FORT WAYNE, Ind. — “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”

It wasn’t because Barack Obama was recently critiquing religious conservatives that I thought of this quote from Dorothy Day. I had arrived at the University of Saint Francis here for a conference on Dorothy Day and the Catholic Church. The words of Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, have been constantly in the air.

Meanwhile, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., President Obama was appearing on a panel at an anti-poverty summit.

At that summit, the president accused religious groups of caring more about issues like abortion and protection of marriage than poverty.

This is the same president, of course, who chose to unnecessarily pick a fight with the faithful during the Obamacare controversy, forcing them to violate their consciences or face stiff penalties. This is the president who accused Catholic bishops and others of bearing false witness, as he put it, when they opposed the inclusion of abortion coverage in that same health-care law.

And commentators were rightly quick to set the record straight about the enormous good that faith-based groups and churches do in America and the world today.

But, perhaps with Dorothy Day’s quote in mind, I also find myself unable to dismiss Obama’s comments.

Robert Putnam, the Harvard professor who famously wrote Bowling Alone, was also a part of the panel, and in the days before it he gave an interview to The Washington Post in which he offered a similar critique, saying, in part: “(The Church has) been entirely focused on issues of homosexuality and contraception and not at all focused on issues of poverty.”

While I would disagree with his characterization here, I had a conversation with him about this a few weeks go, on the day his book Our Kids came out. Putnam longs to see a movement to make sure that every child in America has opportunity. He knows that we need churches to do much of this work. And, as an outsider and social scientist, he doesn’t see religion as a threat to secular society. If Christian concern for the poor, the persecuted, the mourning and the hungry were impossible to miss in the world today, many of the problems we have would not be what they are.

Now, is this a problem of media perception and selective coverage? Are there obstacles that the government and mainstream establishment have put in the way to discourage or even shut down such charity, especially if it does not pass politically correct tests? Of course. I think, in particular, of victims of sex trafficking who have been made to suffer on account of “reproductive health” politics.

One of the speakers at this conference, Ben Wilson, an assistant director at the Summer Service Learning Program at the Center for Social Concerns at the University of Notre Dame, talked about Dorothy Day’s “genius,” explaining: “Dorothy’s unceasing effort to ever more faithfully love God and neighbor underscores the lifelong journey that becoming loving requires.”

In a book Day wrote about St. Therese of Lisieux, she wrote: “We want to grow in love but we do not know how. Love is a science, a knowledge, and we lack it.”

“As is characteristic of many saints,” Wilson observed, “Dorothy remained utterly convinced of God’s enduring presence in those around her as well as of her own failings to reciprocate and channel God’s love. Dorothy’s example challenges us, and in turn those we work with, to resist the allure of self-congratulation, regardless of how demanding or fruitful our work is.”

Pope Francis is fond of pointing out that he is a sinner. It is this unworthiness that draws Christians to Jesus Christ as Savior. For the rest of the world to know that we are works in progress and need to do more and give more — this is not a bad thing. And with Dorothy Day in mind, I might even thank President Obama for his criticism. I’d hope that he’d consider the work of the Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious charitable groups whose efforts he has endangered, too.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online and founding director of Catholic Voices USA. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.

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