Posted on 11/21/2008 8:22:45 AM PST by Salvation
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops yesterday released a report in which Bishop Roger Morin discussed the reasons behind the Catholic Campaign for Human Development’s decision to end funding to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).
Bishop Morin, auxiliary bishop of New Orleans and Chairman of the Subcommittee on Catholic Campaign for Human Development, explained that ‘in the past, CCHD has funded proposals from local organizations affiliated with ACORN when those activities conform to the CCHD guidelines and when the local diocesan CCHD director and the local diocesan bishop explicitly approve the proposal. Many of these local ACORN groups have done impressive work preventing home foreclosures, creating jobs opportunities, raising wages, addressing crime and improving education.’
He continued, ‘Last June, CCHD cut off funding to all ACORN groups when we learned about a major case of embezzlement eight years ago which raised serious concerns about national ACORN's financial accountability, transparency, governance and organizational integrity … More recently, the Subcommittee also became concerned about widespread reports of ACORN involvement in alleged voter registration fraud and political partisanship. As a result of the cut-off earlier this year, no CCHD funds were involved in any of these activities. However, the allegations intensified our questions and problems around ACORN's organizational integrity, competence and non-partisanship. Therefore, we extended the cut off of CCHD funding of any ACORN organizations. The Bishops' CCHD Subcommittee met November 8-9 and reviewed this matter at length and discussed it in depth. The Bishop members of the Subcommittee voted unanimously to reaffirm, extend and formalize the decision to end CCHD funding of ACORN organizations because of serious concerns about financial accountability, organizational performance and political partisanship. While not all the specifics can be known, we simply had too many continuing questions and concerns about these serious matters to permit CCHD funding of ACORN groups.’
Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
**He continued, ‘Last June, CCHD cut off funding to all ACORN groups when we learned about a major case of embezzlement eight years ago which raised serious concerns about national ACORN's financial accountability, transparency, governance and organizational integrity … More recently, the Subcommittee also became concerned about widespread reports of ACORN involvement in alleged voter registration fraud and political partisanship. **
Catholic Discussion Ping!
Please notify me via FReepmail if you would like to be added to or taken off the Catholic Discussion Ping List.
Good. Baby steps, but the Church is starting to come around on many things.
**As a result of the cut-off earlier this year, no CCHD funds were involved in any of these activities. **
Good news for us!
I’m certain that the Rev Wright’s former church will pick up any slack in funding this decision may create for ACORN
Yes, I chuckle about the line “too many continuing questions and concerns”
Good grief it was all over the news during the election....I wish they could have made a stronger statement. Perhaps — ACORN, give the money back — it was a mistake. LOL!
Good. But more must be done. The Church should not have its goodwill abused.
I attended Catholic schools from grade school through college. The Catholic church is loaded with socialists. The BVM nuns in particular are as Marxist as you will find. I live in one of the most Catholic cities in America, and it is loaded with socialist Catholics.
Does the Catholic church have that much money that it can afford to give money to activist organizations that it knows nothing about?
This year, the Sunday on which money for CHD is donated is this coming Sunday.
The only money the Church really has is the weekly donations it receives from its parishioners.
There are usually two collections each Sunday. The first is for the support of the parish the parishioners attend and the second is for larger-scale projects like seminaries, the overseas missions, Catholic schools, etc.
One of the second collections each year in the US is for CHD.
Another one of the second collections is for the Vatican - known as Peter's Pence.
There is no set minimum or maximum for any collection.
So out of 120 collections each year (52 Sundays, * holy days of obligation), the contents of one collection go to CHD (in the US only) and the contents of another go to the Vatican.
Interesting! Thanks for the explanation.
Yes.It is a huge supporter of social justice efforts. I think they should be commended for this and should stick to financing its own Catholic Charities. CC is unbelievably effective addressing the needs of soceity/individuals who need assistance.
I have never been to a Catholic Church that has two collections every Sunday. Second collections are only a few times a year for specific purposes usually dictated by the Bishops or Rome. Sometimes there is a second collection for a specific parish purpose but this is not regular or usual.
You're welcome.
To give you an idea of the scope of funds we are discussing, the Vatican's operating expenses in 2006 were $260 million versus income of approximately $245 million, so the Vatican was operating about $15 million in the red.
That's $260 million divided among: 400,000 local congregations; 125,000 schools; 75,000 clinics; 1,000 colleges; 14,000 old age homes; 8,500 orphanages and foster facilities; 6,000 hospitals; 1.2 million clergy and nuns; 150,000 seminarians and postulants; 1 billion parishioners.
Many of these institutions are supported at a diocesan level as well - but many are not.
Compare this to the Church of England which had an operating budget in 2006 of approximately $55 million for 40 million parishioners.
On a percentage basis, the C of E has 520% of the liquid cash per believer that the Catholic Church does.
Well, it’s a start, although the partisanship was obvious from the start, and they don’t seem to mention the most important reason for cutting off these funds—that the money was used to promote the Culture of Death on every front.
Actually, you can argue that the embezzlement of funds was a Good Thing, because better to steal the money than use it for it’s dedicated purpose: educating kids to be good little Communists and gay/abortion supporters. Or encouraging poor people to get sub-prime loans they can’t afford, thus helping to impoverish them further while bringing down the financial system and throwing people out of work.
I’ll take embezzlement over those results any day of the week.
In every parish I’ve attended in the four dioceses I’ve lived in, two collections were taken every Sunday. The first for the parish, the second for some other charitable purpose. About 8 Sundays a year we have a special visitor raising funds for a specific mission project, not to mention the collections for our vicariate schools, our diocesan seminary each quarter, etc.
Plausible deniability.
This is true. We will see second collections from time to time, but not every Sunday. My parish will also have a second collection every 2 or 3 months for debt reduction, but other parishes may differ.
Catholic Campaign for Human Development Has Given ACORN $7 Million
by Phyllis Schlafly (more by this author)
Posted 11/11/2008 ET
Updated 11/20/2008 ET
Do you wonder why 2008 election data shows that the majority of Catholics voted for Barack Obama even though his record as Illinois state senator proves him the most pro-abortion candidate who ever ran for president?
Perhaps one answer is that on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, millions of Catholics will again be putting in their church’s collection plate their annual donation to what the pre-printed envelope calls “Campaign for Human Development: The Catholic Church working to end poverty and injustice in America; We’ll turn your dollars into hope for the poor of our nation.”
The generous Catholics who respond to that well-phrased appeal probably think they are making a Good Samaritan gift to provide necessaries to the down-and-out. Most would probably be shocked to learn that the money donated to the Campaign for Human Development (CHD) does not go for charity but for radical Obama-style community organizing.
Over the last 10 years, CHD has given $7.3 million of Catholic-donated dollars to the Saul Alinsky-style group called ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). When in 1998 some Catholics complained that CHD grants were not used for Catholic charity but were actually funding groups opposed to church teachings, CHD changed its name to Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).
The name change did not redirect the flow of money. In 2007 alone, CCHD increased its support of ACORN, giving it 37 grants totaling $1,037,000.
During 2007 and 2008, ACORN and its affiliated organizations were aggressively registering what it claimed were 1.3 million poor people. ACORN focused on new registrations in the key toss-up states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida.
You can listen on YouTube to clips from ACORN’s national convention and decide for yourself how partisan it is.
CCHD knew how ACORN spent its money. CCHD’s executive director, Ralph McCloud, admitted to Catholic News Service that “some of the funds that the Catholic Campaign contributed to ACORN in the past undoubtedly were used for voter registration drives.”
Even though the pro-Obama political activity of ACORN had been widely reported, and employees of ACORN and affiliated organizations like Project Vote have been either indicted or convicted of submitting false voter registration forms in 14 states, in June 2008 CCHD approved grants of $1.13 million to 40 local ACORN affiliates for the cycle beginning July 1, 2008. Those grants were ratified by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at its June 2008 meeting.
The CCHD-ACORN relationship suddenly became too embarrassing to ignore, and CCHD announced it was suspending (not canceling) the 2008 grants. But the reason given for suspension was not ACORN’s partisan political activity or registration frauds, it was because Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled nearly $1 million from the organization and its affiliates back in 1999 and 2000.
CCHD also announced that it has formed a task force to ensure that church funds are spent according to the guidelines of the Bishops Conference’s poverty-fighting program. Presumably, the previous millions of dollars given to ACORN were within the conference’s guidelines.
Barack Obama knows the political value of ACORN. He gave $800,000 in campaign cash disguised as payments for “advance work” to an Alinsky front group called Citizen Services Inc.
Obama admits he got his start as a community organizer in Chicago, saying it was “the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School.” He tries to downplay his connection with ACORN, claiming he worked for churches, but he was trained by Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation and then spent years in the 1980s teaching the Alinsky method to others through several Alinsky offshoots such as Project Vote and Developing Communities Project in Chicago.
Saul Alinsky’s son Lee David Alinsky felt compelled to remedy Obama’s failure to give proper credit. In a letter to the Boston Globe in August after Obama’s open-stadium rally in Denver, the younger Alinsky wrote: “Obama learned his lesson well. I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”
Saul Alinsky explained his community organizing tactics in his book “Rules for Radicals.” His game plan was to divide the community into the Haves and the Have Nots, make the Have Nots believe they are unjustly treated by the Haves, build resentment against the American social and economic system, use church congregations to mobilize street agitators, and lobby government for higher taxes and big-spending welfare programs in order to confiscate the wealth and power of the Haves and turn it over to the Have Nots.
Alinsky dedicated his book to Lucifer, “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom.”
Another Alinsky quote seems remarkably prophetic: “Ego must be so all-pervading that the personality of the organizer is contagious, that it converts the people from despair to defiance, creating a mass ego.”
Post number 19 from Dqban22 is very informative. I had no idea.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.