Lifesite News reports that the Chicago office of the CCHD has undertaken significant reform since a new director, Ray Flores, took the helm a year ago. He has moved to defund several recipient groups that espoused philosophies at variance with Church teaching in life/morality matters.
Local pregnancy centers have so far benefitted significantly. One of them was able, as a result of monies received from CCHD, to upgrade to a 4D sonogram. Hitherto, CCHD policy prohibited donations to pro-life groups (I believe that is still the case on the CCHD national level). Chicago CCHD is now able to retain 50% of donations from the local parishes, as opposed to the 25% retention allowance for the rest of the nation.
Please read this entire Lifesite News report. This is extremely significant, as the Chicago CCHD collection is the largest in the nation, and CCHD started in Chicago in 1959.
The question of the day is, "Will the national CCHD follow Chicago's lead and start to adhere to Catholic social teaching?" At present, it doesn't. Thus, at this time I must suggest another nationwide boycott of the CCHD collection, with the obvious exception for the Chicago area.
Good for Ray. It's wonderful to see him following through on some of the things he said when we met with him in Chicago last year. Let's pray that that all the bad guys everywhere be defunded and that they put OUR money into the service of the culture of life in stead of the culture of death.
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