Thursday, June 29, 2017

RRW - Episcopal Bishop in Maine: It is our moral obligation to take in refugees - How convenient since 95+% church funding = taxpayer $






Posted by Ann Corcoran on June 29, 2017
But, is it the obligation of the US taxpayer to pay the Episcopal Church millions annually for THEIR Christian charity?  Of course that is one of the major moral questions that has driven this blog for ten years!
Bishop Lane in a 2009 story about the Episcopal church in Maine going bankrupt. http://www.virtueonline.org/episcopal-dioceses-face-downsizing-closing-parishes-more-departures
You can read the Bishop’s opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News:
With the news that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed a limited version of the president’s travel ban to go into effect, we should recall our moral obligation to assist refugees seeking a chance to rebuild their lives and create a better future for their families. As the world searches for solutions to the largest refugee crisis in global history — more than 22 million people worldwide of whom fewer than 1 percent will ever be resettled in another country — we in Maine must do our part.
It is easy to be charitable with someone else’s money!

I searched the Bangor Daily News piece for any mention of the fact (published in their own publication) that the church is receiving 99.5% of its funds for refugee resettlement from the taxpayer.
Episcopal Migration Ministries (the church’s refugee resettlement wing) is not even a separate legal entity, so our money goes directly to the church!
Therefore we, or Mainers, don’t need any lectures about moral duties!  Christian charity should be privately given, not extorted from every taxpaying American!
The first and foremost Congressional reform needed with our process of resettling refugees in the US is to bar the phony charitable non-profit middlemen*** from receiving federal dollars for their ‘charitable’ work.
I have a huge archive on Maine and its problems with refugees and asylum seekers, click here.
*** Nine federal contractors that monopolize refugee resettlement in the US:
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