Sunday, July 25, 2010

A topical problem

Today throughout England there was a 'second' collection. It was slightly different than the normal 'second round'. Instead of benefiting a particular organisation it was a general collection for an 'umbrella' cause- life in general- the proceeds of which will be divided between applicants to a central fund. Alarm bells started ringing a few days ago as one organisation which had previously benefited from the collection was scrutinised, via its website, for links to organisations which might not be holding to Catholic teaching on life issues. The practical problem boiled down to this. If we were to support today's second collection would we, albeit indirectly, be supporting an organisation providing abortion?

Here's the chain of evidence as far as I can sort it out. (1)  Day for Life, 'initiated by the late Pope John Paul II, is the day of the year the Catholic Church in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales dedicates to celebrating the dignity of human life from conception to natural death.' (2) The news link  presented on their website include a considerable disbursement made to a counselling service known as the City Pregnancy Counselling & Psychotherapy which makes no claims to any particular position but does contain a lot of options that would not be offensive to Catholics. (3) From CPCP's website if you follow the link 'What is Counselling & Psychotherapy?'  to the women's section you will come to a direct link to the NHS. And that is where the direct information on abortion is to be found. According to Caritas in Veritate there are several other problematic organisations linked.

Today's collection is presumably for the next round of disbursements from Day for Life. Last year's collection would have been applied to the amounts given to CPCP. I must admit that personal culpability in this case would probably be similar to that we already incur  by paying British taxes of which a percentage goes towards funding abortions. The difference is that today's collection would be a voluntary contribution on our part.

2 comments:

  1. Surely there is a difference. We have no say in whether or not we pay our taxes but we can choose not to contribute to a voluntary collection. In good faith, because it was in the church, I contributed- this was before I learned of the dubious destination of some of the funds.

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  2. The same idiotic game of links-to-links-to-links, aka 7 degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, played out last fall in the United States during the meeting of the USCCB. The bishops' social justice arm, the Campaign for Human Development, stood accused by a whole group of extremely stupid people for similar reasons: secular groups that we supported to run Catholic programs also accepted donations and/or partnered with organizations that we found repugnant. Well, duh - good groups often get money from sinners and saints alike, and each and every program the CCHD ran was under the direct supervision of the local bishop. You really can't fix stupid...

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