Last week I tweeted a link to a story concerning Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas and his possible election as head of the USCCB, he is currently the Vice President.

Today Tim Drake is commenting on this story. For those unaware of the story, when Bishop Kicanas while rectory of a seminary ordained a sexual abuser even though he was already aware at the time of allegations regarding this. The priest involved, Daniel McCormack, went on to abuse as many as 23 boys and went to prison in 2007.

Asked about it, Bishop Kicanas essentially said that he would do it again.

“It would have been grossly unfair not to have ordained him,” Bishop Kicanas said shortly after being elected as vice president of the USCCB, in a quote that appears in the deposition of Cardinal Francis George. “There was a sense that his activity was part of the developmental process and that he had learned from the experience,” continued Bishop Kicanas. “I was more concerned about his drinking. We sent him to counseling for that.”

I guess hindsight is not always 20/20 after all. Grossly unfair to not ordain a priest who abused so many boys? Not exactly contrition for the role he played.

There’s been speculation that there’s an unspoken practice that the election of the body’s president follows an alternating pattern, as if the body were somehow trying to balance two wings of parliament.

The Church, however, is not parliament.

If there is some unspoken rule, it’s one that should be dismissed. The words “liberal” or “conservative”, “progressive” or “orthodox” cannot truly describe the Church or those in it. If such a practice is taking place with the election of the USCCB’s president, it must be rejected, embracing instead presiding USCCB president Cardinal Francis George’s “simply Catholicism.”

When the bishops gather next week, they have an opportunity to show that elections do matter. It would be best if they met behind closed doors and outside the purview of the media, held an honest conversation not about the voting practice of the previous era, but about who is the best person to lead the brotherhood of bishops at this time and place, and then voted accordingly.

If the Bishop is elected then the USCCB will be shown to be more of an ole boys club than shepherds concerned about their flock. Collegiality in practice seems to mean turning a blind eye.

In September the USCCB released a document on the “Review and Renewal” of The Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

This Review and Renewal is putting in place stronger policies and clearer mechanisms to screen and monitor grants and groups to ensure that these past violations, though very limited, are not repeated. CCHD will do all it can to ensure that groups abide by these strengthened requirements and will act immediately and decisively if it is discovered that any group is violating these essential conditions for CCHD support.

Sounds good, but what about actual practice? Well in the same document they also praise one group.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is an organization of Latino, and Haitian migrant farm workers in Florida. Working with the local diocese, the Florida Catholic Conference and many other groups, CIW has won groundbreaking agreements with major fast food chains to increase wages and improve better working conditions for their members who pick tomatoes.

This group participated in the US Social Forum 2010 (USSF) which sets as part of its national agenda abortion for low-income women, Marxism for the 21st Century (Young Communist League), and LGBT issues including “Radical Queer Festivals.” That they had participated in this was previously reported by Reform CCHD.

CCHD really needs a more radical reform and a look at how it sees its mission. CCHD does not directly fund any charities, but gives grants to groups involved in anti-poverty efforts. As long as this is true CCHD is going to cause scandal simply because it is exactly these types of groups that get themselves involved in an agenda that includes much more than anti-poverty efforts. The people who populate these groups seem to me to have a mindset identical to so many liberal groups. While a group might not personally be involved in activities contrary to Church teaching they are almost always sympathetic to them and will align themselves with such groups. There is very little variety in the types of groups that CCHD has funded which almost always have a more socialist view of economics and why poverty exists in the first place. Just reading over previous grant lists pretty much demonstrate this. CIW saw no inconsistency attending the Social Forum because they are fellow travelers.

So while I am certainly generalizing, it seems to me that as long as CCHD targets such groups for grants in the first place they will continue to cause scandal. It is a prudential question how much good these types of groups have actually achieved in the first place. I am certainly skeptical about this, but no expert on the subject.

From my own point of view I would much rather see such annual collections be directed by the local ordinary who would decide where such money could best serve the poor and other aspects of Catholic social teaching. This is what my bishop is doing since he replaced it with a “Diocesan Schools and Social Action Appeal.” I think this approach is much more effective and in keeping with subsidarity.

Bishop’s Document on CCHD Reform.
Reform CCHD Now Report.

Going over the news feeds I found it odd to see the headline What Is Marco Rubio’s Religion?. But apparently the reporter who wrote the story has been running similar pieces on politicians running in the midterm election.

What is Marco Rubio’s religion?

Rubio is a Roman Catholic.

Where does Marco Rubio worship?

Though he is Catholic, Rubio belongs to the Christ Fellowship nondenominational Church in West Kendall, Fla., where he has attended for the last six years.

Was Marco Rubio born Roman Catholic, or did he convert?

Rubio was born Roman Catholic.

What has Marco Rubio said about the Roman Catholic Church?

When asked about how his faith has sustained him, Rubio said that he derives his family’s strength from faith. “If you get the personal part of your life wrong, nothing else makes sense,” he said, adding that his most important job is father and husband, and “I try to get that right, … and certainly that comes from our faith.” As a Catholic potential senator, he has expressed a possible division (as well as an inference that his Christianity informs his morality): “For those who have the Christian faith and are in politics, there is a constant struggle between a desire to do what is right and how that sometimes may not coincide with what is popular,” he said. “I hope that, more often than not, I make the right choice.”

These were suppose to be answers to frequently asked questions. So whether someone is a convert to a faith is a frequently asked question or what church they attend?

Very strange for a reporter to call someone who attends a Protestant church for six years a Catholic. Somehow I doubt the reporter is considering the nuances of formal defection introduced by the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the subsequent very strict interpretation of it by he Pontifical Commission for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts in 2006. Though since this clarification likely was not retroactive Rubio could be seen as formerly defecting since he is enrolled in another Christian church. Though I don’t play a Canon Lawyer on my blog or on TV. [Jimmy Akin on the subject]

Now the question is how accurate is this report? It does indeed seem that Marco Rubio attends this “denominational non-denomonational” church to which over the years has donated close to 66,000 dollars and his attendance there is referenced in several stories. Though The Huffington Post calls him an “observant Roman Catholic” so I guess that proves that he is now a Protestant. Easy to see the confusion since maybe Rubio is confused himself since his government web page lists Roman Catholic and just about every other source does the same. I would be curious as to what the actual situation is – though this has no effect on my voting for Marco Rubio. Religious affiliation is not what I look for in a candidate, but certainly I desire the unity in that all belong to Christ’s Church – the Catholic Church.

Rich at Ten Reasons points out:

Each year, the USCCB’s Catholic Campaign for Human Development allocates hundreds of thousands of dollars to local projects coordinated by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. The National Catholic Reporter recently asked John Carr, executive director of the USCCB Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development, which includes the CCHD staff, about success stories. Here is what he cited for Cincinnati:

And here is the success story referenced:

“Some of it is mundane, but very important,” Carr added. He said on a recent trip to Cincinnati, “I asked the CCHD archdiocesan director if there had been any significant victories recently.

“And he said, ‘Absolutely. There was a huge victory.’ He said one of the groups that CCHD funds was able to persuade the mass transit board to change the route of a bus line so that it didn’t stop three-quarters of a mile from the mall — so that the people who work in the mall and people who shop in the mall who don’t have a car, mostly low-income people, don’t have to walk in the rain, or walk three-quarters of a mile in order to carry out their work or do their shopping.”

Now if that doesn’t grease open your wallet to give money to CCHD I don’t know what would. I mean a success story like that will be passed on for ages.

Well maybe not, I for one am glad my bishop is not contributing to CCHD in our diocese. CCHD is trying to rebrand itself putting aside the errors in the past to forge one. Unfortunately their renewal sounds exactly like more of the same in giving money to exactly the same problematic groups that are better at promoting themselves than actually doing something for the poor.