number are disingenuous. So I went looking farther and found this article in City Journal from February 4:

The Catholic Church has long positioned itself as an advocate for poor immigrants and provided them with services in the United States. But for decades, including during the great migration waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, much of the church’s work was charitable in nature, funded by contributions from parishioners. Over the past 50 years or so, however, Catholic Church-affiliated organizations, especially Catholic Charities, have become government contractors with a stake in a growing welfare state. Even before the last four years of explosive immigration, Catholic Charities nationwide derived more than six of every ten dollars of revenues from government contracts. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Charities have been among the biggest beneficiaries.

. . . The Biden administration used radical changes in immigration policies, especially through its so-called parole program, to justify a vast expansion of federal spending on migrant services. . . . Large chunks of this money made its way to nonprofits as discretionary grants from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which rose from $33 million in 2021 to $400 million in 2022 and then $616 million in 2023, according to Open the Books.

. . . This federal money, often heavily supplemented by local government contracts, has led to a startling growth in groups like Catholic Charities across the country in just four years. The ProPublica database of the financial filings of nonprofits lists 234 Catholic Charities entities around the U.S. The top 25 had revenues of slightly more than $2 billion in 2023, the last year filings are available for all groups. That’s an almost 50 percent increase, a gain of about $660 million, in four years. Some of these groups have been utterly transformed. Catholic Charities Fort Worth has become one of the nation’s largest local Catholic groups, with revenues of $289 million in 2023, compared with just $32 million in 2020. And like so many religious social services groups today, the charity exists almost entirely on government funds. Catholic Charities Fort Worth’s 2023 federal 990 form, which nonprofits must file, lists $270 million in total government grants.

But even these stories show discrepancies. Just the News gives the total for Catholic Charities of Fort Worth for 2023 at $401.7 million, while City Journal puts it at $203 million, although both wildly exceed the number Vice President Vance and I had been using of "over $100 million" for the US Church as a whole. Last September, posting on the problems in Springfield, OH, I linked to an article that attributed the problem to church-spnsored organizations, certainly including Catholic Charities:

An example is the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, a Catholic voluntary organization which issued a press release in response to citizen backlash against their role in the migrant crisis in which they acknowledged that “SVdP volunteers and interpreter[sic]/navigators assist these neighbors [migrants] with tools for independent living. SVdP conduct(s) legal pro-bono immigration clinics. Whenever possible, SVdP navigators help Haitians seek waivers of… application fees.”

But the "navigators" are doing more than helping immigrants fill out forms:

An example is the Nehemiah Foundation, a non-profit organization that coordinates faith-based activities among churches and parishioners as an official partner of the City of Springfield. The Nehemiah Foundation also maintains collaborative relationships with the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, the Haitian Community Help & Support Center, and the Springfield City School District.

. . . Nehemiah’s volunteers have a level of ideological and religious conviction which means they are happy to educate Haitians for free. Admirable although this is, this is a level of concern for non-citizens which they do not extend to Americans. While teaching Haitians English, they also promote BLM-inspired Juneteenth activities and introduce them to DEI “anti-racist” ideological propaganda.

But the issue goes beyond propaganda. In Springfield, the NGOs appear to be involved in things like buying cars for the immigrants, but exactly who buys them with whose money is difficult to trace.

Within a labyrinth of organizations, obfuscation is the norm. Ohio Department of Development. Ohio Housing Finance Agency. Springfield Metropolitan Housing Authority. Minority Business Services. Neighborhood Impact Division… The names go on and on. Entities feed into other entities to create a twisted maze.

Meanwhile, local citizens are left to bear the costs, including a massive spike in car accidents. Last year an unlicensed Haitian careened into a school bus, killing 11-year-old Aiden Clark and injuring 23 other children. Local bartender Jill explained she’s afraid to let her 17-year-old son drive: “It’s an American rite of passage, and I can barely afford it. I’m worried he’ll be killed by a Haitian every time he hits the road. Our premiums have skyrocketed.” All over Springfield, this is a common refrain. “All because you don’t want to learn how to drive, we have to die,” another local told me.

Neither the public at large nor Catholic laity (nor, I suspect, the rank-and-file Catholic priesthood) has been willing to take at face value protestations of innocence from either Rome or the USCCB on questions like sex abuse without serious investigation and major policy changes. But Pope Francis himself has been reluctant to address even the sex abuse problems of the past quarter century:

[H]e is, of course, the ultimate church "insider," the man at the top of a very clear and rigid hierarchy, the one person who has the most power — indeed, nearly limitless power — to prevent abuse, expose wrongdoers, release records, rebuild trust and help victims heal.

But he refuses to do so. Instead he repeatedly just pontificates (excuse the pun) about the crisis, often in eloquent, even heart-wrenching ways, without following through with concrete, effective reforms.

If we can't get credible numbers and clear statements of policy from Catholic Charities and other Church organizations that are getting government grants, the Church faces a new problem, because Musk and Trump will be a new and independent source of numbers that will do a great deal of damage to the bishops' credibility.