USCCB to Trump: You Can’t Fire Me; I Quit, by Phil Lawler

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture, April 08, 2025

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. 

Responding to the Trump administration’s drastic curb on refugee-resettlement programs, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has announced its decision “not to renew the cooperative agreements with the federal government related to children’s services and refugee support.”

Excuse me? Did I miss something? The federal government has withdrawn funding, and so the USCCB has decided not to run the programs that Uncle Sam had subsidized? In effect, then, the USCCB’s message to the White House is a variation on an old theme: “You can’t fire me; I quit.”

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the USCCB president, said that the decision to end these programs was “heartbreaking.” But the bishops really didn’t have to make a choice at all; the decision had been made for them. Anthony Granado, a spokesman for the USCCB, was candid enough to tell the National Catholic Reporter: “It is clear that the government has decided that it wishes to go about doing this in a different way that doesn’t include us, and so we were kind of forced into this position.” ….

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