Across the centuries Christianity has been the means of reducing more languages to writing than have all other factors combined. It has created more schools, more theories of education, and more systems than has any other one force. More than any other power in history it has impelled men to fight suffering, whether that suffering has come from disease, war or natural disasters. It has built thousands of hospitals, inspired the emergence of the nursing and medical professions, and furthered movement for public health and the relief and prevention of famine. Although explorations and conquests which were in part its outgrowth led to the enslavement of Africans for the plantations of the Americas, men and women whose consciences were awakened by Christianity and whose wills it nerved brought about the abolition of slavery (in England and America). Men and women similarly moved and sustained wrote into the laws of Spain and Portugal provisions to alleviate the ruthless exploitation of the Indians of the New World...By its name and symbol, the most extensive organization ever created for the relief of the suffering caused by war, the Red Cross, bears witness to its Christian origin. The list might go on indefinitely. It includes many another humanitarian projects and movements, ideals in government, the reform of prisons and the emergence of criminology, great art and architecture, and outstanding literature
It was hard for me to keep her busy every day," says Carol. When she saw a flyer for Day Break Cares adult day center, which mentioned activities for people with mild dementia, she decided to test if her mother-in-law would enjoy the change. Marie began attending twice a week, but liked it so well that she increased her visits to four. Carol benefited too; knowing that Marie was safe allowed her to take care of things like cleaning, shopping, and having a little time to herself.
Since then, Carol and her husband had to make the difficult decision to move Marie to a care facility. No catastrophic event preceded the transition; just the realization that managing Marie’s hygiene was too physically and emotionally demanding, despite their efforts. Marie refused help with bathing and toileting – a common behavior for people with dementia – and both Carol and her husband feared Marie would get seriously ill.
Carol also recognized that her own health was being affected because of all the stress and worry. She had learned by attending some of Day Break’s caregiver support group meetings that an alarming number of caregivers become sick while caring for others. Carol began to look for a facility that would give what Marie, and the whole family, needed.
"I don’t think I’ll ever be happy with the decision,” Carol says. “It's a lot of guilt. I was envisioning trying to keep her at home, but we just couldn’t do it anymore.” Marie now receives the physical care she needs from the facility’s specially trained staff. "She is nice and clean. She looks good, has more energy," says Carol, who visits Marie several times a week to play cards.
When Marie's health needs increased, so did the family's expenses. Day care absorbed most of Marie's social security income, Carol says, but it was manageable. Paying for memory care in a long-term facility is something else altogether. With monthly costs averaging many thousands of dollars, Carol has reentered the workforce to help pay for Marie's care. A former teacher, she now substitutes a few days a week at nearby elementary schools.
This family's story is not rare. Members of the so-called “sandwich generation” struggle to work while simultaneously caring for children and aging parents. Like many seniors, Marie did not have long-term care insurance, and MediCal does not pay for memory care. "I hope our country will eventually do something for adults who need memory care," Carol says. In the meantime, she does the best she can.
"In the United States, 50 percent of social services are provided by the Catholic church," said Keating, who now serves as president and CEO of the American Bankers Association.
Keating did not return an inquiry for this story, nor did Catholic Charities USA, the largest charitable organization run by the Catholic church. We asked a variety of experts on philanthropy whether they had heard this statistic or knew where it came from, but none did.
We should start by noting that Catholic charity work is extensive and widely considered a crucial part of the nation’s social safety net. By itself, Catholic Charities USA, has more than 2,500 local agencies that serve 10 million people annually, said Mary L. Gautier, a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, an institute at Georgetown University that studies the church.
And Catholic Charities is supplemented by a panoply of other Catholic-affiliated groups, Gautier said, including "St. Vincent De Paul societies, social justice committees, soup kitchens, food pantries, and other similar programs organized independently by thousands of Catholic parishes each year."
For a variety of reasons, it’s difficult to quantify exactly how big Catholic-backed charity is, but we tried our best to sift the data with the help of the National Center for Charitable Statistics, a project of the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.
The first question we asked is whether the sum of all Catholic-sponsored charity amounts to half of all charitable activity by private groups in the United States. We started with the biggest, Catholic Charities USA, then worked outward.
In 2010, Catholic Charities USA reported expenditures of between $4.2 billion and $4.4 billion, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which publishes an annual list of the 400 biggest charities in the United States, ranked by the amount of donations they receive. This enabled it to rank near the top of the 400 list, behind two major social-services charities -- the United Way and the Salvation Army, neither of which is affiliated with the Catholic church.
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