The Goal of the Reform CCHD Now Coalition

Our goal has been and continues to be to serve the Church by bringing much-needed, even if inconvenient, truth to the conversation about the CCHD. We have never aimed to embarrass any of our faithful bishops, nor have we tried to shut the CCHD down. We have heard several stories of good work done by CCHD grantees, and we've been contacted by CCHD representatives who support the call for reform, and have even begun to initiate such reforms at the diocesan level. This is all wonderful news.

We remain ready to fully support the CCHD the moment its national leadership implements real reforms, which should include revisiting its charter and ensuring that all of its grantees conform with all Catholic teaching, rather than an isolated and confused understanding of Catholic Social teaching; publishing on its web sites signed statements from each grantee which guarantee that the grantee will IN NO WAY work against Church teaching; and making the grant discovery process fully transparent and published on the CCHD web site. Initiating such reforms, and publicizing them as a good faith effort to gain renewed trust from those who are rightly skeptical of the CCHD, will indeed be a cause for celebration.

CCHD Leadership is in control of this scandal. If they continue to ignore the charges publicly, while scrubbing their web sites of evidence and having their partners do the same, and while attacking us in the media, we will have no choice but to keep up our campaign. This will, unfortunately and painfully for us, be public, as CCHD leadership has refused to meet with us and discuss these issues. The faithful of the Catholic Church in America deserve better. Why the CCHD continues to obfuscate, partner with openly anti-Catholic organizations and expect no one to notice is beyond us.

Please keep this affair in prayer. Let Truth win, not any party in this dispute. And please do not let the National CCHD's problems prevent you from giving to support the poor and marginalized. Please click on the link to the left for organizations that do excellent work, and are worthy of faithful Catholics' support.

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We respectfully ask that the US Catholic Bishops consider the following requests, which, despite some positive responses from the CCHD, remain unaddressed. We request:

1) a thorough explanation of how millions of dollars donated from everyday Catholics has gone to serially corrupt, politically radical, and other groups that sometimes oppose the Church on key issues (see CCHD in the News for more information);

2) an independent audit of the CCHD grant process with the results published online;

3) that the CCHD to thoroughly vet all grantees for compliance with Catholic teaching on social justice, life and family issues, with the results of this vetting process published online, and that the CCHD require grantees to sign a document indicating that they will in no way oppose the Church or her teachings.

We love our Church and her shepherds. We do not want to embarrass the USCCB or any particular Catholic bishop. We simply want to be sure that money that we donate to the CCHD goes to reputable, non-political, effective organizations that will work WITH THE CHURCH, NOT AGAINST THE CHURCH. Frankly, that should not be too much to ask.

In our opinion, such a goal will require a complete reform of the CCHD; not simply the occasional defunding of a problematic organization, followed by assurances that the problem has been solved, as has been the CCHD’s response (see also http://bellarmineveritasministry.org/) until now.