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Morning News

President of Catholic Charities Discusses Bush's Faith-Based Initiatives

Aired January 30, 2001 - 11:18 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The president is pushing ahead with his plan to form a new partnership between government and religion. And he's expected to lay out more details on his faith-based initiatives.

CNN's Eileen O'Connor is in Washington, and joins us from a daycare center that would benefit from the president's plan -- Eileen.

EILEEN O'CONNOR: Well, Daryn, one of the things that the president is going to do is to allow people who don't itemize on their taxes to actually deduct charitable contributions.

He's also going to be making it more enticing to corporations to contribute more to charities, particularly charities that actually combat poverty.

Now, this daycare center is, in fact, funded by Catholic Charities, which also give emergency systems -- assistance, housing and food to people who need it.

And, in fact, despite the booming economy, although we see it could be going -- slowing down now, despite the booming economy in the last year, the need for this service had been up 22 percent at Catholic Charities.

With me is the president of the Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., Ed Orzechowski.

Thanks for joining us.

ED ORZECHOWSKI, PRESIDENT, CATHOLIC CHARITIES: You're welcome.

O'CONNOR: What about this money that the president is talking about? He says that faith-based organizations could access up to $10 billion in government money. Is it a good thing?

ORZECHOWSKI: Well, certainly, we see it as a positive thing because there's no question we need resources as anyone else does in terms of our being able to provide services to people that come to us in need.

We're not sure this is 10 billion of new dollars. And I think that's what remains to be seen. Whether this is just a shifting of other dollars from other agencies and current resources to faith-based grouped, or in fact it is a new money that allows for real expansion of service.

O'CONNOR: So the fear is that, then, the responsibility for providing for all these people would be shifted entirely onto your shoulders?

ORZECHOWSKI: Well, that's one of our main concerns. And I was very happy to see President Bush's comments yesterday, that this is not to replace government. We think that's extremely important.

The last thing we would want to see is for government to jettison its responsibility for services to the poor, shift that to faith-based organizations, and make it their responsibility.

O'CONNOR: But what about critics who say, you know, look, it's impossible to give to faith-based organizations without interfering with that separation between church and state; that, what we're going to be doing is enabling religions to convert people.

ORZECHOWSKI: Well, it certainly depends on the different faith traditions on how they choose to, you know, initiate those services.

Within Catholic Charities, that's not part of our mission. Our mission is, as a community of service, to help people in need. Our interest is not to convert. Our interest is really to help and foster their spiritual development, but respecting their faith traditions.

O'CONNOR: Obviously, Daryn, what is going to be the issue here is the details of how this program is going to be administered in order to address those concerns, particularly about the separation between church and state -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Eileen O'Connor in Washington, D.C., thank you very much.

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