CATHOLIC CAMPAIGN - FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT?
Guest editorial by Stephanie Block

The Next fundraising campaign for the CCHD will be coming around to a church near you very soon. Here is some information on where that money goes and who is ends up helping that might be of interest before you donate.

Electing an Organizer

Behind Obama, there’s the annual Catholic Campaign for Human Development

Whether or not Barak Obama becomes the nest president of the United States, the annual Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) bears responsibility for raising this community organizer to his current national prominence. Through CCHD funding, he received a Machiavellian practicum. Through CCHD-funded organizations, Catholics sponsored his education – not at Harvard but in the Chicago streets. Thanks to CCHD grants, this convicted pro-abort has been backed by Catholics every step of his short, meteoric rise.
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.