Obama shuts out the church, again

When he closed down the ‘faith-based initiatives’ office in the beginning of his presidency, it was an early warning.

Whoever missed it then, can’t help but see it now. It’s getting worse, fast.

The Washington Post is reporting this morning about a “contentious battle” emerging between Catholic groups and the Obama administration over a multitude of issues ranging from Obamacare, abortion, contraception, and even human trafficking.

What brought the fracas tumbling out into the street was apparently a decision by the Department of Health and Human Services three weeks ago not to renew a grant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to aid victims of sex trafficking. A five-year, $19 million grant, which expired in March, was first awarded to the USCCB in 2006 via President Bush’s faith based initiatives program.

The decision to deny funding to the USCCB by HHS, which is headed by pro-abortion Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, appears to have been based purely on political and ideological hostility.

One of the ideas that stuck with me from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink is intuitive repulsion. That came to mind reading this report. Came to mind again, that is. There have been many occasions.

A bone of contention with the Obama administration, which it admitted, was the bishops’ refusal to refer sex trafficking victims for contraception or abortion. HHS went on to split a new $4.5 million grant between three organizations that all scored “significantly below the Catholic bishops’ application by the review panel,” according to WashPo. Their threads of similarity were support for contraception and abortion.

To be sure, the bishops haven’t declared war on the administration. It’s the other way around.