Editor
Bishop Howard J. Hubbard was among a select group of 100 religious leaders -- and one of only six Catholics -- invited to the White House Jan. 6 for the annual Prayer Breakfast hosted by President Clinton, Vice President Gore and their wives.
In an address to the religious leaders, President Clinton spoke about welfare reform and immigration (see portions of his remarks on our web site). He called on his guests to support welfare families with job training paid for by the government and to find ways for Americans of different ethnic backgrounds to live in harmony.
"He spoke for about 15 minutes," Bishop Hubbard told The Evangelist from Washington, shortly after leaving the White House. "He asked religious leaders to consider 'adopting' welfare families by putting them to work. Religious groups would get funds from the government to support that effort. He also asked us to encourage businesspeople to do the same. If everyone did that, he said, we would eliminate the welfare rolls.
"He also spoke about the nativist spirit in America against legal immigrants and asked churches to sensitize their members to that."
Assessing the speech, Bishop Hubbard sensed "a genuine desire by the President to work with religious communities to address issues related to the poor and a sincere desire to solicit the good will of religious communities to develop a partnership to address poverty. The 'adoption concept' is interesting and should be explored."
However, the Bishop added: "I still retain grave reservations about the ultimate impact of welfare reform and what will happen to people dropped from the welfare rolls. It's going to take five years to see the impact of that law. Its deficiencies will be rectified, but not without harm to numbers of people, especially children and the elderly, who will fall through the cracks."
In his monthly column in The Evangelist, Bishop Hubbard has sharply criticized the federal welfare reform legislation.
In addition to the Bishop, other Catholics invited to the White House included Cardinal James Hickey of Washington, D.C.; Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J.; Rev. William Byron, former president of The Catholic University of America in Washington; John Carr from the U.S. Catholic Conference's Office of Social Development and World Peace; and Bishop John Elya, an Eastern Rite bishop who is eparch of Newton, Mass.