U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Funded ACORN

It was several years ago when Bishop Nicolas Nicholas DiMarzio of the Archdiocese of Brooklyn and his Vicar of Education, Monsignor Michael J. Hardiman, ordered the closure of our little wooden school house on Noel Road, the Saint Virgilius Parish School here in Broad Channel.

Even though a small group of concerned student parents had worked tirelessly and had actually managed to initially avoid closure for one school year by financing the school’s operating expenses themselves, Bishop DiMarzio nonetheless finally closed the school citing “a dwindling student enrollment and accompanying diocese budget constraints” as the cause of death for our small town’s school.

Although the closure of our Saint Virgilius Parish School by the Bishop was a hard pill to swallow, I have, until now, accepted the Bishop’s explanation that the Catholic Church was facing difficult economic times regarding a dwindling Catholic school enrollment and that the Church had to manage its funds frugally.

As I was researching the 2008 voter registration fraud allegations surrounding ACORN I found that the Catholic Church had been funneling millions of dollars in donations to ACORN for years until 2008 when the donations were stopped because of the notoriety ACORN was receiving regarding voter fraud and embezzlement.

For a long time, Catholics attending Mass the Sunday after Thanksgiving have been met with a second offertory collection for the “Catholic Campaign for Human Development” (CCHD). This is an arm of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), essentially a trade association for the 200 or so diocesan bishops in the U.S.

This collection is divided so that 25% of funds go to the local, diocesan CCHD offfice, and the other 75% are kicked upstairs to the head CCHD office at the USCCB. So, the local bishop has a profit-sharing incentive to push the collection. Parish pastors, even if they’re uncomfortable with where CCHD monies ultimately end up, don’t feel as if they can ruffle feathers with their boss to whom they have pledged a lifetime of obedience, the bishop. As it turns out, CCHD officials were funding ACORN with these contributions.

According to Ralph McCloud, executive director of CCHD, the U.S. Bishops' domestic anti-poverty and social justice program. CCHD funding was suspended for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, popularly known as ACORN, in 2008, because of ACORN’s financial irregularities. The suspension covered all 40 ACORN affiliates nationwide that had been approved for $1.13 million in grants for the funding cycle that started July 1, 2008.

McCloud said the 2008 suspension came soon after his office learned that ACORN disclosed that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled nearly $1 million from the organization and its affiliates in 1999 and 2000. Dale Rathke stepped down from his position with the organization in June when the matter became public; no charges were filed against him. Wade Rathke stepped down as the group's lead organizer at the same time but remains chief organizer for ACORN International LLC.

McCloud released information showing that CCHD funded more than 320 ACORN projects with grants totaling more than $7.3 million during the last 10 years. He said the community organization also had received funds since early in CCHD's history.

To sum this up, it appears that the Catholic Church was using parishioners donations to their drive to fund a group (ACORN) which then used that money to commit voter fraud with the inetent of electing liberal, left wing, pro-abortion candidates.

The only thing good I have to say about the Catholic Church in this matter is that, unlike our elected representatives in Congress, the Church immediately discerned the proverbial writing on the wall and quietly severed ties to ACORN last year when it first became clear that the organization was a criminal enterprise.

Nonetheless, the image of Bishop DiMarzio closing St. Virgilius with his right hand while donating parish contributions to ACORN via CCHD with his left is one that will be with me for a long time.

Itt is hard to wrap yur head around the extent to which ACORN has embedded itself into the very fabric of our society but I certainly was not expecting the Catholic Church to surface as a financial enabler of this criminal organization.

Peter J. Mahon