My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:
The 2024 Spring Plenary Assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) took place June 13-15 in Louisville, Kentucky. Prior to the public sessions, the bishops spent time in executive session reflecting on the future of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). This discussion was prompted in part by the fact that, in 2022, the most recent year for which information is publicly available, the campaign operated at a $5.7 million deficit. CCHD is also plagued by repeated reports of giving grants to organizations that promote or are affiliated with causes that are contrary to Catholic teachings.
Executive session supposedly provides a confidential forum for brainstorming and frank discussion of proposals before going into public debate and decision-making. I say “supposedly” because shortly after the “confidential” executive session there was a story in the National Catholic Reporter in which Michael Sean Winters wrote, “Several bishops told me that in the executive session where the Catholic Campaign for Human Development was discussed, the support for the program was overwhelming. Springfield, Illinois, Bishop Thomas Paprocki intervened to suggest it was time to sunset the program, and his sentiments were echoed by Kansas City, Kansas, Archbishop Joseph Naumann.”
It is very disappointing that several bishops apparently lack the integrity of respecting the confidentiality of our executive sessions. It is also sad to say that such bishops cannot be trusted.
Moreover, publishing this story is a clear violation of the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, which says, “Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.” The SPJ Ethics Committee Position Papers rightly say that “anonymous sources are the road to the ethical swamp.” The journalists’ Code of Ethics also says, “Diligently seek subjects of news coverage to allow them to respond to criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.” No one from the National Catholic Reporter has contacted me for my perspective on this story.
Since the leakers of this story apparently want a public debate on this matter, and since my views on this matter are not fully reported in the news story, I will make my position known publicly about the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.
The roots of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development go back to the collaboration of community organizers with church leaders in Chicago in the 1960’s. Analogous to President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” the Catholic Bishops of the United States launched the National Catholic Crusade Against Poverty in 1969. The name was later changed to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.
Just as it is fair to ask if the “War on Poverty” was effective, given the number of people who still live in poverty and have become dependent on the welfare state, it is reasonable to ask if the Catholic Campaign for Human Development has been effective in its mission “to break the cycle of poverty,” having raised and given away almost half of a billion dollars in pursuit of this aim over its 55-year history. More than 9,000 grants have been made to over 200 community organizations.
It is also fair to ask if giving money primarily to community organizers is the best way to lift people out of poverty. As a young parish priest on the south side of Chicago from 1978 to 1987, I worked closely with community organizers. The United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) of Southeast Chicago helped me to co-found the Chicago Legal Clinic to provide legal services for the poor, for which I am grateful. At the same time, the large steel mills on the southeast side of Chicago shut down, putting thousands of steelworkers out of work. The community organizers were not able to prevent this massive unemployment.
Since I am familiar with Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, the manual of tactics for community organizers, I will make a radical proposal: since the best way to lift people out of poverty is through a good education that will lead to gainful employment, we should let the Catholic Campaign for Human Development sunset and establish a new National Campaign for Catholic Education.
When CCHD was founded in the 1960s, Catholic schools were thriving. I graduated from grade school in 1966. I had religious sisters (Congregation of the Resurrection) as my teachers in every grade except seventh grade. Today, most Catholic schools have no religious sisters. As a result, teachers’ salaries have gone up, driving tuition and other costs up as well. Catholic education has become unaffordable and inaccessible for many poor families unable to pay high tuition rates. Many Catholic schools, especially in poorer communities, have had to close their doors in recent decades due to rising costs exceeding revenues. A National Campaign for Catholic Education could be conducted with a similar formula used by CCHD, with a percentage of the monies raised being used for national grants, while the bulk of funds raised is distributed locally.
Allowing the CCHD to sunset would not be retreating from our efforts to address poverty. Catholic Charities in dioceses and parish program like the St. Vincent de Paul Society continue to help vast numbers of people in need. Strong Catholic education will help lift the poor out of the cycle of poverty. We should give serious consideration to furthering and strengthening these causes.
Here in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, I made the decision in 2012 to replace the collection for the National Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) with the Diocesan Campaign for Justice and Hope (DCJH). Drawing inspiration from the Corporal Works of Mercy, DCJH seeks to address the systemic injustices that contribute to poverty in our diocese and to provide financial support for local programs and organizations that give realistic hope for the poor to break out of the cycle of poverty through effective and efficient interventions.
Furthermore, DCJH assists in protecting life at all stages with an emphasis on the unborn by helping pregnant women to have hope for the future of their children and their lives. A stable family life in a home with a married mother and father is one of the most effective ways to break the cycle of poverty and give children hope for their future.
Donations can be made to our Diocesan Campaign for Justice and Hope.
Rather than considering the conversation closed about the best way to break the cycle of poverty, we should invite a robust dialogue that welcomes fresh ideas to enhance our efforts and make them more effective in helping the least among us.
May God give us this grace. Amen.
(Editor’s note: This column for The Catholic Times, Magazine of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, is reposted here with kind permission of Bishop Paprocki and the Diocese of Springfield, IL.)
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God and Our Lady help Mons Paprocki! I hope none of the diocesan bookkeepers make a mistake in their arithmetic lest Rome have a pretext for imposing a coadjutor, or worse. He is already in certain persons’ black books, I’m sure.
Valuable proposals: to invest in useful education, and in keeping families together…
Three points:
FIRST, most families in poverty are single mothers raising their children alone. Our hats go off to them, but in order to actually solve a problem sometimes it helps to accurately identify the problem.
SECOND, then there’s the related problem of illegitimate births. It used to be that 10 percent of white births and 40 percent of black births were out of wedlock, but today it’s 40 percent of white births and 70 percent of black births. A trend that accelerated with some of the ill-conceived (so to speak!) programs included in the Great Society” “war on poverty” of the late 1960s. In it’s heyday, the overall program advertised itself with some 700 grant programs documented in the encyclopedic Catalogue for Federal Domestic Assistance (a spiral binder capable of amendment!).
THIRD, about the National Catholic Report–we note that this publication has been admonished to identify itself not as Catholic but only as commenting on issues related to the Catholic Church (overshadowed by the title, it’s probably in the masthead fine print somewhere)–it would be interesting to know how many parishes in which dioceses carry this inked newsprint in their publication racks, probably for free; and why this non-Catholic publication is included as a member of the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada.
SUMMARY: the author of the Reporter article, Michael Sean Winters, is The Winter of our Discontent (John Steinbeck, 1961, a line from Shakespeare).
Unless the woman was married and was widowed or abandoned, she is not a hero, she’s not even single; she’s UNWED. Unfortunately, in an abortive culture we are tempted to not criticize illegitimacy too much or too clearly.
Bravo Bishop Paprocki!
I advocate sunsetting the Jesuit call for a “preferential option for the poor” for a “preferential option for the family,” since family brokenness is the greatest source of spiritual and material poverty.
A Bingo and a Touché in a single sentence!
My feelings on such good works are that no sane mother or father would starve their own family to help others, but would instead take care of their own true needs first, and talking a humble existence, and then give out of the surplus to those not family members.
In the US, every parish has truly good people suffering and in desperate need of all manner of help, while nearly every parish has a full compliment of nearly every profession from lawn care to construction, lawyers, doctors, nurses, mechanics, accountants, funeral parlors, and yet parishes do not pool members to care for the parishoners and parish, but instead collect vast sums of money and spend it on general societal problems, the money paid to professionals at high professional wages, and only pittances available for own needy….this is nationwide.
There is zero focus on taking care of own family, and all focus put on taking care of outsiders through professional organizations taking a tremendous slice of the money. I am all for helping others, but our primary duty is to own family, and it be a true church family rather than only a worn out empty feel-good phrase.
Cut the out of wedlock birth rates and the problem goes away. Young, incompetent mothers with no husbands are a recipe for disaster. Why do both parties refuse to address this?
I can actually agree with you on that. Not sure I agree with your solutions, however.
Mr Will, Longterm contraception has been an important factor in reducing teen pregnancies. What would you suggest as a further step? Certainly children benefit from having married parents and society benefits too, but you can only encourage and instruct. Not enforce.
A lot of young women, especially young black women, complain about the shortage of “good, young men” suitable to be husbands. Rather than waiting for Mr. Right, they get pregnant by the first guy who pays attention to them. Unfortunately, that first guy is often an immature, unsuccessful loser. The result is the awful situation that we currently have, a sky high out of wedlock birth rate, and subsequent problems of crime, poor academic performance, etc.
Even Republicans seem immune to reason, as Lauren Boebert’s teenage son impregnated his girlfriend, and Boebert seems weirdly proud of it, spouting some nonsense about being “pro life.” Duh, teenage sex is not pro life. It is just irresponsible.
It gets back to the parents. Two parents not accepting teenage sex. Demand they get through school, get established in a job, etc. before they “get frisky.”
From experience working with the Housing Authority & my son’s classmates’ situations in middle school I learned that many girls are exploited & abused by older men, often their mother’s boyfriends.
I keep on repeating the story so please excuse, but so many 11-15 year old girls in my son’s school had become pregnant that they had to hire a fulltime teacher to tutor them. Most of these were low income girls of colour. A little 12 year old in another school had been abused & murdered by her mom’s live in boyfriend & her body dumped alongside the river like a bag of trash.
I’m no proponent of any sort of contraception use but long term contraception has greatly decreased the number of unwed teen pregnancies. Sadly, it hasn’t solved the tragedy of young girls being preyed upon by older males. When I asked a member of the staff at my son’s school what could be done about this they just shrugged their shoulders & stated that it was a “part of the culture.”
Girls need a father in the home, who will visit violence on any man who would abuse them.
Yes, Will that’s an important part of the solution. Per law enforcement, the most dangerous place for a child is with a single mother who allows unrelated men access to her home.
You are focusing on a major part of the overall problem, and one that the entire pro-life movement and its allies seems to almost entirely avoid – i.e. confronting men about their behavior. Its a lot easier to focus on being “pro-woman”, etc. but then that leaves us in a position of endlessly treating the wounded from a war upstream that never ends.
I would go one step further. Cut off all welfare programs without exception. People might behave differently knowing they will have to assume full responsibility for caring for the kids they bring into the world.
I like that idea, but “the Left” will not go for that, and a good many in the “pro-life community” would object as well, as they believe it would lead more women to have abortions for lack of “resources” with which to raise the baby.
I was once my diocese’s (Charleston, SC) Director of Catholic Charities which meant that I was also the diocesan director of CCHD. I was, in the latter capacity, to recommend (or not) CCHD grant proposals in our diocese. I was appalled when I found out that groups like ACORN had been given grants to do community organizing in our State which, when I questioned in persoñ those requesting the money (between $50,000- $100,000) they pretty much confessed that they were operatives of the Democrat Party and were intending to use the money to “get out the vote.” All hell broke loose when I denied the grant and, in discussion with the CCHD liaison at the USCCB, was told I could not do this. When I told this to the Administrator of our diocese (we were in between bishops at the time), he refused to send the collected monies to CCHD and, instead, told me to use that money for the poor in our diocese. Boy, did he ever catch hell.
Believe me when I tell you that the USCCB and the CCHD, along with Catholic Charities USA and Catholic Relief Services are nothing more than front organizations that have been highjacked to advance the cause of the DNC and to get Democrats elected. It MUST stop!
Spot on, Deacon. Yes, if people only knew the partisan motivations of the higher-ups in these organization. It isn’t about fulfilling some Gospel mandate; it’s about promoting and protecting a certain political party and photo ops for USCCB public relations. Catholics should stop giving to these national collections, not to mention the corrupt-to-the-core Peter’s Pence.
I’ve noticed that many Catholic Social Teaching advocates have a preferential option for governmental solutions, and that it appears that the government is the universal destination for power. Corrupting levels of power.
Yes, just on a practical level, govt. welfare & subsidized housing programs entail layers of bureaucracy. Faith communities can do that more efficiently & economically.
The government can’t seem to help itself in attaching all manner of woke political strings to these programs. Using healthcare to force a pro-abortion agenda. Using education to turn schools into centers for sexual and other forms of political indoctrination.
The CCHD and the USCCB itself are nothing but Democrat Party organizations. Bishop Paprocki and all sincere Catholic bishops should withdraw their dioceses from the USCCB and end all communication with and fund raising for this group and its many hydra-headed enterprises.
It’s been eight decades since “Bureaucracy” (Mises) was published, and the introduction tells us that bureaucracy and bureaucratic are always terms of “opprobrium”.
The USCCB is the ne plus ultra of bureaucracies. Initially formed over a century ago, it has exhibited the worst sort of mission drift and subordination to the state.
When my Diocese withdraws, I will give to the annual appeal. Until then, not a penny.
The Lepanto Institute has been a “burr under the saddle” of the CCHD for years. Check out some of the latest reports at https://www.lepantoin.org/wp/ One would have thought that when it was revealed that CCHD was funding ACORN that would have been the end of it. Also, if you search “CCHD director resigns” you will find some interesting articles on his leadership over the past 16 years.
Perhaps the more urgent necessity is how to catechize a Catholic population which is scandalously ignorant of the faith they profess to believe.
Leave the poverty question to economists. Would you have them address theological issues? On second thought they might do a better job…surely not much worse.
“The Poverty Question”, cannot be left to Economists who are mostly partisan- serve as advocates for Multinational Corporations or radical leftism. It is true however that Education is most palliative to the poverty problem, but it does not significantly address the problems of poor formation of persons and their malformation. This can only be addressed by emphasis on The Spiritual Works of Mercy- Yes Prayer and Don Bosco Missionaries of Sorts where young people are firstly inculturated in prayer life and then with good moral value based education develop into persons with good social values. The real problem is liturgical life- the success or good hit rate tends to be no more than 5%, that is less than one in 20 in the Church are really converted by The Eucharist and worst still give a passing attention to Church Social Teachings. Papal Encyclicals – Caritas in Veritate and Centessimus Annus are treasures of Social Spirituality, of Christ in the World and on the streets. But he is shut out by self seeking and self adulating prayers, and sometimes celebrations of the Mass. It takes 1 minute to see Christ in the Cross, another 5 in the terbanacle in silence. Contemplation would be longer especially given our restive consumerist culture. It is however the begining of healing of each person, the opening of their eyes for proper engagement and resolution of social ills rather than plasters of cracking buildings. We have to inwardly believe what we are doing or want to do even if it means being silent or to remove the debris before planting the seeds of Catholic Spirituality – Daily Mass and Eucharistic Life. Otherwise you are wasting time, energy and money.
Pope John Paul II advocated strenuously for family life- the sacramentality of marriage as key to formation of persons, stabilization of man and woman in union modelled on Christ love for His Church. The fact that things have gotten worse in a generation or two since he warned us can only speak of our deriliction. Penance not change of strategy would be a good start.
The reason for a national conference of bishops seems to be for apostate bishops to yoke the bloated church establishment to the DNC, in exchange for funding the USCCB and its “portfolio.”
In 2013, their CCHD could haul in over $50 Million from parish collections.
After their rotten leftist networks were exposed (abortion, contraception, homo-filia, etc etc), Catholics who actually attend Mass every Sunday stopped giving money to the CCHD and its confidence-gamers in the USCCB, so now the the fraudsters can only pull in $8-10 Million, but they have $11-12 Million in expenses, so their losing cash hand over foot.
Which probably explains why they’re all carrying water for the outlaw illegal immigration scam enterprise, they’ll do whatever it pleases them to render it all to Caesar.
Fr. Dwight Longenecker had an interesting post recently on the topic of the Church (the parish,really) and poverty.
“Just as it is fair to ask if the “War on Poverty” was effective,”
The answer is in. The war on poverty was a disaster. It not only didn’t defeat poverty, it created derivate social pathologies that are not only materially impoverishing, but morally and spiritually impoverishing as well. It did as well as “the war on drugs” and the “war on terror” in Afghanistan, i.e., we lost handily.
With all due respect, the Bishops spend entirely too much time in the Episcopal echo chambers. Your job is to save souls, not opine on economic policy, especially since there’s no special charism or competence conveyed with an Episcopal consecration.
Worry about baptisms, confirmations, confessions, marriages, pews splintering under the weight of people squeezing in (as it is when the “Hollie-Lilys” make their semiannual visits) and churches not being shuttered, but built and enlarged.
Diocesan Campaign for Justice and Hope is a good idea. Not only for education grants in our catholic schools but please help those addicted to drugs. The government doesn’t want to help these people and the police more now than ever, just leave addicts by the roadside or move them along to someone else’s neighborhood. Drugs are the biggest cause to a lack of education and poverty. Thanks for a great Bishop. Go Holy Goalie!
Pitchfork rebel above – agree. See Fr. Longenecker.