Good News: Bishops Cut Off ACORN Funding!

Catholics for McCain! ^ | 10/20/08 | Catholics for McCain

[OPS4]

I don’t know how I missed this story, but apparently the USCCB has decided to cut off ACORN’s funding due to “financial irregularities.” ACORN was set to receive another $1.13 million of our second collection for the 2008 cycle.

[Desdemona]

I didn’t even know they GOT any funding,

I sense the ghost of Cardinal Bernadin. It's finally being exorcized.

[Desdemona]

First of all, I was stunned to learn that they receive federal money (that would be my very own tax dollars!).

You want to really be stunned? Sit down one night with an adult beverage and google federal grants. There's $$ available for EVERYTHING. And all sorts of groups scheme to get their hands on it - and not just the poor. I was reading a paper at work last week that called for tax cuts for small business and R & D and federal dollars to build research parks at the same time as well as the use of federal land to build them. And none of the businesses to be started were to have strictly military applications.

I know this is a thread about the USCCB, but that's my latest soapbox.

Somewhere up a bit at least one person said that they don't give to archdiocesan appeals - there are other causes yes, and when a parish school or archdiocesan high school needs funds people might consider giving directly. Still, there is a lot of good done at the archdiocesan level, at least here.

[brityank]

ACORN must have its tentacles in every place the sun does not shine.

I've been dumbfounded by this, too. First of all, I was stunned to learn that they receive federal money (that would be my very own tax dollars!). And the number of powerful foundations and non-profits channeling money their way would probably blow you away if you ever saw a list.

I find it very troubling and amazing that most of the "old money" which is channeled into these marxist, anti-American causes is primarily granted from what was originally somewhat conservative groups that have been undermined by those they were intended to help. A case in point that directly helped in the creation of Acorn is The Woods Foundation ^.

Discover the Networks has a java-based "Visual Map" that gives a good representation of all the groups and individuals it serves, and hitting the "Acorn" link off the Woods listing brings up Acorn's overall tentacle list. I think it fairly safe to say that most of the foundational funders of Acorn were all started by those considered to be America's premiere families, and conservative at initiation.

[dr_who]

Why were they funding them in the first place?

[cthemfly25]

It’s good news but also news which doesn’t address the real problem at the USCCB. THe USCCB has not only been funding ACORN for years but a host of other Alinsky radical groups including Gamiliel and LaRaza. It will continue to do so for note—the only reason the ACORN funding ceased was because of a fraud issue, not whether it was right or proper for the leftist at the USCCB to be funding any of this nonsense.

The USCCB “social[ism] domestic policy” agenda is run by radical left wing socialist apparatchiks. If you think that such a statement is too harsh, then go to the website and look at the organization’s lobbying agenda along with the funding done by its subsidiary organization the Orwellian Campaign for Human Development. The lobbying efforts are all and exclusively statist solutions and policy preferences. Putting aside the fact that the Church should not be engaged in the whole array of DC policy preferences for bigger and more centralized government, there is no voice at the USCCB for the likes of “other voices” such as Acton.

The bishops have unfortunately “contracted out” many of their pastoral duties to encourage and teach charity-—the charity of our participation, of our minds and our hearts, and the charity of giving our money. In other words the salvific charity of the gospel In lieu of that they have allowed the USCCB to contract charity to the political arena-—and the left wing at that. Sorry, but politics is not about charity; it’s about power. The USCCB has taken the sentiments of charity and deceived many Catholics into believing that giving money to such groups constitutes real charity.

Wasn’t it Lenin who said in effect that capitalists would sell the rope he would use to hang them. Well, the USCCB has farmed out the “charity” which will be used to silence authentic charity and authentic Church teaching on the family, on life, and on salvation once the Alinsky marxists take over.

[jla]

Any other skeletons left in the CCHD closet?

Are you Roman-Catholic?

[livius]

That has always been a bizarre paradox. The old, established foundations - Ford and Rockefeller, founded by capitalists red in tooth and claw - have been pushing socialism for decades now, and the new ones (Packard, for example), also founded by people who made their bucks the American way, on their own and from consumers, are solidly behind reducing both producers and buyers. The Packard foundation is a big supporter of zero-population-growth organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the deceptively named Catholics for a Free Choice.

And the Packard who founded it is still alive and could probably change this if he wanted to. It mystifies me. Of course, Henry Ford was a eugenicist, so maybe there was something rotten there all along. But I really don’t understand, from a simple economic view, how these foundations can support things aimed at killing the very system that created them.

[livius]

Well, the USCCB has farmed out the “charity” which will be used to silence authentic charity and authentic Church teaching on the family, on life, and on salvation once the Alinsky marxists take over.

Well put.

[MattinNJ]

Ping-wow.

[Desdemona]

The old, established foundations - Ford and Rockefeller, founded by capitalists red in tooth and claw - have been pushing socialism for decades now, and the new ones (Packard, for example), also founded by people who made their bucks the American way, on their own and from consumers, are solidly behind reducing both producers and buyers. The Packard foundation is a big supporter of zero-population-growth organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the deceptively named Catholics for a Free Choice.

Umm, the big money has these foundations set up to be sure that the "little people" stay dependent on them and remain little. Don't forget that the inspiration for Pope Pius XI's encyclical against "Americanism" (really, modernism) was a visit from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who asked him to soften the church's stance on birth control.

It's all about power. The communists said from the beginning that the two institutions that needed to be destroyed in order for it to work are the USA and the Catholic Church. They've seriously tried.

[Desdemona]

But I really don’t understand, from a simple economic view, how these foundations can support things aimed at killing the very system that created them.

Simple - the very system that created them could create others to replace them and they don't want to be replaced.

[Desdemona]

The USCCB “social[ism] domestic policy” agenda is run by radical left wing socialist apparatchiks. If you think that such a statement is too harsh, then go to the website and look at the organization’s lobbying agenda along with the funding done by its subsidiary organization the Orwellian Campaign for Human Development.

Look to see more of this disappear or be modified as the JPII generation takes more firm control. The old guard that put all this in place is retiring and dying out. That means the influence of a certain late Chicago cardinal is dissipating. People think I'm nuts, but even the Vatican didn't start making massive moves until after he was dead.

[livius]

Bernardin was very powerful, and I never quite figured out why. Actually, things changed when BXVI took over. Did Bernardin have some special connection with JPII? I always thought the latter could have done more to save the Church, but he consistently refused to do so until the very end of his life, when obviously Ratzinger was much more in charge than was JPII.

I wonder if Bernardin had some influence over JPII? It was possibly the simple fact that the US gives more money to the Church than any other country. Perhaps Bernardin had convinced the slightly liberal and rather unpragmatic JPII that this was somehow connected to him (Bernardin). I don't know.

[Desdemona]

Did Bernardin have some special connection with JPII?

He had a lot more influence. There's been a lot written on it. One publication was called "The American Pope." The bishops we see now making statements are the ones who were elevated AFTER 1984 when JPII finally got his man in the Papal Nuncio. And if you look through the chronology of JPII's papacy, the BIG moves were made after 1996, which was when Bernardin died. Maybe JPII saw it as the path was cleared.

The last of Bernardin's Boys are in their 70's and are gradually no longer in power. They still believe in what Bernardin espoused - the seamless garment, "social justice" garbage. I honestly think we are seeing Bernardin's philosophies fading into history as an ephemeral mistake.

[Bigg Red]

Good bye to Bishops appeals, as far as I’m concerned.

&&&
Same here. While I am glad that we succeeded in shaming them into dropping ACORN, they are still helping illegals and who knows what other anti-American activities. I do not trust them.

[Bigg Red]

I wonder if it is time for American Catholics to petition the Vatican to task the Holy Office and the Dominican Order of Dominicans with coming to the United States, on an extended mission to challenge the heterodoxies that have evolved in the Americas.

&&&
I would love to see that. We need a cleansing tide, indeed.

[SuziQ]

The local Bishop's appeals have nothing to do with ACORN. I believe those support only the outreaches of the Diocese. I frankly don't know where the UCCB gets it's funding. I thought that ACORN was getting its funding through the Campaign for Human Development, which has it's own collection once a year in the Parishes, not from the UCCB.

We might have given to CCHD 30 years ago, but since they got so deeply political, we gave to Peter's Pence and the local Bishop's Appeal instead.

[narses]

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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment

Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

[SuziQ]

Bishop McManus, in Worcester MA, had a very strongly worded column in the Diocesan newspaper yesterday about Catholics having an moral obligation to vote based on an well formed conscience. He said that those who claim the Church teaches that we should vote our consciences, are not going the whole way and saying that the Church teaches we should vote our conscience as it has been formed by the teachings of Jesus and His Church. He also said that, although there are a number of public policy issues about which the Church comments, including the economy, poverty, immigration, war and health care, the paramount issue is that of the right to life of all humans, beginning with the unborn.

For those who want to invoke the notion of 'proportionate reasons' in order to justify their vote for a pro-abortion candidate with whom they might agree on other subjects, the Bishop asked the question, "The act of abortion in our country has claimed over 40 million lives of unborn babies. Will someone please tell me what that proportionate reason is?"

[La Enchiladita]

Why were they sending those jerks our money in the first place? Misuse of funds.