In dioceses across America, bishops send out lists of collections that are to be taken up in individual parishes throughout the year. Some are local, but many are promoted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. There are, for example, Peter’s Pence, Missionary Sunday, and the Retirement Fund for Religious. One of these, the lesser-known Campaign for Human Development, has been such a cause for concern that in 2008 the American bishops began to question how it works and even suggested phasing it out. At the 2010 national meeting of U.S. bishops, Roger Morin of Biloxi publicly apologized for the program’s past mistakes. So what, precisely, does the CHD do? To answer that question, it might help to examine how the CHD got started, what its original purposes were, and how have things changed.
As Lawrence J. Engel relates in “The Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development” (Theological Studies, December 1998), to which this article owes a large debt, the CHD began in 1969 as American cities were burning down: Newark, Washington, Detroit, Los Angeles. It was the height of the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Vietnam War protests. Some scholars believed the nation was on the road to anarchy. The patriotism of the young during the Kennedy era was gone, replaced with: “Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?”
According to Engel, Bishop James Malone, former President of NCCB, identified two pivotal forces of the times that moved the bishops to inaugurate this campaign: “The crisis of human needs and aspirations with a particular urgency in American society and the impact of the Second Vatican Council.”
First, what Bishop Malone politely described as the “crisis of human needs and aspirations” was actually (if you lived through it) an America that was at enmity with itself. And the second force behind the CHD, “the impact of Vatican II,” became nothing less than a call for lay Catholics to assume a new Church role (no longer “pray, pay and obey”) and a new concept of priestly ministry, described in Gaudium et Spes as identifying with the “poor and afflicted in any way.”
But there is another part of the story of the CHD’s origins that is often left out of official narratives. It centers in opaque respects around Saul Alinsky, who developed community organizing in a way that met the spirit of the age: strident, threatening, and prone to shakedown. Thoroughly anti-authoritarian, he ostensibly promised to show priests and laity how to follow the call of Vatican II. His pitch: “With your (Catholic) money and my ideas, we can go a long way.”
Alinsky’s credentials looked impressive to many new, earnest ‘social justice Catholics.’ Cardinal Stritch gave Alinsky $30,000 a year for three years to study Chicago’s racially troubled neighborhoods. Even Jacques Maritain got caught up in the maelstrom, became his friend, and introduced his ecclesial contacts to him as Alinsky developed the first Office of Urban Affairs in Chicago with a mission to “focus the power of the Church on the problems of the city.”
With rising anarchy towards the end of the decade, Alinsky demanded reparations from churches. It was a shakedown routine that worked well. Many mainline denominations caved. The United Methodist Church, for example, paid out $1.8 million. The United Church of Christ, $1.1 million. What were the Catholic bishops going to ante up? The CHD, that’s what.
The circumstances surrounding the CHD were enveloped in umpteen layers, various unknowns, numerous complexities and even contradictions. The CHD was presented to bishops as a sort of marvelous opportunity for Catholics to stand up and be counted. CHD chanelled its funds to organizations engaged in “systemic change.” In CHD’s own words, it sought to address “the root causes of poverty in America through promotion and support of community controlled, self-help organizations and through transformative education.”
All this sounded terrific to newly minted Vatican II Catholics. The Church, under enormous pressure, appeared to be right in the midst of the fight for justice and peace in America. What was not clear to the vast majority of Catholics contributing to the Campaign was that many CHD grants were given to agencies and charities that promoted far-left ideologies and engaged in barely concealed political activism, including the recently disestablished Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and many other groups which supported abortion, homosexuality, illegal immigration, and quasi-socialist agendas. For a wide-ranging survey of the problematic organizations, see either the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ page detailing the use of grant money in recent years or the home page of the Campaign to Reform the CHD.
Few pastors or parishioners had an inkling about the nature of CHD’s work. Parishes across the country responded enthusiastically to the very simple idea of helping America become a more just nation. The first collection (November 22, 1970) came to $8.4 million. No bishops’ collection had ever been that large. The CHD, initially planned to last only five years, took on a permanent existence, guided with little supervision by an Allocation Committee that had too much money and too little expertise.
It needs to be acknowledged that, at the time, many very good Catholics, filled with more enthusiasm than information, supported, and still do, giving grants to organizations that promote “a systematic way out of poverty.” Yet so many hard liners have, since then, worked very hard to make sure that the words “social justice” are synonymous with “community organizing” in the Alinskyite mode and not charity in the traditional sense.
I do not call into question the good faith or integrity of members of the hierarchy involved with CHD. I am old enough to have lived through the civil rights movement and the backlash against the Vietnam War, and know how difficult it was for the bishops of that time to steer the American church through those rough waters. Unfortunately, the pastoral needs of today are very different from what they were forty years ago. Rather than change with them, the CHD has mutated into irrelevance.
When transparency is in place, the CHD seems anachronistic, strangely out of sync with the times and ready to enter its own sunset. It represents, at best, only one view of social justice, and an increasingly marginalized one at that. These are some of the reasons raised here that bishops might consider making it optional or, better, doing away with it altogether.
Fr. Val J. Peter is the Executive Director Emeritus of Girls and Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska. He has written for numerous publications and holds doctoral degrees in both Canon Law and Theology.
RESOURCES
Lawrence J. Engel, “The Influence of Saul Alinsky on the Campaign for Human Development” (Theological Studies, December 1998)
Richard John Neuhaus, “Obama and the Bishops” (On the Square, November 7, 2008) – contains further a further critique of the Campaign for Human Development.
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Comments:
I am also curious as to why persons critical of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops typically leave out the "C" for "Catholic" - CHD rather than CCHD - but never fail to leave out the second "C" in USCCB?
Newton's third law of motion is "for every action there is a reaction." If the social justice Catholics have found their way to the political world of the left, the current roster of bishops in America have reacted and located themselves on the right wing side of the political spectrum. Sad. This is a Church, or it is supposed to be, not the back room of a political convention.
This article isn't asking, "does the CCHD comport with our political preferences?", it is asking, "does the CCHD accomplish what we want it to?" or even better, "is it right?"
That the answer to that question appears to look better for Richard's "right wing" doesn't mean that the tail is wagging the dog, it just means that some people have looked at reality and have re-thought their theory, in light of that.
While political/economic theses don't offer the same certainty as mathematical ones, maybe a math analogy would be appropriate: I'm not going to claim that 2+2=5 (with Dostoevskii's narrator) just because people whose political preferences I disagree with think that 2+2=4.
Either the CCHD helps address the root causes of poverty, or it doesn't. From where I stand, it doesn't, and if that makes me a right-winger, then so be it. I'll be passing on the collection plate this year, as I did last year, despite our usual haranguing from our bitter old lefty priest whose tail has wagged the dog for years.
It is one thing to disagree with conclusions, another to disagree with the premises on which those conclusions are based. Is it your view that 1. Peter's conclusions don't follow from his premises?, or 2. That his premises are mistaken? If 1. Why? If 2. Which of his premises, form your own research, are mistaken?
Ws it just me, or did that have the ring of blackmail to it? To my ears, that sounded a lot like, "Support a massive increase in the welfare state now, or else you DESERVE to be mugged, robbed and raped, and you DESERVE to have your homes and business vandalized. Until such time as we live i na socialist Utopia, you have NO right to mind your own business and to be secure in your homes."
This would eliminate most of the waste in administration costs and mailings.
We keep hearing how in forty years we still have poverty worse than before. Maybe this is telling us something.
Perhaps some conservatives are a little weak on the notion of justice. It's well enough to run a soup kitchen or a clothing bank, but as Dom Helder Camara once remarked the powers-that-be are favorable enough when Catholics are interested in feeding the poor. But when people start asking why people are poor, soon enough they're labelled communists.
I suppose it's enough that people make choices to donate to the CCHD. If you don't want to give money, give to something else and leave the rest of us alone who do think the CCHD does good work.
The CCHD needs to go the way of the Dodo.
Photo: March 31, 2010 Tea Party rally in Denver, Colorado
http://tinyurl.com/64cojxe
Ever angry? Really? Most of the Tea Party people would be just as familiar with, and feel just as home at, a church picnic. The only difference at the picnic--fewer signs.
Maybe there's a message here.
In my diocese, the CCHD-funded Alinskyian local boasted in the Archdiocesan newspaper that it conducted a "Preach and Teach" Labor Day weekend to over 12,000 churchgoers, including congregations of Catholic parishes. The "Preach and Teach" sermons, homilies, and Sunday school teachings were aimed at building support for illegal immigration. They have organized marches on the state capitol and are now working in religious institutions to push their political agenda. This is such an increasingly influential development that I would argue even if CCHD ceased funding every Alinskyian organization - which accounts for over half its grantees - it would make very little difference at this juncture. The deed is done.
If my "attitude" offends so be it. So many people left of center comment on tone rather than facing the arguments. You may not like my tone, I do not like funding those who murder innocents.
Another feeding of red meat for the ever-angry Tea Party types! Not worthy of "First Things."
But of course everyone can see justifying the mission of CCHD has nothing whatsoever to do with partisan politics.
LOL
I just found out about the controversy in this week's parish bulletin, which included a warning that any criticism of CCHD was completely unwarranted and should be summarily dismissed. I just spent two hours finding out why all this concern that people might not contribute this year. They should have kept quiet about it. I'm probably not the only person that has looked into it, and now decided my charitable contributions would do more good elsewhere.
