Faithful Catholics have been saddened by the allegations — most recently suggested by Vice President JD Vance — that their Church has been complicit in creating the humanitarian crisis at the border. Vance pointed out that the Catholic Church has received over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants. Much of that money has been spent on providing transportation and housing for newly arrived illegal immigrants and helping to resettle them from the border to the interior of the country.

This collaboration with the Democratic Party continues today as the federal government pays for most of the activities of Catholic Charities.

I share Vance’s concern because Catholic Charities has been a long time recipient of our family’s philanthropic giving for decades.  My sister, Marie Hopkins, served on the Board of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Hartford for 22 years, and when she died two years ago, our family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Hartford.  Likewise, when her husband died last September, our family asked again that friends and family donate to Catholic Charities.

As a Catholic family, we had always believed in the mission of Catholic Charities to help families in need, provide support for women experiencing crisis pregnancies, facilitate adoption and foster parenting, feed the hungry and house the homeless — and welcome refugees fleeing persecution. Created in 1910, on the campus of Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Catholic Charities was launched to provide a centralized anti-poverty effort of individual parishes and dioceses in strengthening families and encouraging moral behavior as an important way to address poverty. 

This noble goal began to change in the 1960s when Catholic Charities began to shift its focus from personal responsibility and individual behavior to blaming capitalism for poverty and crime. The Catholic agency began to look to the governm...