A Catholic charity in Wauconda has come under attack from a Wisconsin group that usually focuses its attention on President Bush’s faith-based initiatives.
The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation recently sent a letter protesting a $5,000 grant to the St. Vincent de Paul Society from Wauconda Township officials.
“There’s nothing to stop them from buying a large Virgin Mary statue for their altar,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, foundation co-president.
Township and society officials defended the grant, saying they followed all the rules regulating the awarding of taxpayer funds to faith-based groups.
“We help anybody,” Marge Scholla, vice president of the society, whose office is in the basement of Transfiguration Church, said Thursday. “We don’t preach religion or insist you go to church. We just want to know your problem and see if we can help.”
Township Supervisor Glenn Swanson said the Catholic charity had been awarded township grants the last 12 years along with nine other local organizations.
He said the township never received a complaint about the practice before township resident Joe Bogacz sent an e-mail calling the grant a “misappropriation of public funds.”
Bogacz, a self-professed agnostic who belongs to the Wisconsin group, said he has no problem with the society’s work, but he doesn’t want to pay for it.
“They’re forcing me and everyone else to give to a charity that we may not agree with,” he said. “I think it’s a waste of taxpayer money, and it’s unlawful. I have a right to not have my money given to a religious organization.”
It’s perfectly legal, however, for government bodies to give taxpayer money to a non-profit, religious-affiliated charity as long as it doesn’t discriminate, Swanson said.
“To me, this isn’t a religious organization,” Swanson said. “It’s an organization of people wanting to help people.”
Swanson said the township also requires the society to provide an accounting of how the grant money is spent.
Last year, for example, the society said it used the $5,000 to help 11 families cover rent, utility bills, medical supplies, transportation costs and other necessities, Swanson said.
The township, which has an annual general assistance budget of around $150,000, referred the families to the Catholic group, which also helped more than 70 other families last year with money raised through private donations.
“We appreciate the money the township gives to us so much because … we’re just a little organization and we don’t have more than 10 to 15 members sometimes,” Scholla said. “If we didn’t get the grant, we’d only exist on donations.”
The group, however, could see a change in procedures.
Swanson said the township will likely ask those receiving grants to sign a contract spelling out how the money will be used–a requirement sought by the Wisconsin group.
“But I think this group should tackle bigger fish,” Swanson said.
That’s exactly what the Freedom From Religion group would like to do as it tries to respond to hundreds of complaints about the Bush administration’s awarding of millions to faith-based groups across the country, Gaylor said.
The group, formed in 1978 to promote the separation of church and state, has filed several federal lawsuits and complaints about the grants with limited success.
“The initiatives are hard to get at so we take one case at a time,” Gaylor said. “But we’re like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the hole in the dam, and the North Sea is washing over us.”
———-
skuczka@tribune.com
