Author Description

In the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church in America received no government funding, and the Faith was spreading like a prairie fire. Today, Catholic bishops receive over a billion dollars a year in taxpayer funding, but churches are closing, millions have left the pews, and scandals continue to plague our chanceries. How did we get here? This work traces the journey of Catholic charity from a hallmark of religious freedom to a secular subsidiary of the federal government. It begins with the historic leadership of James Cardinal Gibbons (1834-1924), the Primate of America, a champion of voluntary charity, founder of today's U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and a firm opponent of government financial support of the Church. It then describes the conference's support of the Democrat party throughout the twentieth century, and the events that led to the flashpoint in the 1960's: the sexual revolution, Humanae Vitae, and the collapse of the conference's teaching on sexual morality and the family that followed. Notre Dame played a key role in that decline, trading its Catholic identity for an elite but secular status. Other universities quickly followed, and the bishops' conference went along: generous taxpayer support, silence on the Church's magisterial teaching, and the rise of "Social Justice" as a convenient substitute for the Magisterium. A final consideration of the scandals and the rise of mass immigration as the bishops' new "preeminent political issue" leave us with the challenge of Archbishop Fulton Sheen: "It's up to the laity."