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(LifeSiteNews) — This weekend, dioceses across the country will be taking up the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) annual collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), the USCCB’s scandal-ridden charity arm.

For years, the CCHD has given millions of dollars to groups that openly reject Catholic teaching and promote abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, contraception, and other grave evils in contradiction to the CCHD’s own stated policy. CCHD grantees have included groups that partner with Planned Parenthood, help jailed women obtain abortions, promote obscene LGBT material to children, and even practice demonic rituals. 

Last month, the USCCB announced that the CCHD gave funding to a pro-LGBT, anti-police group in Minnesota backed by far-left Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz. The group, Centro de Trabajadores Unidas en la Lucha, has celebrated LGBT “pride” and pushed for so-called “trans rights.”

READ: Bishop Strickland: Every bishop should state ‘Francis no longer teaches the Catholic faith’

Despite the CCHD being repeatedly exposed for funding organizations that violate the teaching of the Church, the U.S. bishops continue to stand by the program and falsely claim that its grantees are in line with Catholic teaching. 

The national collection for the CCHD will be taken up at Masses on Saturday, November 16, and Sunday, November 17. This Sunday is the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, which Pope Francis designated the “World Day of the Poor.”

According to the CCHD, “some dioceses hold their collection on a different date to avoid conflict with local activities and needs.”

Only 25 percent of funds collected are typically retained for local use, while 75 percent go to the national CCHD program.

The CCHD has given more than $440 million to almost 12,000 “community-based, grassroots-led organizations” since its inception, according to the USCCB.  

The current head of the USCCB’s Subcommittee on the Catholic Campaign for Human Development is Bishop Timothy Senior of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The Lepanto Institute has extensively reported on the CCHD’s scandalous funding of pro-LGBT, pro-abortion, Marxist, and other heterodox, leftist groups:

  • US bishops’ campaign gave money to pro-LGBT group that prays to demons
    • Planting Justice has been a recipient of local CCHD grants from the Diocese of Oakland, California, since 2018 and appears to have received its first-ever national CCHD grant of $50,000 in FY 2021-2022.

      According to the November 2022 edition of The Catholic Voice, the official publication of the Diocese of Oakland, Planting Justice received another $50,000 national grant for “this year,” meaning 2022-2023.

      Whatever the case, what we know for sure is that this organization should NEVER have received a dime from the Catholic Church. Any organization that would erect an altar with an idol and pentagram on it and publish actual prayers to demons should be on a permanent ban list, perpetually forbidden from Catholic funding.

      On November 21, 2013, Planting Justice published a tweet saying, “Remembering our Dead on the International Transgender Day of Remembrance,” linking to an article on Planting Justice’s website.

  • US bishops’ campaign funded group that promotes pornographic LGBT books for children
    • Over the years, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development has provided grants to the organization called Congregations United to Serve Humanity (CUSH). From 2012 to 2018, the CCHD provided a total of $202,000 to CUSH, after which time it hadn’t received a grant again until the 2021-2022 grants cycle. The recently published CCHD grants list for 2021-2022 shows that CUSH received a grant of $45,000 for that year.

      On September 29 of this year, Kenosha News reported that CUSH was planning to hold a book drive to collect “banned books” to “help stock (a) proposed LGBTQ youth center.” The books are said to be intended for “a library at a proposed Kenosha-based LGBTQ center for middle and high school youth.”

      On October 5, 2023, Kenosha News interviewed Lori Hawkins, CUSH’s executive director and community organizer, about the “banned books” drive.

      At 2:29 in the Kenosha News segment, the book “Gender Queer” is being held by a CUSH volunteer alongside “The LGBTQ+ History Book,” “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” and “This Book is Gay,” all of which are aimed at grooming children and young adolescents.

      To emphasize this point, CUSH even posted an image on their own Facebook page showing a more complete collection of such books.

  • US bishops’ agency is funding radical Marxist, pro-abortion, pro-LGBT groups: new report
    • Of the 214 organizations receiving grants from the CCHD in 2020–2021, 66 of those organizations are ineligible for Catholic funds, which is 30.8 percent. Those 66 organizations received funding approval from 46 of the 196 dioceses of the United States.

      For instance, the Chicago Workers Collaborative (see the report in the chart) was given a choice in 2013 by the Archdiocese of Chicago to either withdraw from a coalition of which it was a member (because the coalition had taken a formal stance on homosexual “marriage”) or lose funding from the CCHD. The Chicago Workers Collaborative chose the coalition and was denied further funding from the CCHD. And now, even though Chicago Workers Collaborative is still a member of the coalition over which it lost CCHD funding, it is once again receiving CCHD grants. To make matters worse, not only is the coalition now promoting abortion as well as LGBT ideologies, but Chicago Workers Collaborative is a member of several other bad coalitions, and it has been promoting LGBT ideologies itself.

      Oftentimes, organizations desiring to promote abortion or LGBT ideologies try to be subtle in their approach, preferring to do so either through coalitions or behind the scenes.

      For instance, the Ostara Initiative gives no indication of its pro-abortion advocacy on its website, but its leadership has spoken openly about the fact that as an organization, they do advocate for women to have access to abortion information and services while in prison.

      On the other hand, organizations like the Ezekiel project openly promote rallies in defense of so-called “reproductive rights,” such as the “Rally to Defend Roe and Reproductive Rights” they promoted on social media back in May.

      And then there are organizations like Stand Up Nashville (SUN), whose organizational members and leadership are so corrupt in their active promotion of abortion and LGBT ideologies that it is completely indistinguishable from the official activities of the organization (SUN) itself.

The CCHD also reportedly helped fund Barack Obama’s early activism:

  • Catholic bishops helped to fund Alinsky training for Barack Obama, according to documents
    • The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ “Campaign for Human Development” paid a young Barack Obama’s airfare to a training program on community organizing given by the Industrial Areas Foundation, an organization founded by leftist radical Saul Alinsky, according a book to be released tomorrow on the subject. No Higher Power, by conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly and journalist George Neumayr, reports that “In the 1980s, the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago contributed to the training of Obama in the very Alinskyite radicalism that would culminate in such anti-religious measures as the HHS (contraception) mandate,” according to an article on the book published by the Blaze.

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