The American Life League has released an investigative report on the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops’ Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which, it turns out, has been funding dozens of thoroughly unchristian organizations in its fight against domestic poverty. Catholics in the pews who have given to the annual CCHD collection might not be happy to learn that the program’s efforts are frequently right out of line with its “fight poverty: defend human dignity” slogan.

At Acton, we believe that in the long run, the poor are harmed by patronizing aid schemes that, well intentioned though they may be, don’t account for the dignity of the human person whom they try to help. It’s certainly inconvenient that you can’t end poverty by giving lots of people lots of money, but we’ve tried just that for decades, and poverty is nowhere near eradicated.

People are pulled out of poverty by the creation of wealth through productive work, and that is the only way that is truly appreciative of the dignity of the poor. Marxism fails as an economic system and as a means of bettering the condition of the poor because it misunderstands human nature. It debases men and women.

It’s disheartening, then, to see that a quarter of the organizations funded by the CCHD for 2010 – 2011 are either directly involved in materialistic poverty alleviation campaigns based on false anthropologies, or else are proud partners of such organizations. They promote abortion and birth control as ways to keep the poor from reproducing, because, you know, the poor deserve dignified treatment, but we sure don’t want to deal with more of them. And then these organizations tell the poor that if only Lenin were in charge, they’d all be well-off.

In 2010, after public pressure from the American Life League and others, and an internal investigation, the CCHD promised to stop funding groups that trample on human dignity. Unfortunately, the ALL reports that “the number, and percentage, of offending organizations has actually INCREASED in the last year — from 51 to 54 groups and from 21% to 24%. ”

If the program can’t be rehabilitated, it needs to be ended, because the only kinds of poverty programs the USCCB should be supporting are those that cleave to the Judeo-Christian understanding of human nature. (See, for example, Acton’s partner PovertyCure.)