By Archbishop Thomas Wenski - The Archdiocese of Miami
This world is our highway to heaven — that highway needs to be straightened out, it needs to be paved, it needs good signage. That's why we Christians — and, yes, we Catholics — must be involved in the world — because if we don’t take care of the potholes, we can break an axle, or without clear signage we can veer off course and get lost. This is why more than 50 years ago, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops established the anti-poverty program known as the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).
CCHD is guided by the understanding that “those who are directly affected by unjust systems and structures have the best insight into knowing how to change them. CCHD works to break the cycle of poverty by helping low-income people participate in decisions that affect their lives, families, and communities. CCHD offers a hand up, not a handout.”
As the archbishop of Miami and before that as the bishop of Orlando, I have seen the work of CCHD from the frontlines, primarily through local groups affiliated with the Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART Center). The results of those efforts have been enormous.
More than 50,000 children and teens have been diverted from the criminal justice system in Florida through the expansion of civil citations. Seven years ago, ten DART affiliates came together along with the Florida Catholic Conference and others to press the state legislature to expand the use of civil citations so that young people would not be arrested and saddled with a criminal record for non-serious offenses. Then those DART affiliates pushed local law enforcement and States Attorneys to use those civil citations rather than arrest. That work of pulling together local groups in Florida was funded in part with a grant from CCHD.
Last year, 30,000 low-income people received health care through one of seven neighborhood health centers in Polk County, Florida, because the DART affiliate in Polk County, PEACE, won a half-cent sales tax for indigent health care almost twenty years ago. And then that group followed up to make sure that those funds were used in the most efficient and effective way possible. So now 30,000 people a year are getting basic health care. CCHD provided critical funding to help PEACE get started and grow.
Along with these victories, CCHD helps local parishes learn and act on key Catholic values such as solidarity, subsidiarity, and the preferential option for the poor. Here in the Archdiocese of Miami, dozens of parishes and hundreds of lay people are “doing justice” because of efforts led by CCHD funded groups. And working with PACT in Miami and BOLD Justice in Broward, we are training Catholic lay leaders in the principles of the Catholic Social Teaching and engaging more and more parishes in this important work.
The work of CCHD flows from the central tenets of Catholic social teaching. It is not adjacent to that teaching. It is a deep and powerful expression of our core values. The Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) is funded through an annual “second collection” taken up in parishes across the United States on the Sunday before Thanksgiving Day.
Those who say we should not care about this world or be involved in bettering it don’t understand what Christianity is. An atheist believes we’re living on a dead-end street. Dead-end streets don’t require much maintenance or repair. But highways do. And this explains why Catholics have supported through CCHD these faith-based initiatives to address some of the injustices that affect people even in this land of plenty.
