Every year since it was established in 1970, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB) has asked pastors nationwide to take up second collections for their Campaign for Human Development, the American Catholic bishops’ contribution to the Great Society.
Through CCHD, unwitting Catholic parishioners have often funded specious groups and causes, some already amply blessed with federal funding. Despite CCHD’s promise to “help people help themselves,” grants never go to “direct service programs,” but rather to “poverty groups which work toward systemic change, economic strength and political power,” according to CCHD materials. CCHD says funded “projects” must concern “a distinct constituency (e.g., a neighborhood, seniors, Blacks, Hispanics, women, handicapped) and/or a distinct issue or series of issues (e.g, hazardous waste, housing, tribal recognition, community development).”
In the past, some CCHD grantees have been involved in projects that are clearly contrary to what Catholics believe. Yet every year Catholics give millions to CCHD.
In 1970, the NCCB established the Campaign for Human Development, as it was originally known. Its twofold purpose, according to the Campaign, has been to fund “organized groups of white and minority poor to develop economic strength and political power” and to “educate the People of God to a new knowledge of today’s problems … that can lead to some new approaches that promote a greater sense of solidarity.” But problem-solving is a role CCHD tends to reserve for government, and “solidarity” commonly means union organizing and grassroots lobbying in the style of 1960s radical Saul Alinsky.
For many of CCHD’s Catholic donors, the program’s adherence to moral guidelines is more important than it’s progressive politics. In years past, CCHD has encountered difficulty with grants to groups that sometimes oppose Catholic teaching, and grants to coalitions that include groups like the avidly pro-abortion National Organization for Women (NOW). Revised guidelines issued last year — shortly after the name change that added “Catholic” — addressed these concerns: “In such cases, funding decisions will be made in accord with the traditional Catholic moral principles governing cooperation.” Those “moral principles” advise against “scandal” that might be caused by working closely with objectionable groups.
Some of these groups are in the past for CCHD. It no longer funds a handful of the programs it had been criticized for funding because of condom distribution or abortion advocacy.
But there are still reasons for concern.
This year’s “Fight the Right March,” run by the National Organization for Women, was endorsed by ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which receives substantial funding from CCHD. In 1999-2000, CCHD granted a total of $517,000 to 17 state and local chapters of ACORN — an 18 percent increase over the previous year’s grants.
CCHD also still funds the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, which received a $25,000 grant during the 1999-2000 cycle. That’s $5,000 less than the previous year, but $5,000 more than the year before that. The Project’s “JOBS Campaign” coalition includes a branch of ACORN, AFSCME locals, the Pennsylvania and Philadelphia AFL-CIO, the state chapter of NOW, and the Women’s Law Project — all supportive of abortion rights.
And the list goes on.
It’s as if the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is living in a different time. CCHD is stuck in, as one observer called it, a “Sixties time warp,” happy to fund left-wing political mobilization and “anti-poverty” groups.
CCHD granted $28,000 to the Kansas-based Manhattan Alliance for Peace and Justice in the 1999-2000 cycle. In March, the radical organization sponsored a campus lecture at Kansas State University which devolved into a “Free Mumia” rally. About 200 students rallied in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former radio host who is on death row for shooting a police officer in 1981. The invited speaker, whose parents had been served the death penalty, claimed “the Philadelphia police hated Mumia” because he decried police brutality on his radio show.
Another CCHD grantee is the Missoula, Montana-based WEEL (Working for Equality and Economic Liberation), which was granted $30,000 in 1999-2000. WEEL is a welfare-rights advocate that “works to hold those in power accountable to families instead of profits.” Typical of CCHD grantees, WEEL’s rhetoric is a thinly disguised attack on free market and pro-market politics, described as “belief and policy systems which keep people oppressed.” WEEL organizes low-income families for political action to obtain increased welfare funding, low-income housing, child care subsidies and guaranteed wages. It recently launched a campaign against the Fatherhood Initiative, an effort to teach men that families suffer unless fathers accept responsibility for their children’s welfare, which WEEL calls insulting to single mothers.
Among the traditional CCHD grantees are affiliates of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), founded by Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, a bible for leftist political protest groups. Alinsky wrote, “To hell with charity; the only thing you’ll get is what you’re strong enough to get.” Alinsky’s coalition group IAF still very much believes, it would seem, what Saul Alinsky taught.
IAF has support from CCHD’s national and diocesan directors. Rev. Carmen Mele, O.P., CCHD director in Forth Worth, Texas, says this of IAF: “I commend the parent organization as well as the affiliates with which I have worked for their efforts at bringing the poor into the democratic process…. The methods are much more constructive than party politics and deserve support. Yes, I sometimes wish that they might take up issues such as abortion (especially in El Paso, where the people are largely conservative on the issue), but as long as they do not take a contrary position, it seems fair to continue backing the group.”
Familiar with past criticism of CCHD and its questionable ties and inspirations, Mele defends IAF’s ties to Alinsky: “Some of the criticism of the IAF which I have heard sounds foolish, like condemning the organization because Saul Alinsky once said he was the devil’s disciple. More to the point, he was a Jewish humanist who perhaps did as much to improve the lot of poor workers, many of whom were Catholics, all over the country as any person in our history.”
What does CCHD have to say about itself? Not much in the way of defense. When I asked CCHD director Rev. Robert Vitillo for an interview earlier this year, he refused, and replied, “I will keep you in thought and prayer as you prepare this article and will continue to pray for those who will make the decision on what information will be included in this report. May truth and justice prevail.”
To fund groups that take positions contrary to Catholic teachings and to ostracize anyone who doesn’t share CCCD’s politics are serious concerns for Catholic churchgoers. But how can truth and justice prevail if they won’t help anyone get to it?
