Thursday, November 13, 2008

Roman Catholic Church Cuts Funding to ACORN

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met this week in Baltimore and decided to cut all ties with ACORN. The Roman Catholic Church has cited complaints over voter registration fraud allegations as well as other questionable ACORN dealings.

In June the brother of ACORN founder, Wade Rathke, was alleged to have embezzled nearly $1 million from ACORN. It was then that the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) froze its contributions to the group.

According to CNN, during the past ten years the CCHD has donated more than $7.3 million to ACORN projects. And $40,000 went to the Las Vegas, Nevada ACORN chapter “that was raided before the election in an investigation into fraudulent voter registration forms.”

Roger Morin, auxiliary bishop of New Orleans, said that a church review, which was completed last November, found that ACORN no longer met funding standards. In addition to the embezzlement problem Morin said the registration fraud complaints "raise additional serious concerns."

(See ACORN Voter Registration Fraud Issue Festers)
In a letter to the Bishop’s conference, Morin wrote:

“We simply had too many questions and concerns to permit further CCHD funding of ACORN groups”. . . .the ban on donations to ACORN won't be lifted "until and unless it is clear that CCHD funds will not go to an organization that has engaged in unlawful activities or voter registration fraud."

ACORN Executive Director Steven Kest issued a statement stating that it was grateful for the church’s funding in the past and that ACORN was looking forward to continuing “discussions with CCHD officials and the bishops in the months ahead . . .”

However, Ralph McCloud, the Human Development campaign's director, said the church has "severed ties" with ACORN and there are no plans for further discussion at this time.

Cross-posted from Faultline USA

 

 

5 comments:

  1. It's about time! And cut off all public money from ACORN too.

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  2. That´s the old good Catholic Church. Very well done. Now I'm expecting a comment on the barbaric lift of all restrictions on abortion up to the ninth month of pregnancy.

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  3. Shalom, all. This is only one of several organizations that have used feel-good words to get contributions from different dioceses, and then have gone on to fund activities that are not in line (if not actively opposing) the Catholic faith. While CCHD is the most visible instance of this happening, I would be interested to know which other churches and religious institutions also supported ACORN not knowing about their history or what the money really would be used for.

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  4. Finally some one takes a stand against ACORN. Too bad the church isn't more outraged with the new Atheist campaign going on just in time for Christmas.

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  5. Better late (in fact TOO late) than never. Now if we could just get the nuns to stop worshipping trees, we might see a bit of a revival of actual Catholic doctrine within the Catholic Church.

    Cheers,

    Charlie

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