The CCHD Question Revisted

I haven’t yet decided what I’ll be doing with the CCHD collection this weekend, but in passing: it strikes me that the story with the CCHD is probably like that of many bureaucratic organizations with a lot of hands in the pot. Most bishops probably understand pretty well the CCHD programs in their own diocese, but they also probably have rather too much to do to pay much attention to what programs are going on outside their diocese. Which puts the fund as a whole in one of those odd limbos in which no one is really feels responsible for the whole thing, and around the margins money gets misused in some rather appalling ways.

So it’s probably understandable that it’s gotten itself involved in a lot or activities much more shady than something your local St. Vincent de Paul group or your diocese’s annual appeal would support. Whether that justifies not funding it or not, I’m not sure yet. Certainly, there’s not a shortage of needy and clearly accountable Catholic charities in any given diocese.

I am absolutely boycotting this moral evil.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, can justify my money being sent to pay for abortions.

I’m glad I’m just a simpleton, I can see straight through the mud and pinpoint this evil among us.

You guys can continue with your moral gymnastics and puzzle over a simple decision such as this.

Tito, I’m pretty sure that the group that is boycotting says on their website from which I quote above that the CCHD has never directly paid for abortions, nor is the money being given to organization that perform abortions. In any case, to be morally consistent, you shouldn’t pay your taxes and should double-check your health insurance to make sure it isn’t among the 40 to 80 percent of companies that covers abortion, depending on whose statistics you follow.

Therefore far from playing a game of moral gymnastics as you so happily accused myself and Darwin of, on the contrary. In moral theology, formal cooperation where your will is aligned with the agent of evil is always wrong. The same is true of material proximate cooperation where one provides directly for the evil being done. The problem is this situation, in my view, does not meet either of those criteria. It is clearly an issue of remote material cooperation (which is not always evil and therefore one bears no culpability for the action) because as far as my reading has gone–it is those in the grantee position, not the whole campaign itself. Therefore the issue lies with the judgment of people hired for a particular position. Of course, knowledge of their judgment prior to the fact is completely impossible. If anything, the same problem has occured with the RNC. Did anyone know that their money was going toward a group that had abortion coverage in their insurance? The same is true of Focus on the Family.

Far from being a question of simplicity where the moral choice is binding on every person, it actually requires prudential judgment and I think a Catholic can disagree with you in good conscience. Assume what you will about my moral integrity if you must; I, at least, gave you the benefit of the doubt you were actually following your conscience.

Tito,

In moral theology, something does not cease to be remote material cooperation because you are aware some sort of evil will occur. Moreover, I have yet to see it established that an automatic CCHD donation goes to a widespread funding of abortion groups and that such occurences are not incidences that occur in specific regions.

Thus, one can reasonably disagree with your conclusion and in good conscience. No,life doesn’t have to be complicated; nevertheless it is.

Excuse me? Must you really resort to ad hominem attacks? Did I call you any names or assert that your views are wholly delusional? Not at all.

There is nothing complicated about my argument: Catholics can disagree. Again, I have not seen such evidence and I have seen nothing that negates my arguments. The problems are individual grantees that work for the CCHD. That is obvious, but it isn’t obvious that the number of incidences requires punishing the whole system by a boycott. I really don’t take issue with people who think otherwise; apparently you do to the childish point of being insulting.

Truthfully Tito, you know nothing about my life or my perspective on it so I would really appreciate it if you would cease your claims to such knowledge.

I have a “rosy” personality? How is my personality relevant to the question of the CCHD?

Isn’t some of the local contribution earmarked for local programs? And weren’t a few of the problematic charities located in L.A./California? Living in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, I’m very suspicious and leaning against giving to CCHD.

I am severely puzzled here. Do we have to go to Washington [or wherever the bureaucracy is located] to find out what are the needs of the poor in our parishes?

I permit myself to recall to you youngsters that LBJ’s War On Poverty was meant to end poverty in the U.S. It was about as successful as his military operation in Vietnam.