After Rod Dreher wondered what on Earth the USCCB could be spending its $53M budget on, Amy Welborn offered a tongue-in-cheek explanation:
$20 million to make sure Ex Corde Ecclesiae isn’t enforced.
$20 million to delay implementation of Rome-mandated liturgical norms and translations
$10 million to hunt out unauthorized citations from the New American Bible
$2 million to hotels for biannual meetings and
$1 million for security to keep the hoi polloi away from bishops during said meetings.
This is a good time of year to ask where the money is going, because parishes will soon be taking up their annual collection for the “Catholic Campaign for Human Development”, which probably has the most doubtful value of any project the U.S. bishops sponsor. In case you haven’t heard the details about CCHD, here are the ground rules that make it objectionable to me:
1. Organizations funded must not be church-run.
2. Grants must not provide direct services to people in need: rather, they are used for organizational purposes.
What’s the effect of all that? CCHD has been used for years by secular leftist groups to get funds for “community organizing” activities, claiming to promote social justice but often in highly debatable ways. Furthermore, the money groups get from CCHD and spend on staff salaries lets them free up other monies to be spent on more overtly political activity. Some of the groups have even had pro-abortion involvements, but got money out of CCHD for specific projects that met the agency’s criteria at the time.
Over the years protests from conservatives have led to increasing restrictions on the program; and if the hard Left is squawking, they must be an improvement. Under new management, CCHD has started honoring the new restrictions, at least when a violation is brought to its attention. Still, I doubt I’ll ever be willing to give a red cent to CCHD.
