Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 4:13am

Not One Thin Dime

(This is a repost from 2014.  Nothing has changed in regard to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and no faithful Catholic should contribute to it.  Go here to read the latest from the Lepanto Institute in regard to the CCHD.)

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas my bride and I usually send Christmas donations to groups we support.  This is the time when we also make a substitute donation to Catholic groups we endorse in lieu of contributing anything to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.  Despite window dressing efforts at reform, the CCHD is still in the business of handing out money, given by good-hearted Catholics who think they are contributing money to help people down on their luck, to left-wing pressure groups, many of whom espouse causes directly contrary to the teachings of the Church.

The Lepanto Institute gives us some details on just what a corrupt organization the CCHD is:

The newly launched Lepanto Institute published a report today, which shows a conflict of interest for Ralph McCloud, the Director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

McCloud, who approves grants distributed to community organizing groups on behalf of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, is a member of the board of directors of Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ).  Two affiliates of Interfaith Worker Justice received CCHD grants for fiscal year 2014-2015.

The IWJ philosophy is another issue of scandal for an organization that is part of the Catholic Church.

“Ralph McCloud was provided with the facts in 2012, with our showing that the leadership of Interfaith Worker Justice is filled with self-professed pro-abortion, pro-homosexual Marxists,” said Michael Hichborn, president of the Lepanto Institute.  “By joining the board of directors of IWJ, McCloud has created for himself the very definition of a conflict of interest, and accepted the role of overseeing distribution of funds to an organization in conflict with the Catholic Church’s teaching.”

A report on the leadership of Interfaith Worker Justice is available here.

“In 2012, my colleagues and I published a report on one of the two IWJ affiliates that are currently receiving grants from the CCHD which are in violation of CCHD guidelines,” Hichborn said.

For Fiscal Year 2014-2015, two affiliates of Interfaith Worker Justice received grants from the CCHD totaling $85,000: Northwest Arkansas Workers Justice Center and The Micah Center.

“How can an individual serve the Church while sitting on the board of IWJ, and in fact approve grants for affiliates of this organization?  It seems impossible,” Hichborn concluded.  “Our Blessed Lord said that man cannot serve two masters, but in the case of IWJ and the CCHD, that is precisely what McCloud is trying to do.”

And this:

The Lepanto Institute issued a report exposing the activities of an organization which received a $35,000 grant from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).  According to the report, the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC) launched its own gay straight alliance in 2014, participated in a homosexuality activism coordination event in 2013, and its director of operations signed a letter supporting same-sex marriage.

“CCHD grant guidelines are very clear.  CCHD says it will not fund organizations which are taking actions in violation of Catholic moral teaching,” said Michael Hichborn, president of the Lepanto Institute.  “This is just one more in the long list of failures in the CCHD’s self-proclaimed rigorous screening process.”

The CCHD’s grant guidelines state, “Organizations that receive CCHD funds must not participate in or promote activities that contradict the moral and social teachings of the Catholic Church.”  The Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 2357 specifically states, regarding homosexual acts, “under no circumstances can they be approved.”

“What’s perplexing is that in 2012, The Reform CCHD Now coalition sent a profile on the problems with NWBCCC to the Archdiocese of New York, and the response we received was that they decided not to fund that organization before we even sent them the letter,” said Hichborn.  “So, why are they funding them this year, now that it’s clear that things have gotten worse?”

Go here to read the rest.  None of this should come as a surprise to anyone.  The man the bishops have at the head of the CCHD, Ralph McCloud, was the campaign treasurer for Wendy Davis a/k/a Abortion Barbie, who recently got trounced in her campaign to ride dead fetuses into the Governor’s mansion in Texas, during her first run for the State Senate in Texas.  I posted this in 2011:

In a dog bites man story, and an example of good blog journalism, Creative Minority Report has broken the news that the head of the CCHD, Ralph McCloud, while he was head of the CCHD, was the campaign treasurer for pro-abort Wendy Davis in her successful run in 2008 for the Texas State Senate:

While the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) has come under well deserved scrutiny for supporting groups such as ACORN and groups with ties to promoting abortion, CMR has uncovered that Ralph McCloud, while heading the CCHD in 2008, was simultaneously working as a highly placed campaign official for a pro-choice politician seeking to unseat a pro-life politician.

As you likely know, CCHD is the bishops’ anti-poverty program which funds community organizing and economic development projects and has been at the center of a number of controversies. Ralph McCloud was named head of the CCHD in November 2007. In his first year as head of the CCHD, according to public records, McCloud also worked as the Treasurer for Planned Parenthood endorsed Democrat Wendy Davis.

Why would the director of the CCHD, during his tenure as head of an ostensibly Catholic institution act as champion and treasurer of a campaign for a pro-abortion politician seeking to oust a pro-life politician? This is the textbook definition of scandal.

According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop’s website, “the CCHD fully upholds the Church’s teaching on the sanctity of human life from conception through natural death.” But acting as Treasurer for a pro-choice politician means that every single yard sign, every press release, every brochure or pamphlet of the Davis campaign had Ralph McCloud’s name on it. So in short, while heading up the CCHD, McCloud was very publicly working against the stated goals of the organization he oversaw.

Isn’t that a bit confusing to Catholics? Isn’t that in itself a scandal to the faithful?

McCloud himself labeled questions about another CCHD employee John Carr’s commitment to the pro-life cause “very disturbing allegations” which he believed were unfounded. CMR believes it to be equally disturbing that McCloud would work for a campaign garnering donations from Annie’s List (a pro-choice PAC), Planned Parenthood and ACORN. So pro-choice was the Davis campaign that in fact, Annie’s List, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Davis in 2008 while McCloud worked as Treasurer. The group even gave a spirited endorsement of the pro-choice Davis, who succeeded in defeating her pro-life opponent.

Go here to read the rest at Creative Minority Report.

 

Here is the website of the CCHD showing Ralph McCloud as director.  Here is a bio piece on Ralph McCloud produced by the USCCB when he was named director of the CCHD.

McCloud has coordinated the peace and justice ministry in the Fort Worth Diocese and directed CCHD in the diocese since 1995. He has headed the diocese’s African American ministries since 1990. He also serves as a board member of the Roundtable, the National Association of Diocesan Social Ministry Directors.

Active in the civic community, McCloud was elected to four two-year terms to the Fort Worth City Council, in 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2003. He served as Fort Worth’s mayor pro-tem from 1999 to 2005. He currently chairs the Mayor’s Commission on Homelessness in Fort Worth.

In other civic activities, he was president of the Fort Worth Local Housing Development Council and served four terms on the National League of Cities’ Human Development Steering Committee.

McCloud attended Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Texas, and was co-founder of the African-American Summit for Peace, Justice and Equality. He is a past-president of the National Association of Black Catholic Administrators.

Msgr. David Malloy, USCCB general secretary, noted McCloud’s reputation as a “respected and experienced social ministry leader with strong ties to CCHD.”

“Ralph’s profound commitment to the Catholic Church enables him to communicate the biblical, theological and spiritual dimensions of Catholic social ministry and the principles that guide CCHD’s mission of empowering people trapped in the cycle of poverty,” Msgr. Malloy said.

Bishop Kevin Vann of Fort Worth praised the appointment saying, “Ralph has served the Diocese of Fort Worth for 14 years, assisting faithfully both the late Bishop Joseph Delaney and myself. He will be a great asset at the USCCB.”

Wendy Davis was on the Fort Worth city council with McCloud prior to her run for the state senate.  I find the bio of McCloud interesting for two reasons.  He is obviously a man who has received a lot of training by the Church, and it clearly had zero impact on his ability to comprehend that working to elect a total pro-abort betrays everything the Church stands for .  The second reason is that he is a poster child for the lay “professional Catholic” Church-o-crat, living off Church employment, while working against Church teaching;   a bad waste of donations to the Church, and a phenomenon that Catholics have become all too familiar with since Vatican II.

From all of this we can draw the following lessons:  A pro-life Catholic would have to be an idiot to give a thin dime to the CCHD, and the USCCB is not to be trusted.  Of course we already knew both of these things before, didn’t we?

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Clinton
Clinton
Monday, November 12, AD 2018 7:10pm

On the one hand, our bishops at the USCCB have kept
McCloud as their head of the CCHD for eleven+ years now,
so it’s hogwash for them to pretend that they are anything
other than enthusiastic supporters of his notorious gifts of
the faithful’s dollars to marxist and pro-abortion organizations.
They know perfectly well what he’s up to, and they don’t care.

On the other hand, around this time last year a Capuchin friar
named Fr. Thomas Weinandy, who worked as a consultant for
the USCCB Committee on Doctrine, published a respectful
but direct open letter to Pope Francis, criticizing elements of
this papacy all too familiar to readers of TAC. Within 24 hours,
the USCCB demanded Fr. Weinandy’s resignation.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/us-bishops-conference-hammered-for-sacking-theologian-critical-of-pope

So, for eleven years one USCCB employee delivers millions of
dollars to organizations working directly counter to Catholic
social and moral teaching, and the man keeps his job to this
day. Another USCCB employee writes an open letter critical
of aspects of this pontificate, and he’s removed with lightning
speed. We can see what really scandalizes our bishops.
Hint: it’s not misusing the donations of faithful Catholics
that draws their ire.

Morenowthanever
Morenowthanever
Monday, November 12, AD 2018 8:34pm

Thanks for the reminder. I’ve been placing this piece of art in the envelope ever since Lepanto Institute issued this masterpiece in 2014…the “Alinsky” dollar:
http://www.lepantoinstitute.org/uncategorized/send-the-cchd-the-dollars-it-so-richly-deserves/

Foxfier
Admin
Monday, November 12, AD 2018 8:46pm

We go with Catholic Answers, LifeSite, some good Catholic radio stations, Sisters of life of the Sacred Heart (single mother’s home), and of course the Alliance Defending Freedom.

A specific goal seems to be safer than a general “We will do a good job” type goal.

trackback
Tuesday, November 13, AD 2018 12:07am

[…] Advent Activities to Build Family Traditions & Faith – Mary Ellen Barrett, Seton Magazine Not One Thin Dime to the CCHD – Donald R. McClarey J.D., The American Catholic Communist China’s Fraught Bids Hide […]

CAM
CAM
Tuesday, November 13, AD 2018 8:13am

Ralph McCloud is untouchable for removal from CCHD leadership because he is a person of color. The bishops conference, weak as usual, are fearful of being branded as racist. Meanwhile the murder of babies continues subsidized with collection plate money. Shame!

Mary De Voe
Thursday, November 15, AD 2018 7:50am

Abortion is not about population control. After instilling a terror of overpopulation, abortion is issued as a remedy for over population; too many people and food shortage, famine and the possibility of islands with too many people on one end tipping over in the ocean. Maybe that is what happened in the great flood.
Abortion is not about the license to be free of the consequences of procreation, the marital act. Abortion is not even about having baby body parts for experimentation ala Dr. Joseph Mengele who sewed twins back together in an experiment to produce more soldiers for Hitler, though DARPA would do that in a instant. Abortion is not about having dead baby bodies to cannibalize as heralded in Hollywood.
Abortion is not about removing the Constitution and innate, endowed, human rights from humanity to enslave man as a beast of burden to tyrants.
Abortion is about an assault on the The Supreme Sovereign Being, “their Creator” of our Declaration of Independence; about an assault to ignore the image and likeness of God in the human being, man’s free will, man’s rational, immortal, human soul and the acknowledgement of our God as Creator of man’s soul. Abortion denies the reality of the sovereign personhood of man, newly begotten, the reality of man’s soul as a testament and witness to the creative power of God.
Abortion is the denial and the eradication of the knowledge of God in the public square. The majority of one sovereign person in the public square is like a stick in the eye of atheism; remembering “the tank man” of Tiananmen Square, the Hungarian uprising, the Warsaw ghetto, the martyrs of heaven and earth, the Church triumphant, the Church militant and the Church suffering.
Abortion is atheism imposed by our government.

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