Catholics rebuffing controversial charity

Several priests and parishes in Northern Virginia’s Arlington Diocese balked Sunday at taking up a collection for the much-criticized Catholic Campaign for Human Development, whose contributions to the voter-registration group ACORN got a dose of bad publicity this fall.

“I personally haven’t given a dime to the Campaign for Human Development in years,” the Rev. John DeCelles told parishioners during his Sunday homily at St. Mary’s Church in Alexandria.

“Over the years, including last year,” he continued, “the campaign has given millions of dollars to very questionable groups, including groups that actively support and campaign for so-called ‘abortion rights.’”

Mary Beth Beasley, a law student who was at the 1 p.m. Mass where Father DeCelles spoke, said her thought was, “Wow, it was great he was being so honest about what the CCHD does, because you don’t hear that.”

“And then when the basket went around, I didn’t see any cash collected at all,” she added.

The Rev. Dennis W. Kleinmann, the pastor at St. Mary’s, also was unenthusiastic in encouraging donations to the CCHD at his Masses. According to two parishioners, he cited the recent controversies over the campaign’s grants to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) as one reason to be “cautious.”

The CCHD, whose $9.4 million budget depends on annual November collections from Catholic parishes, recently revealed it had donated more than $7.3 million to ACORN over the past decade. The community-organizing group has been accused of voter fraud in 15 states.

Although the CCHD cut off all funding to ACORN, the dioceses of South Carolina and Alabama recently suspended their CCHD collections pending the findings of a church audit into more than $1 million in church funding that went to ACORN in 2007.

Despite a Nov. 22 letter from Arlington Bishop Paul Loverde instructing Catholics in the 400,000-member diocese to give, an undetermined number of priests told their parishioners to hold back.

The CCHD customarily benefits from “second collections” taken up at November Masses throughout the church in the U.S.

Every Sunday, Mass has a collection before Communion, which goes to the parish. But at a large share of Masses throughout the year, a “second collection” is taken up after Communion for specific causes — sometimes to benefit church-related groups such as the CCHD or the St. Vincent de Paul Society and sometimes to benefit specific causes such as natural-disaster relief.

It is very rare for a priest to discourage giving for any collection, and particularly atypical to do so when the cause has been endorsed by his bishop.

Parishioners at Queen of Apostles Church in Alexandria were told in their bulletin that in the 1990s the CCHD “contributed to organizations diametrically opposed to the Catholic Church, i.e. the pro-abortion group National Organization for Women and the American Civil Liberties Union.”

“There are so many tremendous Catholic apostolates that work with the poor that are in need,” said the note, penned by the Rev. Thomas Vander Woude. “One wonders if one’s donations could be better spent elsewhere until the CCHD has proven its ability to fund truly Catholic apostolates that truly work with and help the poor?”

Ralph McCloud, executive director of the CCHD, said collection money does go toward Catholic projects and that 25 percent stays within the diocese. According to the diocese, $66,000 stayed within the diocese in 2007, and $198,000 was sent to the CCHD.

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