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What’s Going on at the USCCB? More trouble at CCHD and CRS (Catholic Caucus)
Onepeterfive ^ | January 27, 2015 | STEVE SKOJEC

Posted on 01/27/2015 2:34:52 PM PST by NYer

4ea6f-cchd

As a publisher of a Catholic website, I receive lots of information that may be of interest to readers. Lately, that has included press releases about the activities of USCCB-related organizations like the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).

The CCHD has been under scrutiny by pro-life Catholics for about as long as I can remember. The reason? For appropriating funds to groups with records incompatible with the Church’s pro-life teachings. In 2011, 1P5 contributor Pat Archbold revealed that CCHD head Ralph McCloud had, during his first year working for the US bishops, simultaneously served as Treasurer for the campaign of Wendy Davis – then in the process of unseating a pro-life incumbent in the Texas state senate. (Two years later, she would become best known for her 11-hour filibuster in the Texas state legislature to block a bill seeking to enact more restrictive abortion regulations. Davis was also endorsed by Planned Parenthood.)

Despite this, McCloud is still the head of the CCHD. And since 2011, not a few stories have come out about the organization’s consistent failure to identify appropriate recipients of its funding. Just this month alone, three additional press releases have crossed my desk from the Lepanto Institute alone:

These are only the most recent stories that I’ve seen. This sort of thing appears to be happening with embarrassing regularity – making it pretty hard to ignore. The Lepanto Institute encourages Catholics to contact CCHD about the sizable grants they’re giving to suspect organizations:

The main phone number for the CCHD is The email address for the CCHD is cchdgrants@usccb.org.  And to contact Ralph McCloud, the director of the CCHD, call or email rmccloud@usccb.org.

I decided to contact Mr. McCloud on Friday of last week, to ask why the CCHD doesn’t partner with an independent group like Lepanto — clearly very effective at finding this information — to vet their grant recipients ahead of time. It seems like a great strategy – it would save CCHD a lot of negative attention, and move everyone toward the shared goal of ensuring that the funds of faithful Catholics are not going to organizations that promote abortion, contraception, same-sex “marriage,” and other anti-Catholic agendas. I don’t claim to know how the logistics of such a partnership would work, but from my outsider’s perspective, it seems preferable to an endless barrage of bad press based on even worse funding decisions.

As of this writing, I have not received a response from Mr. McCloud.

Making matters worse, I received yet another release from the Lepanto Institute this evening, revealing that Catholic Relief Services was involved in the development of an African sex-education program “aimed at children as young as 10, encourages condom use, promotes abortifacient contraception, normalizes homosexuality and masturbation and lists Planned Parenthood as a resource.”

I found myself thinking, At least it isn’t CCHD this time.

This is a sad state of affairs. Obviously, people make mistakes. Administrative work is often quite tedious, and things can be overlooked. But grant after grant, affiliation after affiliation, USCCB organizations have shown an inexcusable lack of discernment.

Enough to make any reasonable person wonder if it’s really a mistake.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to question if, when I give my money to a Catholic organization, it’s going instead to something evil. Which is why I don’t give money to anything USCCB-related. Neither do any of my friends.

Maybe they don’t need my money – or yours. But they do need to follow God’s laws. I hope and pray that they’ll commit themselves to right action, and soon. I really don’t want to read any more press releases like these.


TOPICS: Catholic; Current Events; Moral Issues; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: catholic; cchd; crs; usccb

1 posted on 01/27/2015 2:34:52 PM PST by NYer
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To: Tax-chick; GregB; SumProVita; narses; bboop; SevenofNine; Ronaldus Magnus; tiki; Salvation; ...

Catholic Caucus

Ping!

2 posted on 01/27/2015 2:35:34 PM PST by NYer (Without justice - what else is the State but a great band of robbers? - St. Augustine)
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To: NYer

One of the serious problems with the Church in the US. Points up the fact that in the US there’s the “Roman Catholic Church” and the “American Roman Catholic Church” for the cafeteria liberal Catholics. Probably should have been a break made between the two years ago. But, with this Argentine Pope...who knows what’s going to happen.

And I might add, all this against the weird back drop of more seminaries graduating Latin proficient priests while more churches under the “Conservative (Orthodox?) Roman Catholic Bishops” adopt more and more Latin masses which are attracting more and more people to the faith; people in search of some substance. Which begs the question, how many different directions can a hierarchical organization like the Catholic church go without falling entirely apart.


3 posted on 01/27/2015 2:48:50 PM PST by Rich21IE
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To: NYer
eyeless in Gaza under the yoke of the Philistines
4 posted on 01/27/2015 2:48:52 PM PST by Rashputin (Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)
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To: NYer

Thank goodness for reporters willing to dig out and publish the truth.


5 posted on 01/27/2015 2:48:53 PM PST by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: NYer

CCHD is dead to me.


6 posted on 01/27/2015 2:52:01 PM PST by Andyman (The truth shall make you FReep.)
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To: NYer

I don’t give to this fund.


7 posted on 01/27/2015 3:42:32 PM PST by virgil (The evil that men do lives after them)
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To: NYer

bkmk


8 posted on 01/27/2015 3:44:41 PM PST by Sergio (An object at rest cannot be stopped! - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight)
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To: virgil

Money is fungible. If you give the the USCCB in any way it can be transferred to uses not consistent with Catholic teaching.


9 posted on 01/27/2015 3:55:39 PM PST by Vesparado (The American people know what they want and they deserve to get it good and hard --- HL Mencken)
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To: NYer

...I don’t want to have to question if, when I give my money to a Catholic organization, it’s going instead to something evil. Which is why I don’t give money to anything USCCB-related.

***
Same here. I give to my parish and that is it in terms of contributions I make at Church.


10 posted on 01/27/2015 4:41:17 PM PST by Bigg Red (Let's put the ship of state on Cruz Control with Ted Cruz.)
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To: NYer

this needs to be stomped out.

The US Catholics are financing the radical left do community organizing for their NARAL, same-sex candidates.

Their project in Connecticut
http://uact4justice.org/uact-political-social-reform.php


11 posted on 01/27/2015 8:27:41 PM PST by campaignPete R-CT (-They will believe in hell when they get there. St. Pio)
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