Texas Bishop – “I urge you to stop donating to CCHD”

Retired (unfortunately) Bishop Rene Gracida of Corpus Christi has some strong advice regarding the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the US bishop’s prime “social justice” agency. He urges Catholics NOT to support it.  This is as plain a condemnation of this organization that I have ever seen or heard from any American bishop, retired or no.  He also says the CCHD has always been a source of scandal and is, to me, strongly implies that as an entity it is irreformable:

When I was Chancellor, Vicar General and then Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Miami I learned how great a scandal it was that the very liberal staff of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was making grants from the funds of the annual CCHD collection taken up in the dioceses of the United States to organizations that were in opposition to the doctrines of the Catholic Church.  When I became Bishop of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee I would not allow the annual collection for CCHD to be taken up in that Diocese.  I continued the policy when I became Bishop of the Diocese of Corpus Christi.

In spite of expressions of support for CCHD on the part of the bishops who constitute the leadership of USCCB, the CCHD has almost never been free from the criticism that it gives funds to secular organizations that engage in activities that are in fundamental opposition to the teachings, statements and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. [Bishop Gracida is absolutely right. CCHD has been a constant source of scandal since its inception 40 years ago. There were grave concerns about its orientation as a funding vehicle for sexular leftist organizations even then, and of course decades of evidence has shown that CCHD is incapable of NOT funding groups with agendas and beliefs that are diametrically opposed to the Doctrine of the Faith.  One would think that would move the bishops to close this misbegotten agency, but one would be wrong.]

If you have been in the habit of contributing to the annual collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, I urge you to stop and to direct you contributions to organizations that you are sure do not support abortion, among other things in opposition to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Thank you for being so honest and charitable, Bishop Gracida. Thank you for not mincing words, and making a statement that is plainly intelligible.

I have long concluded that the CCHD is totally unreformable. CCHD was disordered from its very conception, because its founding purpose – not to help train the poor in job or life skills or to help alleviate the effectgs of poverty via food, housing, medicine, etc, but to “empower” the poor by turning them into vehicles of left wing agitprop – was scandalously erroneous.  The CCHD funnels money to groups that are, in essence, left wing activist groups. That very bias reveals how disordered CCHD is – are only left wing groups truly able to advocate for the poor, or are the poor being used as a political prop to advance various left wing causes?  Is the money of the faithful really helping “empower” the poor, or do they pay the salaries and fund the activities of various aspiring revolutionaries?

Because of its disastrous founding principle – it has always been the darling of the Saul Alinsky revolutionary set, and funded ACORN for years! – I don’t think CCHD can be reformed. A year or two ago, there was talk some bishops wanted it abolished. Let us pray that becomes most, if not all.