There is a current diary on the Rec list, entitled Glenn Beck and the Catholic Bishops that is a piece of conspiracy theory devoid of sources which is worthy of the shock jock in the diaries title.
According to the diarist,
For the past two decades, Catholic bishops have been dismantling and defunding the Church-organized network of aid to the poor, the sick, the marginalized and the homeless. They have closed inner-city schools, severed ties with community organizations and cut programs for the disadvantaged. Denver's Catholic Charities regularly reminds potential donors that less than 4 percent of their funding comes from the archdiocese.
This is an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence. Unfortunately this evidence is not provided. Quotes are left without a source and those that are attributed somewhere are not linked. In fact there is not a link in the entire diary.
The diarist goes on to say,
This is not to say that individuals or groups of Catholics are no longer striving for "social and economic justice." But the overwhelming majority of their efforts occur outside the auspices of the official U.S. Catholic Church which is husbanding its diminishing resources toward the goal of electing Republicans.
Really? What is this based on? Unsourced observations about how the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops gives out its Catholic Campaign for Human Development grants? Based on the CCHD annual reports the total amount of aid provided by these grants each year is around 9 million dollars which is a drop in the bucket of the "diminishing resources" of the Catholic Church. I'm not sure how the funding practices of the CCHD signals a shifting of the American church hierarchy from social justice to the GOP, but apparently the diarist is.
Even very shallow research proves the diarist assertion about the CCHD funding to be false. To begin there are examples of funding being pulled from groups that support abortion and gay marriage. However, a cursory examination of the 2008 grantees shows a strong commitment to social and economic justice remains. You can see the list of grantees and the amount of the money they received here.
I focused on some of the grantees in the Boston/Massachusetts area because that is what I am familiar with. One group that received a 30k grant was Urban Revival Inc. which is the corporate name of the group City Life Vida Urbana. I am personally familiar with this group from presentations of theirs I have attended. They fight for affordable housing and economic justice in Boston. They have been especially active in the face of the recent foreclosure crisis. I focused on this group because I am familiar with them but if you browse the list you will see numerous labor, affordable housing, immigrant rights and economic justice groups. Apparently the decades long effort by the bishops away from social justice has not been very successful. As of 2008 they had not made much headway.
The Catholic Church has plenty of terrible problems worthy of criticism without coming up with half cocked conspiracy theories. Diaries like the one on the rec list only play into the Church's false meme that it is being persecuted unfairly. I would urge all of those who recommended it to withdraw their support as to avoid the Daily Kos community being associated with this kind of article. As always, thanks for reading.