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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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-
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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.
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