Catholic campaign for human development: Still entranced by leftist activism, despite growing unrest

Human Events, Nov 10, 2000 by Lopez, Kathryn Jean

At least in Davenport, CCHD does not promote division between the stereotypical pro-life Republican and poverty-fighting Democrat. Ebener sees CCHD as a home for people of all political orientations.

"I don't buy the fact that CCHD-funded groups tend to be 'left-leaning,' " Ebener says. "That's not my personal experience here. Some of our best local leaders happen to be active in the Republican Party."

Loxi Hopkins is one of those Republicans whom Ebener talks about. An activist at her core, Hopkins, now a grandmother, has been involved in local GOP politics since her College Republican days.

Her first introduction to CCHD was at a rally protesting a Planned Parenthood clinic set to open in Davenport. There she met the Rev. Marvin Mottet, former national director of CCHD, who got Hopkins involved in a local group he founded called Interfaith Housing.

The group "rehabs houses in the central city, hires people that are unemployed and gives them some construction training to get people off welfare," Hopkins says.

She is certain the membership of Interfaith Housing is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Nevertheless, even in Davenport the difficulties of working with the left while upholding Catholic values are apparent.

Although Hopkins learned about CCHD while protesting Planned Parenthood, Ebener is proud that his diocese and Planned Parenthood recently joined forces to lobby for state laws favorable to adoption.

"There are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies," Ebener says. "Maybe it was a political ploy on their part. Honestly, I don't know what their motivation was. But if passing the bill is the goal, I'd rather have them as ally than an opponent."

What to Expect

Will CCHD ever change?

"When some changes were enacted within the Bishop's Conference regarding [CCHDI, there was hope that this would change," says the Rev. Robert Sirico, president of the Acton Institute and frequent critic of CCHD.

"It takes time to move a bureaucracy, so I think the jury is still out on this question. It appears to me that the funding is still generally directed at groups with a specific, partisan and ideological approach to relief of the poor favoring political action over filling the voids that still exist in many families and communities which enable people to become independent."

But CCI-ID had a challenge from the start, Sirico says: "There is a particular problem of prudence when money that is collected from American parishes, which have a broad representation of political ideas, is distributed with such partisan political precision, as it clearly has been in the past."

As pressure mounts for change, CCHD's future is by no means preordained.

"This appears to me to be more of a problem with who is administering these programs at the Bishops Conference than it is with the bishops themselves," Sirico said. "If these things have not changed, it may be that the bishops will have to begin to look at the very staff they employ to administer their domestic policy."