蜜桃交友

By Cardinal Blase J. Cupich

Over the course of just a few weeks, the new administration suddenly halted foreign aid for 90 days, making dramatic cuts in funding and staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development. This has thrown the network of charities that administer our global humanitarian aid, including those funded by Catholics, into chaos. There is a human cost to acting so precipitously, which is partly why on Feb. 13, a federal judge ordered the administration to restore funding, given the “likelihood of a successful claim that the Executive’s actions violate the Constitution and statutes of the United States.”

While a government has the right and duty to ensure taxpayer funds are spent wisely, freezing that aid, even before any such review, adds to the suffering of people who are starving, homeless and threatened by disease. While the government announced that lifesaving aid work would be exempt, these exemptions are not being effectively implemented. A crippled USAID is not making timely payments for past and current work in these life-saving programs, perhaps causing permanent damage to the ability of humanitarian aid groups to save lives.

This is one of the reasons the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops filed suit against the administration on Feb. 18. “The conference suddenly finds itself unable to sustain its work to care for the thousands of refugees who were welcomed into our country and assigned to the care of the USCCB by the government after being granted legal status,” explained USCCB President Archbishop Timothy Broglio. The USCCB, which “spends more on refugee resettlement each year than it receives in funding from the federal government,” according to the lawsuit, is still waiting for reimbursements from the government totaling about $13 million for expenses prior to Jan. 24.

The decision to abruptly slash USAID funding brought swift responses from the international community, including the Holy See:

“Stopping USAID will jeopardize essential services for hundreds of millions of people, undermine decades of progress in humanitarian and development assistance, destabilize regions that rely on this critical support, and condemn millions to dehumanizing poverty or even death,” according to a statement from Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 162 Catholic relief agencies, which operate in more than 200 nations and territories.

The effect of these funding cuts has been staggering for both small and larger charities, such as Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the foreign-aid program of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, founded in 1943.

Carolyn Woo, who ran CRS from 2012 to 2016, and once served as dean of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, offers a chilling assessment: “The freeze [on foreign aid],” she told Our Sunday Visitor, “where it affects programs like this, really puts people’s health, livelihood on the line, and it could actually cause death.”

That’s because every year, CRS provides aid to about 210 million people across 120 nations — and, as Woo writes in a Feb. 7 piece in America, more than half of its budget has come from USAID contracts. Cut a charity’s budget in half, and you halve the amount of help it can provide.

What sort of help does CRS offer? Back to Woo: “USAID grants enable CRS to undertake emergency assistance and long-term transformational development. The work covers and integrates multiple areas for human flourishing: food, health, livelihoods, agriculture, education, water and sanitation, child development, access to capital and peace-building.”

This complex work is not simply a handout, but a hand-up. Woo recalls the story of Ernesto, a farmer who found himself destitute after years of costs outstripping returns on crop sales. With the help of CRS, the farmer learned to farm a new crop sustainably, and with that first return, he was able to set himself on the path to financial stability. Soon he began teaching other farmers these methods and even saved enough to send his children to college. This program was funded by a grant from USAID.

Some claim that hobbling USAID was necessary because it is “wasteful.” Woo addresses that, too, explaining that over the past three decades, global poverty has dropped from one-third of the population to one-tenth, made possible by international development aid. What’s more, Woo notes, “both maternal and infant-child mortality rates have dropped by 50 percent.” For anyone who prioritizes life issues, it’s hard to imagine a better return on an investment, considering that USAID counts for less than 1% of the federal budget.

But the humanitarian crisis occasioned by these unsparing cuts is also a crisis of trust — trust in the United States of America, in its ability to keep its word and honor its promises. Such a loss of trust could have dire consequences.

This was immediately highlighted by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop emeritus of Vienna. In a recent column referring to the cancellation of contracts, the cardinal writes, “What is currently happening in the United States is dangerous.”

“Contracts govern large parts of our lives,” the cardinal continues. “The rule of law thrives on the fact that treaties apply.” When agreements are broken, “the powerful dictate their will, no matter what is contractually agreed.”

 “Loyalty and faith, trust and security, and above all the weaker, poorer, and defenseless are falling by the wayside,” Cardinal Schönborn goes on, asking a simple but searing question: “Do we want that?”

The “we” of it matters. For any nation, foreign aid is an expression of strategic wisdom. A world with less human suffering is by definition a safer world. A world in which nations keep their agreements is one in which development has a better chance of success. The path to improving the human condition leads not inward, but rather out from ourselves, from our enclaves and nations, toward lasting international partnership and the authentic flourishing of the human family.

Finally, foreign humanitarian aid is also, more deeply, an expression of a nation’s values. American values still include caring for the less fortunate, standing up for the oppressed and building long-term peace through solidarity. The United States expressed American values when it helped Europe rebuild after the devastation of World War II — this is our legacy as a nation, and it is one we must never abandon.

 As Christians, we follow the Lord’s call to love our neighbor as ourselves, even when it’s hard. But there is a less spiritual calculus to consider: namely, that weakening the social safety net at home or abroad will eventually affect us all, as none of us is invulnerable to disease or misfortune, no matter how blessed with health or wealth. America would be wise not to overreach the extent of her power in a connected world. After all, we never know when we’ll need the help of a Good Samaritan.

This article was reprinted with permission from Chicago Catholic, the English language newspaper of the Archdiocese of Chicago.