North Dakota Bishops Issue Charity Guidelines
Ah Catholicism, a religion that takes Paula Abdul’s music to heart. (It takes two steps forward, then two steps back…) Two bishops in North Dakota show us the meaning of their warped version of charity by producing a guideline which catholics should follow while donating to various causes.
The issue with Christian charity is that it comes at a price, the selling of the gospel. A lot of apologetics say “Well, they are feeding people are they not? What’s the harm?” I say what they are doing is not charity; it is a concerted effort to spread their faith and superstition to people who are the most vulnerable.
Missionary work is always so effective because people are ever so grateful to receive aid when they are starving or when they are sick. By using that opportunity to sell your particular personal god to someone else kind of ruins the point of charity.
The guideline states that
“All human life is sacred and must be protected. This is why we should not support or endorse individuals and organizations that provide, promote, or advocate for abortion, contraception, “reproductive rights/ family planning,” or embryonic stem cell research. Marriage, a lifelong partnership between a man and a woman, is the foundation of the family and, therefore, essential to the common good. Accordingly, we should not support individuals and organizations that seek to redefine marriage or whose activities devalue its importance.”
On the list are such stellar examples such as
The American Association of University Women – Which promotes equality through education for women, and so is both pro choice and pro recognition of gay marriage. It also strongly advocates against homeschooling.
Amnesty International – Apparently the catholic church forgets the stellar work of the international watchdog in bringing to light the suffering of political prisoners. It’s acceptance of reproductive rights and its campaigns to free people persecuted for homosexuality are internationally famous.
Crop Walk – Again for it’s distribution of condoms.
March of the Dimes – An American charity who helps out a lot with disabled children and routinely runs fund raisers for biologists in stem bell programs. Due to the use of embryonic stem cells these two bishops have stated that the charity is not worthy of catholic aid. Because wishing for science to cure your children is a mortal sin.
UNICEF – This boggles me, the majority of Catholics in the world are in South America and Africa and routinely come under the UNICEF’s various betterment programs. Why are they on the list? They actually have been on the list for a fair while due to the Pope John Paul II’s stance on contraception. UNICEF recognises that the main problem internationally for children is the inadequate supply of food and contraception prevents excess children from being born taxing finite resource.
To place such qualifiers on charity, because people wish for women to have equal rights (equal rights cannot occur without the right for women to decide what to do with their own bodies and contraception). For all the Catholic Church’s bluster about equality we know that it is a sexist entity entrenched in the logic that women cannot believe sufficiently in a magic entity. The church’s stance on contraception makes it the largest entity opposing development in Africa and in some cases it has more money than the people trying to help them. The church’s stance on contraception is nothing short of killing by denial of service. AIDS kills just as surely as a bullet, it is just a matter of time. The lack of contraception causes high birth rates and high HIV rates increasing high death rates which are just insane.
It’s just rubber and latex; do you really think the catholic god is unhappy about a tiny piece of that than all the real problems of corruption and inter-human violence that pervades Africa?