What's all this talk about CCHD grants and Cardinal George?

From the Catholic Conference of Illinois:

We wanted to let you know about the unfortunate politicization of Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) grants.

Most dioceses participate in the CCHD program, collecting money from parishioners for grants to local organizations that serve the poor. When applying for and receiving a CCHD grant, an organization agrees to adhere to Catholic teaching.

Some of these organizations that receive CCHD grants in the Chicago area also belong to the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR). On May 23, ICIRR issued a statement --  a week before the end of the legislative session -- saying it supported redefinition of marriage legislation pending at the state Capitol. The ICIRR board did not consult its member organizations when reaching this decision.

ICIRR member organizations that were awarded CCHD grants were informed by the Archdiocese of Chicago that in order to adhere to Church teaching and therefore keep the grant, they should disassociate from ICIRR. If they chose to stay with ICIRR, they would lose the CCHD grant since they would be supporting a violation of Church teaching.

Several Chicago and Cook County politicians took out an ad in the Chicago Tribune on Monday, July 29 in the form of a letter to Cardinal George, asking him to allow ICIRR member organizations to keep the CCHD grants. Cardinal George responded to the ad with an open letter posted on the Archdiocese's website.

Gubernatorial candidate Bill Daley on Wednesday, July 31 made public a similar letter he had sent to Cardinal George in an article in the Chicago Sun-Times. Cardinal George on Thursday responded to Daley's criticisms during interviews with two Chicago television stations (here and here), noting that the poor and immigrants are suffering because of the politicization of the CCHD grants.

The national CCHD office, housed in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, today sent Cardinal George a letter in support of his decision. The letter notes that CCHD application materials and website information state that "organizations that receive CCHD funds must not participate in or promote activities that contradict the moral and social teachings of the Catholic Church. For example, organizations that support or promote same-sex marriage, discrimination, racism, capital punishment, abortion, or euthanasia are not eligible for CCHD funding."

The letter further notes that "violations of these regulations are taken seriously and result in the removal of CCHD support for an organization."

The situation begs an obvious question: Why are Bill Daley and other politicians interfering in how the Church spends its own money that is collected from Catholics in the pews?

The Catholic Conference of Illinois

Kudos to Cardinal George. By the way, isn’t Daley supposed to be a Catholic? Once again, political expediency rules over a politician’s faith and morals. If Dante was alive today, I wonder what circle he would put Daley and his ilk in?

Fortitude

Another great article found in Our Sunday Visitor (OSV). I hope you have the time to read it. It starts:

A while back I heard a homilist quote a cardinal who heads a major American archdiocese: “I will die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”
The homilist didn’t leave it at that. “The persecution of the Church in America isn’t coming,” he told the congregation grimly, “it’s already here.”
This is a man not much given to flamboyant rhetoric. His text was from St. Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy, with its exhortation to Christians to “bear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God” (2 Tm 1:8).
Bearing hardship for the Gospel is central to fortitude. American Catholics soon may be called to practice fortitude by bearing more of it than many suppose. 

Please go here to read the entire article.

These are trying times for Catholics. We must have the fortitude, will, and strength to defend our faith. There are times to be silent, there are times to turn the other cheek, and there are times, like now, to speak out and defend our faith. We cannot bury our heads in the sand.

What can you do? A lot. Speak up. If nothing else, contact your local, state and federal representatives. Get to know what is happening. Do not rely on the media – they are in the secularist/socialist camp. Join political action groups. Know the facts, so you can speak of the issues with you family, neighbors and friends.

Remember Cardinal George’s words: “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.” This may happen sooner than Cardinal George see it.

Sadly, there are many of us who decided to vote what we think would fatten our pocket books instead of our faith. Now we need to deal with the consequences. We cannot now stand idly by.

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Cardinal George on Chick-fil-A

From: CARDINAL'S NETWORK ARCHIVE

Monday, July 30, 2012

Reflections on “Chicago values”

Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone what are the “values” that must be held by citizens of Chicago.  I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval.  Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city?  Is the City Council going to set up a “Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities” and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it?  I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, “un-Chicagoan.”

The value in question is espousal of “gender-free marriage.”  Approval of state-sponsored homosexual unions has very quickly become a litmus test for bigotry; and espousing the understanding of marriage that has prevailed among all peoples throughout human history is now, supposedly, outside the American consensus.  Are Americans so exceptional that we are free to define “marriage” (or other institutions we did not invent) at will?  What are we re-defining?

It might be good to put aside any religious teaching and any state laws and start from scratch, from nature itself, when talking about marriage.  Marriage existed before Christ called together his first disciples two thousand years ago and well before the United States of America was formed two hundred and thirty six years ago.  Neither Church nor state invented marriage, and neither can change its nature.

Marriage exists because human nature comes in two complementary sexes: male and female.  The sexual union of a man and woman is called the marital act because the two become physically one in a way that is impossible between two men or two women.  Whatever a homosexual union might be or represent, it is not physically marital.  Gender is inextricably bound up with physical sexual identity; and “gender-free marriage” is a contradiction in terms, like a square circle.

Both Church and state do, however, have an interest in regulating marriage.  It is not that religious marriage is private and civil marriage public; rather, marriage is a public institution in both Church and state.  The state regulates marriage to assure stability in society and for the proper protection and raising of the next generation of citizens.  The state has a vested interest in knowing who is married and who is not and in fostering good marriages and strong families for the sake of society.

The Church, because Jesus raised the marital union to the level of symbolizing his own union with his Body the Church, has an interest in determining which marital unions are sacramental and which are not.  The Church sees married life as a path to sanctity and as the means for raising children in the faith, as citizens of the universal kingdom of God.  These are all legitimate interests of both Church and state, but they assume and do not create the nature of marriage.

People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and, of its nature, for life.  The laws of civilizations much older than ours assume this understanding of marriage.  This is also what religious leaders of almost all faiths have taught throughout the ages.  Jesus affirmed this understanding of marriage when he spoke of “two becoming one flesh” (Mt. 19: 4-6).  Was Jesus a bigot?  Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan?  Would Jesus be more “enlightened” if he had the privilege of living in our society?  One is welcome to believe that, of course; but it should not become the official state religion, at least not in a land that still fancies itself free.

Surely there must be a way to properly respect people who are gay or lesbian without using civil law to undermine the nature of marriage.  Surely we can find a way not to play off newly invented individual rights to “marriage” against constitutionally protected freedom of religious belief and religious practice.  The State’s attempting to redefine marriage has become a defining moment not for marriage, which is what it is, but for our increasingly fragile “civil union” as citizens.

Francis Cardinal George, OMI

Cardinal George - "... his successor will die a martyr..."

Later in 2010, [Francis Cardinal George] further outlined the degree to which he believed religious freedoms (in the United States and other Western societies) was endangered. After the passage of legislation that enabled Civil Unions in Illinois, his eminence stated, "I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square".

From Wikipedia article on Cardinal George