The Catholic Campaign for Human Development has gotten a lot of criticism of late (including, most prominently, from EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo). Now the bishop who oversees it is defending the organization:

The chairman of the U.S. bishops’ subcommittee which oversees the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) has defended the program against what he called “outrageous” allegations and claims. He reiterated that the campaign is pro-life and has “zero tolerance” for funding any group that violates Catholic teaching.

Bishop of Biloxi, Mississippi Roger Morin on Tuesday addressed the fall assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on the topic of the CCHD.

He said that some attacks on the campaign are motivated by concern for the poor or for the Church’s teachings. Some critics may not understand the social teachings of the church, while others charge that the bishops are funding groups that are pro-abortion.

“The critics are using this as an opportunity to attack the shepherds of the Church. I reiterate that we are pro-life, from conception to natural death,” Bishop Morin said.

The CCHD never makes grants to organizations that are specifically involved in promoting activities against Church teaching, he said.

“You will recall that CCHD was the first national group to cut funds for ACORN,” he added, referring to the community organizing group that was accused of voter fraud in 2008.

“We say at CCHD that we have zero tolerance for any group that would violate the Church teachings.”

The bishop said it was “particularly disturbing” that people form an opinion of CCHD based on an individual incident of misconduct.

“They paint the whole organization with a broad brush using isolated instances.”

You can read more at the link.

There’s more about the Arroyo program here.

And ZENIT has its own report about the upcoming second collection for CCHD.