The New CCHD Strategy

I've noticed during the past few weeks that our bulletin listing of upcoming collections for the rest of the year omits the traditional CCHD (Catholic Campaign for Human Development) collection usually taken up in November the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Regular readers of this blog know CCHD is notorious for funding groups with links to abortion, same-sex marriage, and the election of liberal politicians I'd like to think the Diocese of Arlington is opting out of the CCHD collection, but that is too much to hope for. What's more likely is implementation of strategies cropping up around the country in some dioceses: bait and switch or the bob and weave. In some places the collection is being rolled into other collections, or the date is being changed, or it is being taken up different weekends at parishes in the same diocese. It appears that, rather than correct the problems with CCHD, many bishops are gaming the collection. Hey, if nobody knows when the collection will occur or if it's hidden under another name, opponents will have a hard time organizing a boycott.

In the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., as reported by Restore D.C. Catholicism, this year's collection was switched to August and combined with the Catholic Communications Campaign. The diocese retitled it the Catholic Communications and Human Development Campaign. The Diocese of Superior lists the CCHD campaigns on its calendar for June in 2012 and 2013. Is this a change for them? I don't know. I couldn't find anything on previous years. See here for a number of articles on this year's collection in D.C.

According to friends around the country, fellow members of the Catholic Media Coalition, similar things are happening in their own dioceses. To me it seems just one more indictment of CCHD. No other national collection gets disguised with another collection or gets the date-changing bob and weave treatment. But CCHD is a special case and last year, under increasing scrutiny, they brought out the big guns to go after the enemy, their critics, who must be isolated, and discredited. Unfortunately for CCHD, it's an impossible job when there is so much evidence that indicates serious problems. All you have to do is look at the list of the 2010-2011 grantees on the USCCB website to see that community organizing groups are still among CCHD's main "charities."

To be fair, the devious strategies being used to disguise the collection are not universal. Some dioceses clearly identify when CCHD will be collected. The Diocese of Davenport for example announces it on their website. And some, like the Diocese of Kansas City, MO, announced last year that they were dropping all the community organizing groups from their local grants. A handful of bishops in the past few years have declined to take up the collection at all or took it up, but distributed it locally or to organizations outside the CCHD national grant system.

The problems with CCHD continue and are systemic. They are symptomatic of the problems with the entire social justice arm of the Catholic Church. Many of the professionals working for social justice "charities" are liberal cafeteria Catholics who support abortion, same-sex marriage, and other issues that violate Church teaching. They sit on boards of pro-abortion groups; contribute to liberal pro-abortion, pro-homosexual politicians; and often publicly dissent from Church teaching. Their approach to social justice is to forever demand increased government funding "for the poor" which often goes instead to the bureaucracies who claim to work for the poor but actually work to advance the liberal agenda. In view of government's "charity" to Planned Parenthood and other evil organizations that work for population control to eliminate the poor, the idea that somehow government is the solution is flawed to say the least.

Watch ALL's report from last year about CCHD. And be alert to "special collections" and where they are really going. Last year over seven million was collected and distributed by the national CCHD office. That's  I wonder how much of that money really went to help the poor and how much went to promoting philosophies that undermine Catholic teaching. Seven million buys a lot of grease for the liberal skids.