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Examples of Charitable Projects to be Supported by
                                Militia Caritatis Dei


The following examples are meant to give an idea of the type of charitable activities that Militia
Caritatis (MCD) will support – or not support – and the type of charitable service opportunities that
will be available to members of the organization’s “Catholic Peace Corps” arm, Militia Pacis
Christi (MPC). The examples are real – the names might have been changed to protect the
innocent or guilty – or are based on a composite of really-existing projects.


+       Kindergarten Support; west-central ETHIOPIA

        The Consolata Fathers Institute, a missionary society, operates a Catholic
        kindergarten in a remote, neglected area in western Ethiopia. “Access to
        schools is very limited and the financial situation of the households is very
        poor,” writes the society’s provincial superior. “Proper kindergarten
        educational facilities are non-existent in the area.” A Spanish Catholic aid
        agency gave funding for the construction of a simple building to house the
        kindergarten…but finding money to actually operate the school is a much
        more difficult matter: The Consolatas don’t have sufficient funds of their
        own; there is no local or national government support; and most families
        are too poor to pay the full fees that would cover operating costs. As for
        “external” charitable support: The major secular-government aid agencies
        would not consider touching this too humble and too “sectarian” project.
        The mainstream “Catholic” humanitarian agencies – functioning to a large
        extent as contractor-agents of those same secular governments – are
        either forbidden by contract to direct their aid to a specifically Catholic
        endeavor, or are not themselves interested because the project is not
        developmentally trendy enough and its results are not sufficiently
        “measurable,” or both. So, without external assistance the Consolatas will
        be obliged, as their only option, to charge higher fees…which will exclude
        most of the poorer children in the community, thus defeating one of the
        major charitable objectives of the project.

        -- MCD will provide $15,000/year to subsidize about 65% of the
        kindergarten’s operating costs. (The Consolata Fathers will raise the
        remaining funds from school fees and other charitable sources.) About
        200 children per year will benefit.

        -- MPCs will: teach or provide teacher-assistance at the kindergarten;
        follow up with, mentor, and do home visits with the neediest of the pupils;
        provide catechetical assistance at the parish run by the Consolata
        Fathers; monitor the use of MCD assistance and account for that funding.

        ∗ Antonio Vismara, Consolata provincial superior in Ethiopia, tells me that
        he considers education to be the key to development in that country, as


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well as being the sector in which the Catholic Church can most effectively
    and appropriately make a charitable contribution. I hear the same claim
    from religious and lay Catholic charitable “practitioners” in other African
    countries. If it is also true, as the pope writes, that “life in Christ is the first
    and principal factor of development,” and if we take that “scandalous,”
    “particularist” assertion seriously, does it not almost logically follow that
    Catholic charitable donors can best contribute to development in poorer
    areas of the world through their support to specifically Catholic educational
    endeavors; by helping to provide an authentic, unadulterated education on
    “life in Christ” to disadvantaged children?

    While willing to consider the funding of any type of legitimate charitable
    activity in a developing country, as proposed by a local Catholic group,
    Militia Caritatis will nevertheless give priority to projects of Catholic
    education. These projects will not be flashy; they may not be trendy.
    They will not feature photos or sentimentalist descriptions of allegedly
    “starving” children, in so doing objectifying and diminishing their
    “beneficiaries” in a cynical attempt to better extract money from
    misguidedly guilt-ridden foreigners eager to make a display of their
    superficial and politically-correct “compassion.” And what they might have
    of statistically “measurable results” – so beloved of the short-term, this-
    world-focused secular-philanthropist quantifiers and their “Catholic”
    epigones – might only become evident in the long run… and perhaps not
    even then, as life-in-Christ results – the only important ones – will far
    exceed the pathetic, hopelessly inadequate measurement capacities of
    the development bureaucrats.


+   Food and Education Support for Orphans and Vulnerable Children;
    Kibera, Nairobi, KENYA

    In Kibera, often called “the largest slum in Africa,” a women’s religious
    congregation had for many years managed a project for orphans and
    especially needy children that (a) provided lunches at several school sites
    for children who otherwise would have gone without, and (b) paid the
    primary-school fees for selected children whose caretakers lacked the
    means. Dwindling vocations and financial resources forced the Sisters to
    abandon the project and turn it over to a secular philanthropy…whose
    subsequent mismanagement led to the complete cessation of assistance.
    Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, situated at the edge of Kibera, now wants
    to resume this aid, but lacks the human and financial resources.

    -- MCD will provide $30,000/year to the parish to assist about 100 children
    with food and 100 with school expenses.




                                                                                      2
-- MPCs will: monitor the project and account for the funding; follow up
    with and mentor the orphans; tutor selected students; provide catechetical
    assistance at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish.

    ∗ Militia Caritatis is a Catholic charitable organization. In keeping with the
    Catholic principle of subsidiarity and the Biblical and common-sense
    principle of responsibly providing, first, for the needs of one’s own
    (religious) family, it will thus prioritize assistance to Catholics. Aid to non-
    Catholics, however, is by no means excluded. The evangelization
    imperative in fact compels it, where possible and appropriate.

    In this project, for example, assistance is given to children regardless of
    their religious affiliation. This is entirely appropriate and does not violate
    the principle of subsidiarity because: Here the non-Catholic beneficiary,
    unable to provide for himself and not provided for by his “first-level
    society,” i.e., by his family, is also not receiving help, as would “normally”
    be the case, at one of the next higher levels, e.g., from his extended
    family, from his own religious community, or from another
    neighborhood/community group. Thus, in succoring these non-Catholic
    children, Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish is not usurping the role of another
    helping agent or group which, being “closer” to the children, would
    theoretically be the proper “first responder.” Since this Catholic parish has
    an obligation, when and where it can, to aid those of its non-Catholic
    neighbors who are not being helped by a “lower-level society,” it is fitting
    and a true act of “evangelistic charity” for Militia Caritatis Dei, through the
    local parish, to help these children who are not in the family of the Faith.

    In doing so, Militia Caritatis and the parish obviously eschew the
    “proselytism” (of quid-pro-quo compulsion) that is sometimes attributed to
    Christian charities – often falsely and maliciously. Equally rejected is the
    “opposite,” far more common approach favored by the secularized and/or
    government-supported “Catholic” aid agencies, that of “hiding” the Faith or
    presenting a de-Christianized, “humanitarian” version of it. Yes, when
    we’re in good moods and on our toes, it is to be hoped that “they will know
    we are Christians by our love”…but they will also know it because we
    haven’t been afraid or ashamed to mention the fact.


+   School/Home for the Physically Handicapped; Mwanza, ZAMBIA

    The Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Assisi struggle to manage and
    support a residential school for the physically handicapped in western
    Zambia. Government assistance – in the form of the payment of the
    salaries of a few teachers – is minimal. Tuition payments from the families
    of the students must be kept almost nominal so as not to exclude most of
    the children. The international religious congregation – originally mainly


                                                                                   3
Italian but now headed by a Zambian and peopled largely by Africans and
    other non-Italians – is far from having the resources to cover all costs. It is
    only through the ad hoc, local money-making enterprises of one
    particularly energetic and enterprising Zambian Sister, and through her
    ability to raise a certain amount of funding from abroad, that the school
    remains afloat.

    -- MCD will provide $40,000/year to cover the cost of food – about 40% of
    the institution’s operating budget – for the school’s 250 handicapped
    children.

    -- MPCs will: teach, tutor, and counsel at the school; assist with the
    physical upkeep of the home; provide physical therapy for certain
    handicapped students; communicate with the families of the children on
    student progress/problems; monitor and account for the MCD funding.

    ∗ In many parts of Africa, physically and mentally handicapped children,
    often stigmatized, shunned, or ignored, are truly among, if not the,
    “poorest of the poor.” Families living at subsistence levels can be unable
    or unwilling to provide the assistance these children need for their very
    survival. In such situations, private institutions run by the Church can be
    the only lifeline for the handicapped…but such schools and homes are
    often on the brink of failure. Care for the visibly weakest and most
    vulnerable among us having always been a powerful means of Christian
    witness, a compelling testimony to the love of God, caritas Dei, it is
    appropriate that Militia Caritatis Dei give special attention to such
    endeavors.


+   Maternity Wing Construction at St. Michael’s Dispensary; western
    TANZANIA

    An international “society of apostolic life,” the St. Patrick Missionary
    Society, and a local women’s religious community, the Assumption Sisters
    of Nandi, are together trying provide basic medical and maternal-health
    care to the transient population of a slum area outside of a major city in
    western Tanzania. They provide services from a well-kept but cramped
    facility, with inadequate space for a separate maternity section. Here’s
    how the local Tanzanian nurse in charge, an Assumption Sister, describes
    the situation:

    “There is need for more rooms to serve the maternity wing. We are unable to
    serve expectant mother at term because we don’t have rooms. There is a big
    demand for the services and the unit has to refer them to the district hospital
    which is a distance away and with an overwhelmed maternity wing. In the




                                                                                      4
maternity wing, pregnant mothers are assisted to have live and healthy infants.
    The mother is taken care of psychologically, physically, and emotionally.

    “Through the maternity unit, the dispensary will be able to manage over 400
    mothers yearly with difficult labour who are referred from traditional birth
    attendants. Sick/premature babies, over 100 yearly, will be nursed in the baby
    care unit. The above will help lessen the number of home deliveries, the incidence
    of vesicovaginal fistulae, and the mortality rate of pregnant mothers and unborn
    babies. The unit will benefit over 600 expectant mothers yearly directly. The unit
    is operating on a strict Catholic foundation but the health facility does not
    discriminate on the basis of faith. The facility gives community health talks twice
    a week with the aim of improving the health conditions of the population.”

    -- MCD will provide $25,000 for the construction of the maternity wing and
    the purchase of all medical equipment and furniture necessary for the
    proper operation of the wing.

    -- MPCs will: aid in the supervision and the construction of the maternity
    wing; monitor and account for the use of the MCD funding; provide
    ongoing assistance as nurses, nurse-aids, and midwives.


+   Social Assistance, Nursing, Teaching, Catechizing; northwestern
    JAMAICA

    The Missionaries of the Poor, Sisters (currently mainly young women from
    the Philippines), a new, more traditional order, has taken over social and
    missionary duties in Jamaica from an American-based women’s
    community which is expiring from attrition and lack of vocations. The new
    order and the Jamaican dioceses to which its members are assigned
    struggle to find financial support for the Sisters, as they serve in the
    following ways: visiting and giving material support to the indigent elderly;
    teaching and counseling at a local Catholic girls school; providing
    administrative services and ministering to the ill and dying at Hope Health
    Clinic and the Hope Hospice for the Dying (many HIV/AIDS patients);
    catechizing children and adults in a remote, mountainous parish.

    -- MCD will provide $15,000/year to cover some of the living expenses of
    six Sisters, allowing them to carry out the above social and missionary
    responsibilities.

    -- MPCs will: aid the Sisters in their teaching, nursing, counseling,
    administrative, and catechetical duties.




                                                                                      5
+   General Charitable Assistance to Priority Projects Designated by the
    Archbishop of Colombo; SRI LANKA

    Declaring the Year of the Eucharist in his Archdiocese of Colombo, Sri
    Lanka, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith writes:

    “Uppermost in our mind is the urgency to live the Eucharist in daily life through
    well-coordinated and directed works of charity. … We need to break ourselves for
    others, and be pressed and crushed for justice and peace simultaneously as we
    believe and celebrate this most holy Sacrament. … I very earnestly request all
    priests, religious and the laity to combine devotion with animation to show our
    love for the poor and the less fortunate people in our society by engaging in works
    of corporal mercy. … Latin still remains the main liturgical language of the
    Church. In Sri Lanka we made a mistake in abandoning the language of our
    worship altogether. Let this Eucharistic Year be an occasion for us to resuscitate
    this lost tradition at least to some extent. … I also wish to affirm that as indicated
    in the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum of 7th July 2007 priests and
    institutions are now permitted to celebrate, where it is appropriate, the Tridentine
    Mass and the Sacraments in that rite. In this case it is best that the faithful be
    prepared for it beforehand.”

    -- MCD will provide $50,000/year to priority social, educational,
    catechetical, and liturgy-training projects as designated by the Archbishop
    of Colombo.

    -- MPCs will: teach Latin, English, and other subjects in local Catholic
    schools; assist in the execution or administration of priority charitable
    projects as advised by the archbishop of Colombo; monitor and account
    for the use of the MCD funding.


+   Community-Based Orphan-Support; BUNDWELA: Funding Denied

    A group of local, nominally Catholic women, responding selflessly and
    sacrificially to the unmet needs of large number of AIDS orphans living in
    slums around the capital city of this east African country, found an
    organization to mobilize community volunteers to help provide these
    children with various forms of non-institutional support – e.g.,
    supplemental food, home visits, medical consultations, partial payment of
    school fees. This approach might or might not be the most effective way
    to address the plight of these orphans, but, in any case, the organization is
    efficiently managed and it is certainly succeeding in alleviating some of the
    material distress of its beneficiaries. It receives substantial financial
    support from an American ambidextrous “Catholic”/Protestant charity, and
    it enjoys at least the tacit endorsement of the local Catholic bishop. It also
    – probably unbeknownst to that bishop – uses morally-relativistic “values-


                                                                                        6
clarification” techniques in the sex-education lectures it delivers at local
secondary schools; promotes the use of certain prophylactic/“birth control”
methods that are at least “officially” condemned by the Catholic Church;
and, when counseling adolescents on “family life,” employs as an
acceptable reference the now-standard, secular, Planned-Parenthood-
inspired, polymorphously perverse, UN-funded literature on inter- and
intra-gender relations.

When the group requests financial assistance from MCD, it is refused, on
the grounds that, in word and deed, it is violating Catholic moral guidelines
and principles of the natural law.

∗ MCD is a traditional, orthodox Catholic charity. We slavishly toe the
traditional and “official” lines (praying that those will always be identical)
on issues of practical morality. Concerning the Church’s teaching on
sexual morality specifically, here’s how we see it, as through a glass
darkly:

Western society’s current moral endorsement of the practice of
polymorphous perversity (P3) – to use an objective, nonjudgmental
technical designation – seems to be shaping both the behavior and the
doctrinal thinking of some of our bishops and many of our priests. Thanks
to the more advanced laity in “developed” countries – especially those
educated at “Catholic” colleges – it has also definitely moved what could
be claimed to be the sensus fidelium towards a laissez-faire position
favorable to full or partial P3. Going with the flow of this sensus, the major,
mainstream “Catholic” relief and development organizations, especially
those funded heavily by Western governments and directed by groups of
bishops from the developed North, see absolutely no ethical problem or
issue of Catholic integrity or “conflict of interest” or scandal in taking huge
sums of money from the very governments which are, proudly and
conspicuously, the major financers and fomenters of P3 – including
abortion, an inevitable P3 byproduct – in the poorer South, nor in
cooperating with those “population” and “health” institutions which are
vocally committed to making the world safe for P3 and abortion. Such
“Catholic” “humanitarian” “charities” are also staffed largely by program
directors who, when not yet courageous or philosophically consistent
enough to openly and wholeheartedly embrace theoretical P3-ism, are
eager to let it be known – “Some of my best friends are P3-ers!” – that they
are at least on that enlightened path.

MCD, too, certainly wants to keep up with progressive trends in human-
rights thinking, when permissible…but, try as we might, we cannot detect
that the “official” Catholic line – always a bit skeptical of P3 – has changed
in this area. Moreover, when – in trying for program planning purposes to
anticipate a change (or rather “development”) in the Church’s P3 position



                                                                                 7
which would be more in keeping with the spirit of the age and allow us to
work more happily with the Red Cross, Save the Children, CAFOD, and
this dedicated women’s group in Bundwela – we look to Scripture and
Tradition for an “opening”…we look in vain. However, we are admittedly
not very theologically sophisticated, and our readings are likely superficial
and time-bound. We perhaps fail to understand the historical and cultural
contingency of what had appeared to us to be moral absolutes. “Hope
springs eternal,” say even some of our own workers – who, though
“traditional,” are only human – as they pantingly pray that, along with
peace, the Church will give P3 a chance.

But until It does, MCD and all of its workers – panters and non-panters –
will consider themselves bound – not so much as Catholics but as men
and women of simple honesty, decency, and integrity who would find it
shameful and dishonorable to be members of a Church or servants of an
organization with whose “official” principles they are in disagreement – to
give full assent, in word and deed – yea, even in thought, you panters – to
the traditional and official teaching of the Catholic Church on relations
between and within the sexes.

MCD will neither cooperate with nor accept funding or other support from
private institutions, “nongovernmental” organizations, corporations,
governmental agencies, or individuals who publicly express and/or act on
moral views counter to the teaching of the Church, particularly in what
Pope Benedict XVI called the “decisive” moral area of life and family, into
which the P3 issue falls. MCD will not itself provide funding to, or lend the
support of its workers to, “Catholic” organizations or projects which violate
Magisterial teaching on life and the family.

This policy will distinguish us from the mainstream international “Catholic”
relief agencies, which are not nearly so squeamish.

The two primary justifications (or rationalizations) which those agencies
give for what we consider to be their unnecessary cooperation with evil –
on the rare occasions when they even feel it necessary to give
explanations – are to us far from convincing.

They will, first, claim that the funding that they take from or give to a
“morally suspect” organization is restricted to only the “legitimate,” moral
parts of the organization. Their cooperation with a particular branch or
aspect of that entity – as either beneficiary or benefactor – in no way
implies and should not be seen, they say, as Catholic support to or
endorsement of the less savory activities of the organization.

We say, to the contrary, that cooperation, in both its financial and moral
aspects, is fungible, and thus indeed constitutes and can easily be seen



                                                                               8
as Catholic approval of all of the activities and aims of the suspect
organization: Cooperation in the form of donated money, supposedly
restricted to one “good” part of an organization, can, with some accounting
legerdemain, be moved by the recipient to a “bad” part, or it can simply be
used to free up other organizational resources for the support of the bad
stuff.

As for moral cooperation – the practical, social, and moral approval which
the Catholic party confers by its willingness to associate with the offending
organization: Since such cooperation is perfectly “liquid,” indeed
intangible, its transfer from one (good) part of the organization to another
(bad) part is even more easily accomplished than the shifting around of
the financial cooperation. It is thus even more important, meaningful, and
useful to the organization which is using immoral means in one or more
areas of its activity. It will be rightly understood both by the suspect
organization itself and by scandalized observers that the Catholic party’s
willingness to cooperate in any way or in any area – when the Catholic
side could, after all, have found other ways to accomplish its charitable
goals – constitutes a tacit endorsement of the organization and indicates
that the Catholic side thinks that those “bad parts”…are maybe really not
so bad after all. (“We just need to give the ‘official’ Church time to catch
up.”)

The second rationalization used by the mainstream “Catholic” charitable
agencies, related to but a bit more sophisticated than the first, and usually
proffered by an official “ethics advisor,” probably a cleric or religious
belonging to one of the more “liberal” congregations, will employ technical,
moral-theological, “material-cooperation” arguments to try to show that in
order to accomplish a charitable good it is necessary, and thus justifiable,
for the “Catholic” agency to work routinely with a semi-dastardly
organization

That simply will not wash. Only if there were no other way for the
“Catholic” agency to render charitable assistance would it have possibly
been justifiable for it to regularly cooperate with an organization which had
publicly embraced moral principles opposed to those of the Catholic
Church and the natural law. (And probably not even then; for “a good end
does not justify an evil means.”) But in the real world, there is almost
always another way; a way that does not involve the use of immoral
means or cooperation with evil-promoting organizations.

When a “Catholic” relief and development organization claims, then, that it
is “obliged” to cooperate with and take a major percentage of its funding
from USAID – the primary propagandist for and promoter of P3, artificial
“family planning,” and abortion in the developing world today – what it is
really saying is that it is unwilling to give up the fantastic financial



                                                                            9
resources which, though morally tainted and coercively extracted,
contribute to its worldly prestige and influence. It is saying that the large
amounts of food that it is able through this means to deliver to hungry
people during a natural disaster justify its cooperation with evil. (Note that,
had the “Catholic” agency correctly refused such cooperation, those
hungry people would have been just as well fed by another secular
contractor of USAID – and all organizational servants of USAID, including
the “faith-based” ones, are obliged to work as “secular” contractors.) And
it is saying that it is unwilling to use alternative, moral means – i.e., funds
raised from voluntary donors rather than from coerced taxpayers – to carry
out charitable activities.

As noted, then, MCD will try to conspicuously distinguish itself from the
“mainstream” “Catholic” relief agencies by using only moral charitable
means – i.e., voluntary, free-will donations – and by a policy of
conspicuous non-cooperation with evil-promoting organizations. The
object is, not to become a “major player” in the secular world’s system of
“humanitarian”-assistance delivery, but to provide a safe, effective, and
efficient way for authentic Catholics to support authentically Catholic
works of evangelistic charity around the world.

If you think, by the way, that the above, Bundwela example represents an
unusual or unimportant case, or that its inclusion in this list is evidence of
traditional Catholics’ unseemly focus on, or even “obsession” with, matters
of sexual morality, when it is “social justice” issues that need to receive
our priority attention, we should point out that…you are wrong. Or that
you have somehow missed the massive “population-control” and
anti-“family-values” campaigns that have been waged by rich Western
governments and institutions against the materially-poorer people of the
South for the last fifty years – and which continue unabated. (Is that war
on the people of the South not itself a matter of “social justice”?) If it is we
who are “obsessed,” that is not (usually) due to our own disordered
inclinations, but is a necessary defensive reaction to an enduring idée fixe
of those powerful governments and institutions, to their obsessively
unreasoning conviction that “birth control,” abortion, and partial to full P3
will save the world.

Consider, if you are skeptical, just one recent, typical, telling example: a
policy initiative of the United Kingdom’s Department for International
Development (DFID), the functional and philosophical equivalent of the
USA’s Agency for International Development which funds the American
bishops’ Catholic Relief Services. DFID has announced that it will “now
have an unprecedented focus on family planning [euphemism for artificial
birth control, polymorphous perversity, and abortion promotion], which will
be hard-wired into all our country programs.” “Key proposals for UK
action” include “modern methods of family planning such as implants,



                                                                             10
injectables and IUDs” and “ensuring abortion services are safe.” “Family
planning will be at the heart of DFID’s approach to women’s health in the
developing world.”

So: “unprecedented focus,” “hardwired into all country programs,” “at the
heart of the approach.” Now, tell me again which side it is that is sex
“obsessed”? Is it those Western secular government agents of a
supposedly easily-identifiable and attainable “social justice”…or those
Catholics who confidently carry out humble but meaningful works of true
charity while at the same time working for, or rather peaceably searching
for, a social justice which they know that this world will yield, even at its
occasional best, only partially and feebly?

The Bundwela example is indeed typical and widespread: a local, well-
intentioned “Catholic” charitable group that has been pressured by a
powerful donor, or been truly convinced from breathing the ambient
secular and “Catholic” air, to include in its program activities which violate
Church teaching on life and the family. The large, nominally Catholic aid
agencies – themselves having been so convinced – give a wink and a nod
to those local “Catholic” groups. MCD – for better or worse, and until we
get the Magisterium’s own pro-P3 go-ahead – won’t.




                                                                            11

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MCDExamples

  • 1. Examples of Charitable Projects to be Supported by Militia Caritatis Dei The following examples are meant to give an idea of the type of charitable activities that Militia Caritatis (MCD) will support – or not support – and the type of charitable service opportunities that will be available to members of the organization’s “Catholic Peace Corps” arm, Militia Pacis Christi (MPC). The examples are real – the names might have been changed to protect the innocent or guilty – or are based on a composite of really-existing projects. + Kindergarten Support; west-central ETHIOPIA The Consolata Fathers Institute, a missionary society, operates a Catholic kindergarten in a remote, neglected area in western Ethiopia. “Access to schools is very limited and the financial situation of the households is very poor,” writes the society’s provincial superior. “Proper kindergarten educational facilities are non-existent in the area.” A Spanish Catholic aid agency gave funding for the construction of a simple building to house the kindergarten…but finding money to actually operate the school is a much more difficult matter: The Consolatas don’t have sufficient funds of their own; there is no local or national government support; and most families are too poor to pay the full fees that would cover operating costs. As for “external” charitable support: The major secular-government aid agencies would not consider touching this too humble and too “sectarian” project. The mainstream “Catholic” humanitarian agencies – functioning to a large extent as contractor-agents of those same secular governments – are either forbidden by contract to direct their aid to a specifically Catholic endeavor, or are not themselves interested because the project is not developmentally trendy enough and its results are not sufficiently “measurable,” or both. So, without external assistance the Consolatas will be obliged, as their only option, to charge higher fees…which will exclude most of the poorer children in the community, thus defeating one of the major charitable objectives of the project. -- MCD will provide $15,000/year to subsidize about 65% of the kindergarten’s operating costs. (The Consolata Fathers will raise the remaining funds from school fees and other charitable sources.) About 200 children per year will benefit. -- MPCs will: teach or provide teacher-assistance at the kindergarten; follow up with, mentor, and do home visits with the neediest of the pupils; provide catechetical assistance at the parish run by the Consolata Fathers; monitor the use of MCD assistance and account for that funding. ∗ Antonio Vismara, Consolata provincial superior in Ethiopia, tells me that he considers education to be the key to development in that country, as 1
  • 2. well as being the sector in which the Catholic Church can most effectively and appropriately make a charitable contribution. I hear the same claim from religious and lay Catholic charitable “practitioners” in other African countries. If it is also true, as the pope writes, that “life in Christ is the first and principal factor of development,” and if we take that “scandalous,” “particularist” assertion seriously, does it not almost logically follow that Catholic charitable donors can best contribute to development in poorer areas of the world through their support to specifically Catholic educational endeavors; by helping to provide an authentic, unadulterated education on “life in Christ” to disadvantaged children? While willing to consider the funding of any type of legitimate charitable activity in a developing country, as proposed by a local Catholic group, Militia Caritatis will nevertheless give priority to projects of Catholic education. These projects will not be flashy; they may not be trendy. They will not feature photos or sentimentalist descriptions of allegedly “starving” children, in so doing objectifying and diminishing their “beneficiaries” in a cynical attempt to better extract money from misguidedly guilt-ridden foreigners eager to make a display of their superficial and politically-correct “compassion.” And what they might have of statistically “measurable results” – so beloved of the short-term, this- world-focused secular-philanthropist quantifiers and their “Catholic” epigones – might only become evident in the long run… and perhaps not even then, as life-in-Christ results – the only important ones – will far exceed the pathetic, hopelessly inadequate measurement capacities of the development bureaucrats. + Food and Education Support for Orphans and Vulnerable Children; Kibera, Nairobi, KENYA In Kibera, often called “the largest slum in Africa,” a women’s religious congregation had for many years managed a project for orphans and especially needy children that (a) provided lunches at several school sites for children who otherwise would have gone without, and (b) paid the primary-school fees for selected children whose caretakers lacked the means. Dwindling vocations and financial resources forced the Sisters to abandon the project and turn it over to a secular philanthropy…whose subsequent mismanagement led to the complete cessation of assistance. Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, situated at the edge of Kibera, now wants to resume this aid, but lacks the human and financial resources. -- MCD will provide $30,000/year to the parish to assist about 100 children with food and 100 with school expenses. 2
  • 3. -- MPCs will: monitor the project and account for the funding; follow up with and mentor the orphans; tutor selected students; provide catechetical assistance at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish. ∗ Militia Caritatis is a Catholic charitable organization. In keeping with the Catholic principle of subsidiarity and the Biblical and common-sense principle of responsibly providing, first, for the needs of one’s own (religious) family, it will thus prioritize assistance to Catholics. Aid to non- Catholics, however, is by no means excluded. The evangelization imperative in fact compels it, where possible and appropriate. In this project, for example, assistance is given to children regardless of their religious affiliation. This is entirely appropriate and does not violate the principle of subsidiarity because: Here the non-Catholic beneficiary, unable to provide for himself and not provided for by his “first-level society,” i.e., by his family, is also not receiving help, as would “normally” be the case, at one of the next higher levels, e.g., from his extended family, from his own religious community, or from another neighborhood/community group. Thus, in succoring these non-Catholic children, Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish is not usurping the role of another helping agent or group which, being “closer” to the children, would theoretically be the proper “first responder.” Since this Catholic parish has an obligation, when and where it can, to aid those of its non-Catholic neighbors who are not being helped by a “lower-level society,” it is fitting and a true act of “evangelistic charity” for Militia Caritatis Dei, through the local parish, to help these children who are not in the family of the Faith. In doing so, Militia Caritatis and the parish obviously eschew the “proselytism” (of quid-pro-quo compulsion) that is sometimes attributed to Christian charities – often falsely and maliciously. Equally rejected is the “opposite,” far more common approach favored by the secularized and/or government-supported “Catholic” aid agencies, that of “hiding” the Faith or presenting a de-Christianized, “humanitarian” version of it. Yes, when we’re in good moods and on our toes, it is to be hoped that “they will know we are Christians by our love”…but they will also know it because we haven’t been afraid or ashamed to mention the fact. + School/Home for the Physically Handicapped; Mwanza, ZAMBIA The Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Assisi struggle to manage and support a residential school for the physically handicapped in western Zambia. Government assistance – in the form of the payment of the salaries of a few teachers – is minimal. Tuition payments from the families of the students must be kept almost nominal so as not to exclude most of the children. The international religious congregation – originally mainly 3
  • 4. Italian but now headed by a Zambian and peopled largely by Africans and other non-Italians – is far from having the resources to cover all costs. It is only through the ad hoc, local money-making enterprises of one particularly energetic and enterprising Zambian Sister, and through her ability to raise a certain amount of funding from abroad, that the school remains afloat. -- MCD will provide $40,000/year to cover the cost of food – about 40% of the institution’s operating budget – for the school’s 250 handicapped children. -- MPCs will: teach, tutor, and counsel at the school; assist with the physical upkeep of the home; provide physical therapy for certain handicapped students; communicate with the families of the children on student progress/problems; monitor and account for the MCD funding. ∗ In many parts of Africa, physically and mentally handicapped children, often stigmatized, shunned, or ignored, are truly among, if not the, “poorest of the poor.” Families living at subsistence levels can be unable or unwilling to provide the assistance these children need for their very survival. In such situations, private institutions run by the Church can be the only lifeline for the handicapped…but such schools and homes are often on the brink of failure. Care for the visibly weakest and most vulnerable among us having always been a powerful means of Christian witness, a compelling testimony to the love of God, caritas Dei, it is appropriate that Militia Caritatis Dei give special attention to such endeavors. + Maternity Wing Construction at St. Michael’s Dispensary; western TANZANIA An international “society of apostolic life,” the St. Patrick Missionary Society, and a local women’s religious community, the Assumption Sisters of Nandi, are together trying provide basic medical and maternal-health care to the transient population of a slum area outside of a major city in western Tanzania. They provide services from a well-kept but cramped facility, with inadequate space for a separate maternity section. Here’s how the local Tanzanian nurse in charge, an Assumption Sister, describes the situation: “There is need for more rooms to serve the maternity wing. We are unable to serve expectant mother at term because we don’t have rooms. There is a big demand for the services and the unit has to refer them to the district hospital which is a distance away and with an overwhelmed maternity wing. In the 4
  • 5. maternity wing, pregnant mothers are assisted to have live and healthy infants. The mother is taken care of psychologically, physically, and emotionally. “Through the maternity unit, the dispensary will be able to manage over 400 mothers yearly with difficult labour who are referred from traditional birth attendants. Sick/premature babies, over 100 yearly, will be nursed in the baby care unit. The above will help lessen the number of home deliveries, the incidence of vesicovaginal fistulae, and the mortality rate of pregnant mothers and unborn babies. The unit will benefit over 600 expectant mothers yearly directly. The unit is operating on a strict Catholic foundation but the health facility does not discriminate on the basis of faith. The facility gives community health talks twice a week with the aim of improving the health conditions of the population.” -- MCD will provide $25,000 for the construction of the maternity wing and the purchase of all medical equipment and furniture necessary for the proper operation of the wing. -- MPCs will: aid in the supervision and the construction of the maternity wing; monitor and account for the use of the MCD funding; provide ongoing assistance as nurses, nurse-aids, and midwives. + Social Assistance, Nursing, Teaching, Catechizing; northwestern JAMAICA The Missionaries of the Poor, Sisters (currently mainly young women from the Philippines), a new, more traditional order, has taken over social and missionary duties in Jamaica from an American-based women’s community which is expiring from attrition and lack of vocations. The new order and the Jamaican dioceses to which its members are assigned struggle to find financial support for the Sisters, as they serve in the following ways: visiting and giving material support to the indigent elderly; teaching and counseling at a local Catholic girls school; providing administrative services and ministering to the ill and dying at Hope Health Clinic and the Hope Hospice for the Dying (many HIV/AIDS patients); catechizing children and adults in a remote, mountainous parish. -- MCD will provide $15,000/year to cover some of the living expenses of six Sisters, allowing them to carry out the above social and missionary responsibilities. -- MPCs will: aid the Sisters in their teaching, nursing, counseling, administrative, and catechetical duties. 5
  • 6. + General Charitable Assistance to Priority Projects Designated by the Archbishop of Colombo; SRI LANKA Declaring the Year of the Eucharist in his Archdiocese of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith writes: “Uppermost in our mind is the urgency to live the Eucharist in daily life through well-coordinated and directed works of charity. … We need to break ourselves for others, and be pressed and crushed for justice and peace simultaneously as we believe and celebrate this most holy Sacrament. … I very earnestly request all priests, religious and the laity to combine devotion with animation to show our love for the poor and the less fortunate people in our society by engaging in works of corporal mercy. … Latin still remains the main liturgical language of the Church. In Sri Lanka we made a mistake in abandoning the language of our worship altogether. Let this Eucharistic Year be an occasion for us to resuscitate this lost tradition at least to some extent. … I also wish to affirm that as indicated in the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum of 7th July 2007 priests and institutions are now permitted to celebrate, where it is appropriate, the Tridentine Mass and the Sacraments in that rite. In this case it is best that the faithful be prepared for it beforehand.” -- MCD will provide $50,000/year to priority social, educational, catechetical, and liturgy-training projects as designated by the Archbishop of Colombo. -- MPCs will: teach Latin, English, and other subjects in local Catholic schools; assist in the execution or administration of priority charitable projects as advised by the archbishop of Colombo; monitor and account for the use of the MCD funding. + Community-Based Orphan-Support; BUNDWELA: Funding Denied A group of local, nominally Catholic women, responding selflessly and sacrificially to the unmet needs of large number of AIDS orphans living in slums around the capital city of this east African country, found an organization to mobilize community volunteers to help provide these children with various forms of non-institutional support – e.g., supplemental food, home visits, medical consultations, partial payment of school fees. This approach might or might not be the most effective way to address the plight of these orphans, but, in any case, the organization is efficiently managed and it is certainly succeeding in alleviating some of the material distress of its beneficiaries. It receives substantial financial support from an American ambidextrous “Catholic”/Protestant charity, and it enjoys at least the tacit endorsement of the local Catholic bishop. It also – probably unbeknownst to that bishop – uses morally-relativistic “values- 6
  • 7. clarification” techniques in the sex-education lectures it delivers at local secondary schools; promotes the use of certain prophylactic/“birth control” methods that are at least “officially” condemned by the Catholic Church; and, when counseling adolescents on “family life,” employs as an acceptable reference the now-standard, secular, Planned-Parenthood- inspired, polymorphously perverse, UN-funded literature on inter- and intra-gender relations. When the group requests financial assistance from MCD, it is refused, on the grounds that, in word and deed, it is violating Catholic moral guidelines and principles of the natural law. ∗ MCD is a traditional, orthodox Catholic charity. We slavishly toe the traditional and “official” lines (praying that those will always be identical) on issues of practical morality. Concerning the Church’s teaching on sexual morality specifically, here’s how we see it, as through a glass darkly: Western society’s current moral endorsement of the practice of polymorphous perversity (P3) – to use an objective, nonjudgmental technical designation – seems to be shaping both the behavior and the doctrinal thinking of some of our bishops and many of our priests. Thanks to the more advanced laity in “developed” countries – especially those educated at “Catholic” colleges – it has also definitely moved what could be claimed to be the sensus fidelium towards a laissez-faire position favorable to full or partial P3. Going with the flow of this sensus, the major, mainstream “Catholic” relief and development organizations, especially those funded heavily by Western governments and directed by groups of bishops from the developed North, see absolutely no ethical problem or issue of Catholic integrity or “conflict of interest” or scandal in taking huge sums of money from the very governments which are, proudly and conspicuously, the major financers and fomenters of P3 – including abortion, an inevitable P3 byproduct – in the poorer South, nor in cooperating with those “population” and “health” institutions which are vocally committed to making the world safe for P3 and abortion. Such “Catholic” “humanitarian” “charities” are also staffed largely by program directors who, when not yet courageous or philosophically consistent enough to openly and wholeheartedly embrace theoretical P3-ism, are eager to let it be known – “Some of my best friends are P3-ers!” – that they are at least on that enlightened path. MCD, too, certainly wants to keep up with progressive trends in human- rights thinking, when permissible…but, try as we might, we cannot detect that the “official” Catholic line – always a bit skeptical of P3 – has changed in this area. Moreover, when – in trying for program planning purposes to anticipate a change (or rather “development”) in the Church’s P3 position 7
  • 8. which would be more in keeping with the spirit of the age and allow us to work more happily with the Red Cross, Save the Children, CAFOD, and this dedicated women’s group in Bundwela – we look to Scripture and Tradition for an “opening”…we look in vain. However, we are admittedly not very theologically sophisticated, and our readings are likely superficial and time-bound. We perhaps fail to understand the historical and cultural contingency of what had appeared to us to be moral absolutes. “Hope springs eternal,” say even some of our own workers – who, though “traditional,” are only human – as they pantingly pray that, along with peace, the Church will give P3 a chance. But until It does, MCD and all of its workers – panters and non-panters – will consider themselves bound – not so much as Catholics but as men and women of simple honesty, decency, and integrity who would find it shameful and dishonorable to be members of a Church or servants of an organization with whose “official” principles they are in disagreement – to give full assent, in word and deed – yea, even in thought, you panters – to the traditional and official teaching of the Catholic Church on relations between and within the sexes. MCD will neither cooperate with nor accept funding or other support from private institutions, “nongovernmental” organizations, corporations, governmental agencies, or individuals who publicly express and/or act on moral views counter to the teaching of the Church, particularly in what Pope Benedict XVI called the “decisive” moral area of life and family, into which the P3 issue falls. MCD will not itself provide funding to, or lend the support of its workers to, “Catholic” organizations or projects which violate Magisterial teaching on life and the family. This policy will distinguish us from the mainstream international “Catholic” relief agencies, which are not nearly so squeamish. The two primary justifications (or rationalizations) which those agencies give for what we consider to be their unnecessary cooperation with evil – on the rare occasions when they even feel it necessary to give explanations – are to us far from convincing. They will, first, claim that the funding that they take from or give to a “morally suspect” organization is restricted to only the “legitimate,” moral parts of the organization. Their cooperation with a particular branch or aspect of that entity – as either beneficiary or benefactor – in no way implies and should not be seen, they say, as Catholic support to or endorsement of the less savory activities of the organization. We say, to the contrary, that cooperation, in both its financial and moral aspects, is fungible, and thus indeed constitutes and can easily be seen 8
  • 9. as Catholic approval of all of the activities and aims of the suspect organization: Cooperation in the form of donated money, supposedly restricted to one “good” part of an organization, can, with some accounting legerdemain, be moved by the recipient to a “bad” part, or it can simply be used to free up other organizational resources for the support of the bad stuff. As for moral cooperation – the practical, social, and moral approval which the Catholic party confers by its willingness to associate with the offending organization: Since such cooperation is perfectly “liquid,” indeed intangible, its transfer from one (good) part of the organization to another (bad) part is even more easily accomplished than the shifting around of the financial cooperation. It is thus even more important, meaningful, and useful to the organization which is using immoral means in one or more areas of its activity. It will be rightly understood both by the suspect organization itself and by scandalized observers that the Catholic party’s willingness to cooperate in any way or in any area – when the Catholic side could, after all, have found other ways to accomplish its charitable goals – constitutes a tacit endorsement of the organization and indicates that the Catholic side thinks that those “bad parts”…are maybe really not so bad after all. (“We just need to give the ‘official’ Church time to catch up.”) The second rationalization used by the mainstream “Catholic” charitable agencies, related to but a bit more sophisticated than the first, and usually proffered by an official “ethics advisor,” probably a cleric or religious belonging to one of the more “liberal” congregations, will employ technical, moral-theological, “material-cooperation” arguments to try to show that in order to accomplish a charitable good it is necessary, and thus justifiable, for the “Catholic” agency to work routinely with a semi-dastardly organization That simply will not wash. Only if there were no other way for the “Catholic” agency to render charitable assistance would it have possibly been justifiable for it to regularly cooperate with an organization which had publicly embraced moral principles opposed to those of the Catholic Church and the natural law. (And probably not even then; for “a good end does not justify an evil means.”) But in the real world, there is almost always another way; a way that does not involve the use of immoral means or cooperation with evil-promoting organizations. When a “Catholic” relief and development organization claims, then, that it is “obliged” to cooperate with and take a major percentage of its funding from USAID – the primary propagandist for and promoter of P3, artificial “family planning,” and abortion in the developing world today – what it is really saying is that it is unwilling to give up the fantastic financial 9
  • 10. resources which, though morally tainted and coercively extracted, contribute to its worldly prestige and influence. It is saying that the large amounts of food that it is able through this means to deliver to hungry people during a natural disaster justify its cooperation with evil. (Note that, had the “Catholic” agency correctly refused such cooperation, those hungry people would have been just as well fed by another secular contractor of USAID – and all organizational servants of USAID, including the “faith-based” ones, are obliged to work as “secular” contractors.) And it is saying that it is unwilling to use alternative, moral means – i.e., funds raised from voluntary donors rather than from coerced taxpayers – to carry out charitable activities. As noted, then, MCD will try to conspicuously distinguish itself from the “mainstream” “Catholic” relief agencies by using only moral charitable means – i.e., voluntary, free-will donations – and by a policy of conspicuous non-cooperation with evil-promoting organizations. The object is, not to become a “major player” in the secular world’s system of “humanitarian”-assistance delivery, but to provide a safe, effective, and efficient way for authentic Catholics to support authentically Catholic works of evangelistic charity around the world. If you think, by the way, that the above, Bundwela example represents an unusual or unimportant case, or that its inclusion in this list is evidence of traditional Catholics’ unseemly focus on, or even “obsession” with, matters of sexual morality, when it is “social justice” issues that need to receive our priority attention, we should point out that…you are wrong. Or that you have somehow missed the massive “population-control” and anti-“family-values” campaigns that have been waged by rich Western governments and institutions against the materially-poorer people of the South for the last fifty years – and which continue unabated. (Is that war on the people of the South not itself a matter of “social justice”?) If it is we who are “obsessed,” that is not (usually) due to our own disordered inclinations, but is a necessary defensive reaction to an enduring idée fixe of those powerful governments and institutions, to their obsessively unreasoning conviction that “birth control,” abortion, and partial to full P3 will save the world. Consider, if you are skeptical, just one recent, typical, telling example: a policy initiative of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), the functional and philosophical equivalent of the USA’s Agency for International Development which funds the American bishops’ Catholic Relief Services. DFID has announced that it will “now have an unprecedented focus on family planning [euphemism for artificial birth control, polymorphous perversity, and abortion promotion], which will be hard-wired into all our country programs.” “Key proposals for UK action” include “modern methods of family planning such as implants, 10
  • 11. injectables and IUDs” and “ensuring abortion services are safe.” “Family planning will be at the heart of DFID’s approach to women’s health in the developing world.” So: “unprecedented focus,” “hardwired into all country programs,” “at the heart of the approach.” Now, tell me again which side it is that is sex “obsessed”? Is it those Western secular government agents of a supposedly easily-identifiable and attainable “social justice”…or those Catholics who confidently carry out humble but meaningful works of true charity while at the same time working for, or rather peaceably searching for, a social justice which they know that this world will yield, even at its occasional best, only partially and feebly? The Bundwela example is indeed typical and widespread: a local, well- intentioned “Catholic” charitable group that has been pressured by a powerful donor, or been truly convinced from breathing the ambient secular and “Catholic” air, to include in its program activities which violate Church teaching on life and the family. The large, nominally Catholic aid agencies – themselves having been so convinced – give a wink and a nod to those local “Catholic” groups. MCD – for better or worse, and until we get the Magisterium’s own pro-P3 go-ahead – won’t. 11