Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 22, 2024 / 17:20 pm (CNA).
The national anti-poverty program run by U.S. bishops has released its annual report from 2023, revealing that it spent $11.4 million more than it collected.
The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) Annual Report 2023 revealed that the program ended the year with a net operating deficit of $2,830,364 after spending more than the combined total of its $8,451,156 savings and the $7,284,574 in revenue it collected this year.
The CCHD is a nationwide anti-poverty program run by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) that raises money every year and allocates funding to charitable organizations that benefit the poor.
In total, the organization dedicated to “breaking the cycle of poverty” spent $18,696,903 overall despite having just $15,735,730 in available funds after clearing out its accumulated assets.
Bishop Timothy Senior of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who chairs the Subcommittee on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, stated in the annual report that the various charitable projects that received CCHD funds mentioned represent “a small taste of how CCHD invested $7.3 million of [donor] gifts in grants in 2023 to help people help each other.”
The CCHD has not published a list of grantees since 2022, though USCCB spokesperson Chieko Noguchi told CNA this week that she expects CCHD’s 2023 grantee list to be “posted soon.”
CCHD’s recent difficulties and past controversy
The CCHD annual report documenting its financial difficulties comes after its former director, Ralph McCloud, resigned from his position in April. In June, several USCCB social justice employees working for the Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development, which oversees CCHD, were laid off. Bishops had privately discussed the CCHD during its June plenary assembly ahead of the layoffs.
Noguchi told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, at the time that the layoffs were part of a “reorganization” geared toward enabling the conference to “align resources more closely with recent funding trends.”
“The CCHD subcommittee will continue its work,” she continued, adding: “In the interest of good stewardship, the administration of the collection is being reorganized to allow for more efficient management.”
McCloud is now a fellow at a social justice political advocacy group called NETWORK, which was founded by Catholic Sisters in 1972.
Over the years the program has generated controversy and criticism. Beginning in 2008, the CCHD was faulted by activists — and some Catholic bishops — for funding organizations that have taken positions contrary to Church teaching, such as on abortion and same-sex marriage.
In 2010, the USCCB instituted new controls to help ensure that grantees conform with Catholic teaching.
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CCHD should have been dismantled a long, long time ago. They are nothing more than an agent doing the work of the atheistic, progressive Democrat Party machine implementing the operational manual of Saul Alinsky. The bishops, those who run CCHD, and those who donate to it will answer to God’s judgment.
So NETWORK was started by a group of Catholic Sisters in 1972? Why does this make me nervous?
And the former director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development moves into NETWORK?
Catholic Campaign for Human Development began as National Catholic Crusade Against Poverty during the Sixties [approx 1967] under the auspices of Chicago Cardinal Bernadin. Initial project is attributed to a local pastor Fr Dempsey, later bishop Dempsey. In fact it was suggested by and integrated into Saul Alinsky’s 1965 strategy for transforming the Church into an unwitting instrument of Marxist socialism [see Ewtn Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing]. Marxist socialist tactics were used to embarrass and accuse business of illregard for the working poor, setting up class antagonism, elicitation of their funding to Crusade Against Poverty.
Alinsky had a strong, convincing personality exerting his influence in Rome with Paul VI who conveniently authored Populorum progressio 1967. “Maritain was so enthralled with Alinsky’s writing and organizing that in 1958 he personally urged Archbishop Montini of Milan, the future Pope Paul VI, to meet with Alinsky. The Archbishop met with Alinsky in 1965 to explore whether community organizing could work in Italy” (The Influence of Saul Alinsky on The Campaign for Human Development Lawrence J Engel Theological Studies).
Our USCCB has either mismanaged or failed to exert its interests in protecting its own and consequently the Church’s Catholicity. It’s known, at least long reported, that the organization, a worthy effort that requires correction and closer supervision has attracted members who have little interest in Catholic moral doctrine.
In “The Peasant of the Garonne”, written in 1966 and published in English in 1968, Maritain’s praise for Alinsky is brief but still unambiguous. However, a later publication (C.J. Wolfe of the Claremont Graduate University, “Lessons from the Friendship of Jacques Maritain with Saul Alinsky,” Catholic Social Science Review, Vol. XVI, 2011) comments on later letters from Maritain to Alinsky (Maritain died in 1973).
In his correspondence of 1971 Maritain is clearly critical of Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” whereas, earlier, he was influenced by Alinsky’s “Reveille for Radicals”. Of the later work, Maritain writes to Alinsky that he “appears to me as an incurable idealist…” Maritain was especially critical of the claim “we are motivated by self-interest but determined to disguise it [and] in war the end justifies the means.” He asked Alinsky whether war justifies “torture? Indiscriminate bombing? Annihilation of cities? OK for Hitler and the like?”
So, friends, but upon tardy reflection, finally maybe not two peas in a pod.
Now, about the CCHD $11.4 million deficit in year 2023, largely by draining savings. On the big screen, the U.S. federal deficit is $1.7 Trillion each year—or about 150,000 TIMES AS GREAT! …In 2023 the total budget was spread thusly: Social Security ($1,354 billion), Health ($889 billion), Medicare ($848 billion), National Defense ($820 billion), Income Security ($775 billion), Interest on national debt ($658 billion), Veterans Benefits and Services ($302 billion), Transportation ($126 billion).
The CCHD came along at the same time as the underlying Great Society binge under President Johnson. The economics of guns and butter at the same time.
So, just wondering, here, about federal deficits and how much of “inflation” is really due to dilution of the currency from deficit spending (fiat money) under both political parties? And, how rusty will the ax be to amputate “waste”? Something needs to be done about decades of momentum (partly business-as-usual under the “deep state”), but bullet points and too much amateurism don’t cut it.
SUMMARY: “Ready, fire, aim!” Decimal points matter. In complex systems, beware the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Yes. Thanks Peter for the historical sequence. Alinsky had perhaps an unequaled gift of persuasion, his convinced deep tone, the religiosity of his messaging in my opinion, the ‘inheritance’ from his rabbi father.
Maritain was one among many drawn into his intellectual sphere of Marxist oriented virtue. His and Paul VI’s seduction was based on the success of a class warfare ideology couched in quasi religious trappings. Agreed Maritain was too intelligent and morally oriented to be taken in in the long term.
Thanks for the historical information, Fr. Morello.
Back then, I never heard of Saul Alinsky. Now it seems he was/is everywhere.