They aren't the only ones using the religious institution of their preference for political ends, of course, but the CCHD has been in business since 1970, pouring millions into Alinskyian organizing.

Alinskyian organizations - that's what Barak Obama studied and practiced, and those are the people with whom he worked. According to David Moberg: "He collaborated with United Power for Action and Justice (UPAJ), a metropolitan Chicago faith-based organization formed in 1997 by the IAF [Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation], to expand children's health insurance in Illinois. For its part, UPAJ gave Obama a prominent platform to address its multiracial, metropolitan membership during his 2004 bid for the U.S. Senate. William McNary, co-director of Citizen Action/Illinois, a coalition of labor, community and citizen groups, says, 'Barack was not just willing to meet with community-based groups, not only to be a good vote for us, but he also strategized with us to help move our position forward.'" (Moberg, "Obama's Third Way," Shelterforce Online, Issue #149, Spring 2007)

But see, this kind of work doesn't come cheap. People don' t just "get" organized - they have to "be" organized. An Alinskyian organizer has to find progressive pastors and persuade them to give a percentage of congregational tithing to his organizational work. He has to hold house meetings and trainings. He has to develop a progressive "presence" in the local political arena, targeting his member congregations. He needs a salary ...and the religious institutions infiltrated by Alinskyites are "selling" poverty to pay it.

Oh, the CCHD does give a little money to support economic self-help projects run by the poor. These projects are the CCHD's "window dressing." They don't much of the CCHD pie, but they do get the bulk of its promotional attention.

The real money goes, instead, into organizations that promote social change. CCHD's founding resolution states that its primary funding will be for social projects "aimed at eliminating the very causes of poverty." To clarify what "social projectsE2 the CCHD thinks will "eliminate poverty", one has to look at what it funds.

A good percentage of these Catholic grants fund Alinsky-style, broad-based community organizations - including organizations Obama trained under and worked for - to restructure society along a socialist model. Alinskyian community organizations want to be the mediators of government, education, job training, job placement, healthcare, housing, and social services.

And if that isn't enough of a bitter pill, these organizations network with other progressives who fight against any limitation of abortion "rights" or homosexual "rights." Like Obama.

So, whether or not Barak Obama becomes the nest president of the United States, the annual Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) bears a portion of the responsibility. Consider that when the collection plate comes around this year.

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THE "CATHOLIC CAMPAIGN FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT"- CHRISTIAN CHARITY OR LEFTIST LURE?

"The Campaign's annual budget... is approximately $7.5 million [now $14 million]a year.... The largest grants have gone to community-organizing projects of the Alinsky school. The largest single recipient has been the Industrial Areas Foundation, founded by Alinsky, with ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) the second." [Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac, The Coercive Utopians (Chicago: Regnery Gateway, 1983) p. 210]

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"Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical... who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer."

[Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), p. ix]

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"Fr. Marvin Mottet, its [CHD's] director [1979-1986], was a member of ACORN, and explains that the Campaign for Human Development is not designed to provide direct services to the poor: 'Why you know, passing out food and clothing - that's a bottomless pit.' Rather, he says, the Campaign is 'organized for institutional change.'" (Isaac and Isaac, op. cit., p. 210)

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"The Campaign gave the Dallas chapter of ACORN $50,000 in 1979. That same year the chapter urged members to soak the computer bill card they received from their utility company in hot water and iron it before returning it so it could not be machine-processed. Members were also told to overpay by a penny and demand credit. This sort of guerilla theater is satisfying to the utopians but of little help to the poor." (Isaac and Isaac, op. cit., p. 211)

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"ACORN'S chief organizer, Wade Rathke, 'a one-time activist in SDS [the radical"Students for a Democratic Society"] and organizer for the National Welfare Rights Organiza­tion, says he works to advance 'an agenda for low-to-moderate-income people to take back what's rightfully ours' and defines 'ours' as 'everything.'"[William T. Poole and Thomas W. Pauken, The Campaign for Human Development: Christian Charity or Political Activism? (Washington, D.C.: The Capital Research Center, 1988), p. 13]

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"No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true socialist." - Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno, 1931

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CHD has supported organizations which advocate abortion, e.g., Oakland's "Progressive Way"(from CHD's 1991 grant-recipient list CHD: "Administered in the Diocese of Oakland by Catholic Charities"). A call to Progressive Way in early 1995 confirmed its enthusiastic support and funding assistance for the "California Pro-Choice Education Fund," along with other groups thought by Progressive Way's representative to support "abortion rights."

Catholic Charities has itself been involved in other questionable activities, including the establishment of the "Gay and Lesbian Education and Affirmation" (GLEA) Club, operated by two Catholic priests at Bishop O'Dowd High School - and extensive participation in a 1995 conference sponsored at Holy Names College by the "Bay Area Network of Gay and Lesbian Educators" (BANGLE) and the "Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education' Network"

"A major CHD grantee that is particularly well-regarded by the left is Project VOTE! (Poole and Pauken, op. cit., p. 18). "Project VOTE! describes itself as 'created in 1982 to pioneer the strategy of registering citizens to vote as they waited in long lines to collect unemploy­ment, food stamps, and social services. That strategy... has changed the world of voter registration.'" (ibid., p.55 footnote, quoting Project VOTE! mailing)

CCHD grants to groups that fund abortion advocacy "allow recipients to shift resources to activities opposed by the Catholic Church.... For instance, several CCHD-funded nonprofits [including ACORN and Oakland's Center for Third World Organizing, CTWO] endorsed NOW's 'Fight the Right March' in San Francisco in April 1996." Among the march's advertised purposes: "actively support... abortion rights and reproductive freedom... [and] lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights."... CCHD's 1997 grants help support "a CTWO project called SPIRIT ( Sisters in Portland Impacting Real Issues Together)" that sponsors "safe sex" seminars and condom distributions (Patrick Reilly, "Catholic Campaign for Human Development: New Name & Guidelines Fail to Erase Problems," Organization Trends, Capital Research Center, Oct. 1998).

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"That may be their right; but Catholics who believe in our traditional political and economic institutions should inform themselves as to what... the Campaign for Human Development, clothed in the mantle of religion, is supporting with their money." (Poole and Pauken, op. cit., p. 43)

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Written in the late 90's and submitted by Mike Arata, Email: marata01@sbcglobal.net

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