Posted on 09/27/2011 8:32:04 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
After more than 40 years of the (Catholic) Campaign for Human Developments preaching about the need for systemic change, we get it.
If we want a world in which the dignity of every human person is respected, from the moment of conception until natural death, the system under which we live has to be reordered. Pope John Paul II called this present system a culture of death and thats a good name for an entire fabric of institutions and programs that take it for granted that certain humans are invisible and dispensable. The most dispensable among us are the children in utero, the ones yet to be born. They are cavalierly aborted, most often by contraceptives, or discarded in laboratories in staggering numbers.
To change a culture of death into a culture of life requires systemic change, the change of a bad system.
One needs to understand how systems operate. The abortionist who sucks a child from its mothers womb is supported by laws, by pro-abortion religious communities, by self-serving boyfriends, by sexual education programs, by a pornography industry, by salacious Madison Avenue sales pitches, and a hundred other entities that are comfortable with babies dying. To shut down the system, therefore, requires repairing laws, evangelizing, educating, and offering unadulterated alternatives, such as health care that doesnt come, hand in glove, with a corrupt system.
Is this the systemic change CCHD is seeking?
The pro-life United States Conference of Catholic Bishops annual Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) collection has had a slogan, break the vicious cycle of poverty. The idea behind it is that giving money to the CCHD is a way to help the poor.
In a culture-of-life system, helping the poor would mean helping the poor. It would provide an immediate benefit to them, such as food or medicine, or it would provide a long-term benefit, such as job training or financial management or it might address elements in society that treat poor people unjustly, engaging in legislative advocacy or educational programs.
In a culture-of-death system, however, benefits are contaminated. One poor person is fed by starving another. Every acquired good is purchased by an exchange of flesh.
How does this work? In one of its 2011 newsletters, CCHD proudly describes the work of grantee AMOS, an acronym for A Mid-Iowa Organizing Strategy. AMOS is a local affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation, an Alinskyian organizing network that rallies congregations and other institutions for political advocacy.
AMOS was given a CCHD grant to help it advocate for a mobile obstetric clinic. The mobile clinic is the happy result of a five-year effort by AMOSs 29 member organizations, including Catholic parishes in the Archdiocese of Dubuque and the Diocese of Des Moines.[i]
AMOS was one of four organizations involved in creating the Ames clinic. The clinic was created from a partnership of AMOS (A Mid-Iowa Organizing Strategy), MICA (Mid-Iowa Community Action), Broadlawn Hospital in Des Moines, and Des Moines University.[ii] Its insightful to look at these other partners.
MICA (Mid-Iowa Community Action) is one of a number of associated organizations were established in the 1960s as delivery systems that maximize the federal, state and local resources in providing services to citizens.[iii] That is, they connect poorer citizens into government-funded programs such as Head Start, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and others.[iv]
Among the key programs MICA uses is PROMISE JOBS, described as a supportive, informational, and a true collaborative effort [that] gives each family an opportunity to access not only positive programs but an increased network of support. [v] Available to all PROMISE JOBS participants and therefore to all MICA clients - are Family Planning Services An option for everyone referred to PROMISE JOBS. Participants can find out how additional children can affect a familys finances.[vi]
Then, theres Broadlawns Medical Center a hospital in Des Moines, another one of the partners that, along with the CCHD-funded AMOS, was responsible for establishing the Ames Mobile Clinic. Broadlawns Variety Club Womens Health Center Family Planning Clinic provides a broad range of specialized services and care for women that include birth control counseling, emergency contraception, and something ominously called pregnancy options,[vii] a term used by Planned Parenthood to include abortion.
The last partner creating the Ames Mobile Clinic is Des Moines University, an institution offering graduate studies in the health sciences.[viii] Students seeking an elective experience in international medicine, that is, wanting some hands-on, primary care experience in a country outside of the United States, must demonstrate an understanding of local Family Planning and population programs.[ix]
In the partnership of AMOS, MICA, Broadlawns Hospital, and Des Moines University, the latter three entities provide the actual program of the Ames clinic.[x] The function of AMOS, however, is to build community support within its member institutions all of them religious congregations; six of them Catholic.[xi]
AMOS is the propaganda machine, the vehicle by which culture-of-life watch-dogs are kept too busy gnawing biscuits to see what they are supporting.
See, the Ames Mobile Medical Clinic (elsewhere called the Ames Area Free Obstetrical Clinic[xii]) is one of about 30 Free Clinics of Iowa. [xiii]
Free Clinics of Iowa is a contraceptive system, providing its member clinics with all essential resources.[xiv] At least one clinic makes it clear that its scope of care includes family planning[xv] suggesting that it is probably not the only clinic providing such services.
So what has CCHD actually funded? It has funded the creation of a clinic that may or may not be distributing contraceptives. Lets say it isnt, for the sake of discussion. However, the clinic is part of a complex system that promotes contraception (family planning) as an important tool in helping the poor. Organizers from the Industrial Areas Foundation have been permitted to enter six Catholic parishes and rally people within them to support a clinic that is part of a culture-of-death system.
Could CCHD have supported a culture-of-life system, instead? Could the United States Catholic Conference not have put Catholic money into shoring up Catholic medical facilities? Couldnt it have funded any of the innovative health care practices around the country that dont include family planning options, or worse? Sure it could have.
But it didnt. Rather than bringing the leaven of Catholics values into a broken world, the systemic change sought by CCHD appears to be just the opposite to force the leaven of the worlds value into Catholic institutions.
Over the next few weeks, this series will examine a number of other recent CCHD grantees, many of whom are far more personally and directly culpable than AMOS. However, its important to appreciate that the cry for systemic change means different things to different people and not all change is for the good.
In a culture-of-life system, helping the poor would mean helping the poor. It would provide an immediate benefit to them, such as food or medicine, or it would provide a long-term benefit, such as job training or financial management or it might address elements in society that treat poor people unjustly, engaging in legislative advocacy or educational programs.
In a culture-of-death system, however, benefits are contaminated. One poor person is fed by starving another. Every acquired good is purchased by an exchange of flesh....
....So what has CCHD actually funded? It has funded the creation of a clinic that may or may not be distributing contraceptives. Lets say it isnt, for the sake of discussion. However, the clinic is part of a complex system that promotes contraception (family planning) as an important tool in helping the poor. Organizers from the Industrial Areas Foundation have been permitted to enter six Catholic parishes and rally people within them to support a clinic that is part of a culture-of-death system....
....Rather than bringing the leaven of Catholics values into a broken world, the systemic change sought by CCHD appears to be just the opposite to force the leaven of the worlds value into Catholic institutions.
Of course CCHD funds the culture of death. That’s why no informed Catholic should ever contribute to it.
Yes it is. CCHD is Marxist abomination from the same Alinsky millieu that gave us Obama, Hillary Clinton, SEIU and ACORN. In fact, ACORN could fairly be called a creation of CCHD.
Yes, the Campaign for Human Development has supported abortion, birth control, and other left-wing projects ever since its inception.
For a while, I felt obligated to cease giving to the Bishop’s annual fund, a pretty drastic measure, but the only way I could see to keep the money out of the hands of the CCHD. Now it is no longer listed among the bishop’s “charities,” although I’m not entirely sure it isn’t getting something under the table.
The bishops have really, really fallen down on this one. Our local bishop used as his excuse to withdraw funding the sorty about the CCHD leader who absconded with funds. Actually, that was a good thing (!), because it left less money for abortions. I think some other bishops reconsidered at the same time.
Where contributions to CCHD go is not secret and these men are not incapable of finding where the money goes and for what purpose.
This never ending stream of posts critical of the Church is akin to wetting your pants in a dark suit. It probably gives you a nice warm feeling for a little while, nobody really notices, and eventually you will get a rash.........
But when people start to pick up on the stank, there is a lot of pointing and laughing
Nicely put. Seriously, without any animosity, sarcasm, or intended anything on my part, all this energy would be better spent getting closer to Our Lord, don’t you think? That should be the most important thing in any of our lives. It is the most important thing in my life, and, I hope, in yours.
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