HOLY MOTHER THE STATE
The Catholic Campaign for Human Development Serves Up Tainted Alphabet Soup

April 2012By Juli Loesch Wiley

Juli Loesch Wiley is a worshiper of one God, the wife of one husband, the mother of two grown sons, and mother hen to a little RCIA flock, as well as an agitator/activist, small-hobby gardener, and occasional writer in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Every year around Thanksgiving, there is a brief kerfuffle in the U.S. Catholic Church. At that time, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sends out its annual appeal asking for special collections for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the bishops’ program that awards millions of dollars to “grassroots” community groups that “work for justice” and “address the root causes of poverty.” Simultaneously, concerned Catholic laymen crank up their blogs and start their annual buzz about the leftward tilt of the grantees and the urgent need to “boycott CCHD.”

In 2011 it happened again, but in a strikingly new context. The controversy took place amid a series of unprecedented political attacks on Catholic institutions that threaten their identity and even their existence — attacks that emanated from state capitals and Washington, D.C.

Our Dangerous Situation

The long-term “Catholic strategy” of the secular statists, who enjoy dominant social and political power at the moment, appears to be to undermine and dismantle the institutional presence of the Catholic Church in the U.S. The statists include the present presidential administration and its allies who are committed to the culture of death. They will not and cannot tolerate those who believe life begins at conception, that it is sacred, that abortion is a “moral evil” and a “criminal practice” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2271, 2274), and that human sexual differentiation (“male and female He created them”) has, by God’s design, an intrinsic orientation toward marriage, fertility, and family.


You have two options:

  1. Online subscription: Subscribe now to New Oxford Review for access to all web content at newoxfordreview.org AND the monthly print edition for as low as $29 per year.
  2. Single article purchase: Purchase this article for $1.50, for viewing and printing for 48 hours.

If you're already a subscriber log-in here.



Back to April 2012 Issue

Read our posting policy Add a comment
This represents an annual complaint -- that the CCHD funds organizations that support non-Catholic positions and anti-Catholic policies. Due to the complexity and ability to hide these positions by organizations the CCHD should be disbanded -- completely trashed and since the State sees fit to assume responsibility for HHS, then the CCHD can be re-established to support only Catholic foundations.

Already, some bishops refuse to allow the collection to be made in their dioceses. Eventually, there will be more. Because of articles like Mrs. Wiley's and the programs of Real Catholic TV more and more Catholics are reluctant if not adamant to support the annual collection. We have enough problems trying to get the State off our back without willingly and in most cases knowingly inviting the same kind of organizations with which we are fighting with the State to climb aboard. 		Posted by: Correctthinker
April 17, 2012 08:49 AM EDT
Too many problems are caused by people thinking that we should always be thinking of the poor first, instead of what causes them to be poor in the first place. In other words the left leaning Catholic Church (of which I am a practicing member) would prefer to treat the effects of poor government than the causes. What we should be pushing is candidates for office that know how to establish an economy that is conductive to entrepreneurs establishing businesses that employ people so they can support themselves and their families. Not only would this greatly reduce the poor among us but raise the former poors' self esteem. A win win for all. Tax eaters become tax payers. We do not have to spend money that we don't have (and therefore, borrow from a totalitarian Communist, atheistic state)to support an unsupportable nation of people that depend upon government handouts. Posted by: Correctthinker
May 24, 2012 12:38 PM EDT
The goal should be : improving the self- seeking Spiritual dimension of the individual ( Intellectual , moral and religious aspiration ,consciousness) empirical life of the self versus the self- estimation of the spiritual dimension ( sense of inferiority or of Guilt) Posted by: laguerre12
May 24, 2012 03:31 PM EDT
Add a comment


©