Catholic World News News Feature

Report: Catholic Charity Supports Pro-Abortion Groups November 13, 1998

WASHINGTON, DC (CWNews.com) - A philanthropy watchdog group reported that a national Catholic charity continues to support pro-abortion and other groups opposed to Catholic teaching despite recent changes in policy.

The Capital Research Center said in an October report that the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which is designed to reduce to poverty in the US, provided grants in 1997 to organizations aligned with such pro-abortion groups as the National Organization for Women and advocacy groups that sponsored the 1996 "Fight for the Right March" in San Francisco, whose stated goal was to support "abortion rights and reproductive freedom ... [and] lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights."

The campaign's annual fundraising drive in Catholic parishes through the country is scheduled for November 21-22. Although the group's guidelines forbid direct funding of projects or organizations contrary to Catholic teaching, the grants often allow the shifting of funds toward that purpose, the Center reported.

The report also accused the campaign, founded in 1972 and under the oversight of the committee of the US bishops' conference, of supporting policies and groups that advance the principles of liberation theology, which states that political empowerment is necessary for salvation and has been condemned by the Magisterium.

The campaign has proposed new guidelines, to be approved by the bishops' oversight committee, that forbid funding of organizations that violate the Church's teachings on human life and dignity, and not just projects that directly violate that teaching. But the Capital Research Center, in its report, asked: "... If it is now inappropriate for CCHD to fund groups engaged in abortion advocacy, why weren’t such grants forbidden in the past?"