Too close for comfort: CCHD, sex and abortion

Human Events, Nov 20, 1998 by Reilly, Patrick

For the past decade, the Capital Research Center (CRC) has argued to all who will listen that the national Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCH), a Roman Catholic Church-sponsored grantmaking program, supports primarily leftist advocacy groups (HuMAN EVENTS, Nov. 7, 1997, page 14). This year's collection will be held in churches November 21-22.

Established in 1970, CCHD is the Catholic bishops' anti-poverty program in America. It funds projects "that empower the poor and work to eliminate poverty and injustice." Projects must address "basic causes of poverty," and "members of the poverty group must have a dominant voice in t'he project." But CCHD does not empower individuals and families through private-sector initiatives, charity and prayer. Instead, it promotes activist lobbying for government programs and taxpayer funding. Year after year, CRC carefully examines CCHD's national grants, only to find continued support for groups like ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) and the Industrial Areas Foundation. And each year CRC finds new grants to organizations that trade charity for big-government programs and, in some cases, engage in activities that violate Catholic teachings on human dignity. But this year, when CRC took another look at CCH, the results promised to be different. Indeed, those familiar with the program will notice a cosmetic but important change in its name: the word "Catholic" was added just a few months ago. The program has been called the Campaign for Human Development since 1970, but its leaders now find it necessary to emphasize the program's ties to the Catholic Church. Apparently CCHD is feeling the heat. On a more practical level, CCHD has asked the U.S. Catholic bishops to approve revised guidelines for CCHD grants at the bishops' annual meeting this week. CCH admits no flaws in its current guidelines, which have not been altered since 1972, but the proposed changes are an apparent response to CRC and other critics of the program. The new guidelines forbid CCH funding for projects that violate church teachings. (See ban, page 21.) These developments, which CCH has publicized aggressively, suggest that CCH is responding to its critics in a constructive way. Unfortunately, the changes are little more than a face lift. Fungible Grants For the most part, the proposed new guidelines have no practical effect on CCHD grants. While they more emphatically forbid CCHD from funding projects that violate Catholic doctrine, such grants were already forbidden in the 1972 guidelines. The changes still allow most grants to be "fungible," meaning recipients must apply the grants to specified projects but may thereby offset budgeted expenses and increase spending on other (sometimes unacceptable) activities.

Grant fungibility is limited somewhat by the proposed guidelines. They forbid grants not only for projects but also for organizations that "promote or support abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty or any other affront to human life and dignity." Of course, this raises important questions. If it is forbidden to award grants to organizations that violate Catholic teachings concerning these "human life" issues, even when the funded project is acceptable, why is the rest of Catholic doctrine not similarly defended? And if it is now inappropriate for CCHD to fund groups engaged in abortion advocacy, why weren't such grants forbidden in the past?

Other proposed changes to the guidelines are vague and provide no practical guidance. CCHD proposes new language concerning the funding of organizations that participate in "other activities or coalitions" that violate Catholic teachings, but cryptically promises only that "funding decisions will be made in accord with the traditional Catholic moral principles that guide our relationships in society."

What do those "moral principles" require? That is the issue that CCHD fails to resolve. The proposed guidelines do not necessarily prevent a CCHD-funded organization from engaging in activities that violate church teachings, as long as the group's "primary or substantial thrust" is not in doubt.

The guidelines also make no reference to CCHD grants made directly to coalitions instead of individual groups. If a coalition includes groups that violate Catholic teachings or oppose and criticize the church, is a grant appropriate? Last year several CCHD grants were made to coalitions including pro-abortion organizations. Class Struggle Pushed

Finally, the proposed new guidelines portend no change in CCHD's penchant .for leftist, "grassroots" advocacy groups. CCHD continues to support the model of social justice promoted by 1960s radical Saul Alinsky. His goal was power for the poor and disenfranchised: power before charity ("The hell with charity; the only thing you're going to get is what you're strong enough to get"), power before peace (activists must "fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to a point of overt expression") and power before faith (Alinsky was an agnostic). Big government, the seat of human power in a democracy, is the activist's prize because government controls the fate of societal reform, according to Alinsky-ites.