"Charity Begins at Home." Just ask the Catholic CEOs with their exorbitant salaries!

The Catholic bishops are suing the government. Are we surprised? Isn't that what leftists always do when the gravy train is under threat. How many times has Planned Parenthood sued to keep their baby-killing machine at full speed ahead supported with billions from the taxpayers?

Won't the U.S. Bishops Love This!

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem Announces End to Funding for NGOs Aiding Illegal Immigration

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) has been enabling grievous sins for years. They support distribution of contraceptives in the third world and assist organizations that fund abortion. The CCHD (Catholic Campaign for Human Development) and Catholic Charities are pigmies next to the evil giant of CRS. I rejoice over defunding these groups that enable so much evil. We can expect howling from the bishops, but the taxpayers will benefit. Charity is a Catholic obligation and the bishops should be preaching that, but their charities distribute poison along with their rice bowls. The bishops no longer have the confidence of Catholic in the pew. Catholics once were a powerhouse to be feared in the voting booth. The bishops squandered our power long ago by embracing liberalism, preaching seamless garment garbage, and going for the money. Love of money is the root of all evils and the USCCB often seems to love the almighty dollar more than Almighty God.  Cut the funding and close the massive Catholic bureaucracy in D.C. We will all benefit!

Like Father Like Sons! No Wonder the Church is in Such a Mess!

Get out the extra strength Excedrin. 

We all know the pope is a big believer in man-made global warming, obviously a top priority among his moral concerns since it was the subject of his first encyclical, Laudato Si. Unlike many scientists, the pope has no reservations about the accuracy of the climate change crowd (who incidentally make lots of money doing the Chicken Little dance). Unfortunately, many of the pope's spiritual sons in the U.S. have jumped on the bandwagon.

U.S. Bishops Tell Secretary of State their Top Foreign Policy Concern is Global Warming:

You Just Gotta Laugh: Outgoing Vatican Ambassador Worries about Trump "Surprises!"

Don't worry, Holy Father, Donald Trump can't win!

I had to laugh when I read the statement of outgoing U.S. Vatican Ambassador, Ken Hackett, a past CEO of the discredited Catholic Relief Services, saying:

“There is a general concern among everybody in the world [Nothing humble about that claim!]  – whether you were for Trump or against Trump – because it’s a surprise every day...[Hey, isn't that a good thing? After all, our God is a "God of surprises" according to the Holy Father so he must be God's choice.] ...they just don’t know what to expect."

Corruption in Church Charities

I gave up giving to any special collections years ago. Sad to say, the Catholic Church can no longer be trusted with your charity dollars. When you put your dollars in the basket for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) or Catholic Charities or Catholic Relief Services (CRS) you don't have to guess whether you are funding evil, you know it! Catholic Relief Services has been documented again and again to be up to their necks in supporting abortion and contraception in the third world. Leaders in those organizations have sold their souls for the Almighty Dollar. Getting grants from the government is more important than saving souls. They are an instrument of the evil one.

Catholic Relief Services has been under the microscope recently and the picture in the lens is far from pretty:

Catholic Relief Service Scandals

Find buckets of information about CRS at this website. You'll find information about the pro-abortion backgrounds of their employees, their support for pro-abortion/pro-contraception groups, explicit activities that violate Church teachings, etc. This is why you should NEVER EVER give to CRS. There are many groups doing good work in the third world without funding abortion/contraception. Support them. The bishops apparently lack interest in overseeing their charities to the degree that they have become enablers of evil. The only solution is to cut off the money.

CRS Loves to Hire Pro-Abortion Employees!

Woman who rammed pro-lifers with car was Catholic Relief Services employee

No wonder the bishops' charities have such a record of supporting contraception and abortion when these are the types of employee they have on the payroll. Seems like the bishops' charities are magnets for those who hate the Church. How the devil must laugh on payday!

Boycott CRS, CCHD, and Catholic Charities -- actually, you'd be wise to boycott all the second collections as a policy. There are plenty of worthwhile charities out there that deserve our support: the Missionaries of Charity, the Sisters for Life, the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist, solid Catholic schools, your local cloistered contemplatives, etc. 

Oh, and this is a good time to reflect on today's first reading from Ezekiel:

The word of the Lord came to me: Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel....Thus says the Lord God: Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves! ....You have fed off their milk, worn their wool, and slaughtered the fatlings, but the sheep you have not pastured. You did not strengthen the weak nor heal the sick nor bind up the injured. You did not bring back the strayed nor seek the lost, but you lorded it over them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and became food for all the wild beasts.... 

Therefore, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As I live, says the Lord God, because my sheep have been given over to pillage, and because my sheep have become food for every wild beast, for lack of a shepherd; because y shepherds did not look after my sheep, but pastured themselves....hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God: I swear I am coming against these shepherds. I will claim my sheep from them and put a stop to their shepherding my sheep so that they may no longer pasture themselves. I will save my sheep, that they may no longer be food for their mouths. 

For thus says the Lord God: I myself will look after and tend my sheep.

Unfortunately, the Church in the U.S. is filled with shepherds busy pasturing themselves. They leave their oversight responsibility to professional bureaucrats who, in many cases, are enemies of the faith. Pray and fast for bishops and clergy. The devil assaults them day and night because their downfall devastates the sheep in their care. Love your bishop. Pray for him and speak the truth even when it makes you a pariah in your diocese. Join the club: Pariahs in the Pew. Our model is the widow who harangued the unjust judge. Remember, eventually he gave her justice.

In View of the Latest Catholic Relief Services Scandal...

....a look back:

A Partnership Made in Hell

The hellish partnership continues. As the saying goes...the more things change, the more they stay the same...at least at Catholic Relief Services...and Catholic Charities...and CCHD of course. They all take your money and use it to advance the culture of death. Sad, isn't it? The shepherds are like the pigs in Animal Farm who end up colluding with the enemy. Pray for the U.S. bishops. They have a lot for which to answer. 

What Brought the Church in America to its Deplorable State?

Silence on contraception. If Humanae Vitae had been proclaimed loud and clear from its release in 1968 we would not be battling on all these other fronts today. And if the bishops had been committed to preaching the truth on contraception, they would never have funded all these evil groups that are in bed with the family planners. We would not be seeing headlines like this:

U.S. bishops’ relief agency gives $5.3 million to major contraception-providing charity

The U.S. bishops damage control apparatus is in high speed trying to explain away this latest abomination, but they can't. The fact is that CRS has a long history of supporting contraception. Catholic World Report did an expose by Germain Grisez in 2008 about their condom promotion and tainted AIDS education project working again with "partners" who are adamantly opposed to the Church. 

Jon Merrill who has worked in humanitarian programs in Africa is highly critical of CRS and its entanglement with government that leads to funding moral evils. Here's what he wrote in a February article on SperoForum.com:

I have worked on and off in Africa, for “humanitarian” organizations, for some thirty years, during both Republican and Democratic administrations, and I have not seen that the U.S. Government’s efforts to promote the sexual revolution – with the willing cooperation of the U.S. bishops’ own overseas “humanitarian” organization, and of other “Christian” subcontractors – has varied much in intensity over those years. The “foreign aid” agencies of both the U.S. federal government and the USCCB (the latter a contractor of the former) are both “owned” and staffed by either secularists, or by fellow-traveling-sexual-revolutionist “Catholics” and other vaguely “faith-motivated” types. Regardless of the particular ideology of the sitting president or of the very-theoretical anti-sexual-revolution stance of the bishops, those agencies find ways to effectively advance the sexual revolution. Personnel is policy.

In view of the serious problem with their international relief programs, is it any wonder the bishops' domestic "charity" program, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), is so bad? The only way this will end is for a new Catholic charity to form that 1) takes no government money, 2) hires real Catholics to run it, and 3) funds ONLY Catholic groups that are totally committed to the teachings of the Church. There are so many Catholic missionaries around the world, why should we be funding secular groups anyway? Isn't the most important thing we have to share our faith?

Non Catholic Catholic Charities: Straight Talk on Caritas

Most national and international Catholic charities today reflect the thinking of the world and not the Church. Pope Benedict is trying to resurrect their Catholic identity but has an uphill struggle as the article below indicates. Here are a few excerpts:

Yet on my own many trips to Africa with Catholic Relief Services, for example, it was not uncommon to hear locals refer to them as the “non-Catholic Catholic agency.” (Imagine what they say about CAFOD – the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development).


African bishops would tell me (after my talks about AIDS) how surprising it was to hear a young Western CRS employee speak the common Catholic language, whereas my superiors back in Baltimore told me that I would change my thinking about the way we should approach AIDS prevention – that I’d begin to oppose Church teachings – once I spent yet more time in Africa. That Caritas’ new motto, “One Human Family – Zero Poverty” – platitudinous, vapid, quintessentially secular-NGO-ish – also doubles as the title of their strategic plan for the next four years should dispel any notion that striking reforms will occur overnight.  “Business as usual”, it’s fair to surmise, will prevail within many of the Caritas member agencies for some time to come.  Read the complete article here.

Are Catholic Charities Really Catholic?

There once was a time when Catholics could put their envelopes in a special collection for one of the bishops' charities confident that the money would be spent in accordance with Catholic teaching. That time, unfortunately, is long past. And, in fact, some charities, like the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) have, from their inception, supported organizations working in direct opposition to the faith. One would like to think that CCHD is an aberration, but, judging from other major Catholic charities, it is not. Caritas Internationalis, Catholic Charities, and Catholic Relief Services all have abused the trust shown to them by Catholics in the pew.

The pope's recent condom statement brought a cheerful reaction from Caritas Internationalis which works with AIDS programs. They released a statement welcoming the pope's comments on condoms. It included this quote from Secretary General Lesley-Anne Knight:

“The Pope’s reported comments in this book illustrate the importance of compassion and sensitivity in dealing with the complexities of HIV/AIDS prevention. Caritas delivers its HIV/AIDS programmes in line with Church Teaching and we will consider, in close consultation with the Holy See, whether there are implications for our work in these reported comments of Pope Benedict.”

Shall I translate that for you. "Hey, we've always supported condoms now we look forward to doing it openly with the pope's approval." Is that a slur on Caritas? I don't think so. Unfortunately, all the major Catholic charities are tainted by the fact that they take massive amounts of money from the government and anti-life foundations that support condom distribution and other anti-Catholic solutions to worldly problems. On top of that the charities commonly hire liberals who personally oppose Church teaching to fill key jobs. They also participate in coalitions that include organizations that support abortion, homosexuality, and are enemies of the traditional family.

Caritas is no different. Caritas-Europa, for example, is a member of End Poverty, a group that includes Planned Parenthood International and other problematic members like the European Social Action Network (EASN). They describe themselves as a "coalition of European NGO (non-governmental organization) networks." Their goal is "to advocate for a strong political legacy" (stress in the original)in the European Union (EU). Now what exactly does that mean?  

If you examine End Poverty's goals they includes the usual assortment of liberal issues: redistribution of income, environmentalism, elimination of "social exclusion" for any groups (including LGBT), etc. Building a "strong political legacy," they say, requires "A new overarching social and sustainable EU strategy, based on fundamental rights (stress in original), which puts people and planet first and makes progress on eradicating poverty and inequality a pre‐requisite in the development of all EU policies." Sounds impressive, but terms aren't defined and some of the language about rights and inequality has been used in other international documents and at United Nations meetings to mean the right to abortion and special rights for LGBT groups. Since some members of the coalition support abortion and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is an attack on the family through an attack on parental authority, healthy skepticism is appropriate. And what exactly is a Catholic charity doing supporting "redistribution of income" in the first place? Forced charity is an oxymoron and violates justice.

While paying lip service to "putting people first," there's not one word in End Poverty's document about protecting the rights of the most vulnerable person, the unborn child, or defending the rights of the family. Since the breakdown of the family is the greatest cause of poverty, ignoring the family altogether is inexcusable, but not surprising considering the anti-family agenda of some of the members.

Caritas is certainly not alone in their questionable actions.Anyone paying attention to national and international Catholic charities knows, for the most part, they aren't really Catholic at all. Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) is notorious! So is Catholic Charities which lost its soul years ago when it chose  political activism and government money over the corporal works of mercy and the Catholic rule of subsidiarity. In my own diocese, Catholic Charities ran a teen sexuality program in the 80s (funded by a government grant) that used Planned Parenthood materials and featured speakers who undermined Church teaching. My husband and I attended with our son and I specifically remember the doctor who said "masturbation is no problem" to this group of 13-year-olds.

What about Catholic Relief Services? In 2008 Catholic World Report (CRS) ran an exposé on the international charity titled The Church Betrayed by moral theologian Germain Grisez. Grisez went into extended detail on an AIDS education program that used materials developed by CRS implying that condoms were the best way to avoid AIDS (after a passing mention of abstinence) and masturbation was an acceptable alternative form of sexual expression. (They used the term massage, but one gets the idea.) Fornication was implied as well even for teens. The program included a "flip chart" developed by and the property of CRS with their logo deliberately excluded. Apparently, the powers that be recognized the ticklish situation if they were known as the authors of the problematic materials. And so CRS covered it up. In fact, Jared M. Hoffman, an executive with CRS headquarters in Baltimore, in a letter accompanying the CD with the educational materials, which was sent out to "colleagues" in many countries, specifically forbade the CRS logo from appearing on them. Why? "CRS," Hoffman wrote, "has chosen not to include the CRS or AIDSRelief logo on the flipchart, due to the potential sensitivity of the information contained in these materials among Church partners."

Professor Grisez called for the bishops to investigate CRS, but Archbishop Timothy Dolan, head of the CRS board, sent a letter to his brother bishops after the article was published assuring them that all was well, and no investigation was needed. He also defamed Professor Grisez by misrepresenting the article and accusing him of saying things he never said. It was business as usual at a big Catholic charity, something that has become all too familiar to Catholics in the pew.

Unfortunately, the strategy of the bishops for addressing scandals that regularly arise about their so-called Catholic charities is: 1) circle the wagon, 2) drag out a barrel of whitewash to cover up the scandal, and 3) spin the facts to assure everyone that what happened was, of course, an aberration, a misunderstanding, a mistake that will never be repeated....until the next time. And you can be sure there will be a next time because those administering these charities are often liberals who oppose Church teaching and think the world's solutions are best. Church bureaucracies are filled with them and most of the bishops seem perfectly content to turn a blind eye to the problem.

So what's a faithful Catholic to do? Personally, I won't give a nickle to any of the establishment Catholic charities which will use my money, at least some of the time, to attack my beliefs. In the meantime, I give to groups I trust. The answer in the long run, I believe, is the establishment of a truly Catholic charity run by the laity that follows Catholic principles faithfully, refuses entanglement with the culture of death by taking no money from the government, supports only Catholic charitable programs, and hires only faithful Catholics as administrators, field workers, and grant reviewers. Such an institution is long overdue. Pray for the Lord of the harvest to raise one up that will produce an abundance of good grapes instead of a devastated vineyard filled with rotten fruit.

A Partnership Made in Hell!

If you take money and other goodies from demons, they always want something in return. Rumpelstiltskin demanded the firstborn child of the miller's daughter for spinning straw into gold. Mephistopheles demanded Faust's soul in exchange for knowledge. Which leads me to a question about pro-abortion foundations pumping money into Catholic Relief Services. What do they expect to get from it? Respectability? Silence about their funding of population control and other evils? What exactly are the bishops through the USCCB selling by taking blood money from two of the biggest promoters of child-killing around the world? That's the question explored by Randy Engel in her article, Catholic Relief Services Forms Partnership with the Death Peddlars:

According to the CRS official website (www.crs.org), the Gates Foundation is “guided by the belief that every life has equal value.” CRS praises the foundation’s work “to help all people lead healthy, productive lives,” and “to ensure that all people… have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. …”

In exchange for perpetuating this glorious deception and maintaining a silence on the Gates/Buffett world-wide killing machine, CRS has received in excess of $40 million for global and agricultural development and financial services for the poor from 2003 to 2009. Compared to the billions Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett and his family spend on their true passion – baby killing and. population control – it’s a drop in the bucket, of course, but I’m sure they consider their money well spent. In reviewing the anti-life record of the Gateses and Buffetts, one they have successfully keep out of the public eye, thanks to organizations like CRS.

Engel goes on to itemize the massive funding by these two foundations of pro-abortion and population control groups. The list is a Who's Who of child-killing: Planned Parenthood, NOW, NARAL, Catholics for a Free Choice, Center for Reproductive Rights, Population Council, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, and on and on. The foundations have funded embryonic stem cell and cloning research and clinical trials for RU-486. The involvement of these two groups advancing the culture of death with their multi-million dollar grants staggers the imagination.

On the other hand, the Gates Foundation gave CRS 2.9 million dollars in food grants in 2008 and a million for Haiti relief after the recent earthquake.

What do they get for their money? Glowing articles on the CRS website:

"Thanks to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CRS will be able to ramp up our efforts to serve those suffering from the effects of the global food crisis in these three countries," said CRS President Ken Hackett. "Our partnership with the foundation will help us to meet the immediate needs of hungry families, while investing in greater agricultural production to provide more food in the future." (Read complete arrticle.)

You can find dozens of articles linked to the CRS website that glowingly refer to the projects and programs funded by the Gates and Buffett foundations. What you won't find is any criticism of their efforts to kill off the children of the poor (or the middle class, or blacks, or Asians, etc.). In fact, I challenge you to do a search on the internet trying to find any criticism from the USCCB about the anti-life activities of these death peddlars. I couldn't find anything. Not a single thing. Nada! Zero! Zilch! The  silence speaks volumes.

Who is making strong statements? Fr. Tom Euteneuer of Human Life International. What's the likelihood he'll ever wear a pectoral cross?

CRS is one more department of the USCCB that is tainted by association with the culture of death. As Engel points out in her article:

Unlike the CCHD, which should be disbanded, CRS, founded in 1943, has a long history of legitimate service to the Church especially in regard to refugee settlement and emergency disaster relief programs. The tragedy is that it has become just another compromised entity of the American Bishops’ national bureaucracy which systematically poisons everything it touches. The removal of the Bill and Melinda Gates and Buffett Foundations from the roster of CRS partners/donors list is important, but the problems with CRS run much deeper and are unlikely to be resolved by the liberal, leftist establishment and staff that runs and controls the USCCB.

In closing I return to the question of what these radically pro-abortion, pro-population control groups are trying to buy with their money. I can only presume from my, albeit limited, research that their goal is Church silence about their evil agenda. It's the same silence the state buys with the tax exempt status which keeps so many bishops gagged trembling that they'll lose Caesar's gold if they boldly speak the truth.

Pray that the Lord will wake up our shepherds with the words of Deuteronomy. "I set before thee this day, life and prosperity, death and destruction. Choose life that you and your children may live." Jesus told his followers that you cannot serve both God and money. Choose God or choose Mammon. Trying to choose both is a partnership made in hell.