The U.S. Department of Loving the Poor
Douglas Dewey
July 1, 1996
IN THE PREVIOUS ISSUE OF RQ, Keith J. Pavlischek and Heidi Rolland ("The Promise of Charitable Choice") tout recent legislation offered by Senator John Ashcroft (r-mo) aimed at "inviting active participation of religious nonprofits as social service providers while guaranteeing them religious autonomy" (emphasis added). Sen. Ashcroft's intention is to clear the legal and political way for federal welfare dollars to go to religious organizations that perform such welfare functions as feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and counseling the addicted.
Sen. Ashcroft rightly believes that welfare is a failure. The problem with his proposal (and all others like it) is that it tries to fix a failure that deserves to be scrapped. I'm not saying that Sen. Ashcroft likes welfare even one bit. He just doesn't dislike it enough—or for the right reasons—or he wouldn't propose ideas for preserving it by recruiting religious nonprofits to be the newest agents of government dependency.
Welfare is not bad because it is inefficient, impersonal, or secularized. Welfare is bad because it is a bogus excuse for justice and charity. It is the poisoned fruit of arrogance and coercion, whose purpose is to expand the power of government, and whose effect is to choke out the existence of civic duty and brotherly love. We had every reason to see it coming the first time; to miss it again would be, well, criminally obtuse.
Sister Connie Driscoll grasps this. She heads the St. Martin de Porres House of Hope in southeast Chicago. The House of Hope serves homeless and destitute women and children, most of whom are also substance abusers. The shelter has an outstanding record for doing much with little, for many. They lovingly admit anyone in need, ...
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