What kind of protection do we really need?  Isn’t it, most of all, the need to be protected from sin? And to protect the children too? Then why is this scandal tolerated in our midst? https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/new-press-release-reveals-more-anti-catholic-activity-by-crs

Lepanto Institute has undertaken an in-depth study of  the continuing conflict between Church teaching and Catholic Relief Service’s flow of money, and their evidence points to CRS’s continued undermining of the moral teaching of the Catholic Church. Moreover, CRS also causes bishops and priests to be their agents by promoting Lenten rice bowl collections for CRS’s own nefarious purposes.

It is no excuse to say, e.g., that the rice bowl money doesn’t go to such purposes. Money is fungible. It doesn’t matter how they might segregate it on paper. A ‘dollar in’ is proportionately a ‘dollar out’ for every program CRS funds. Catholics in the pew, people of good heart, trust their pastors and bishops to understand this principle, and only to support what is moral. Especially when it influences children to participate.

What can we do? Certainly give absolutely nothing to the rice bowl collections. If someone has taken a rice bowl home, throw it out and drop the money already collected as extra into the Sunday collection. Or donate it to Church Militant, which has faithfully pursued correction of CRS’s moral laxity.

What else? Remember how just a few months ago we admired the young man from Austria who threw the pachamama idol off the bridge? Do we have anyone in each ‘rice-bowl parish’ with the courage to take and trash the rice bowls? (If you feel that needs to be confessed, perhaps it is better to confess that ‘sin’ anonymously in a parish without rice bowls?)

Furthermore, even if CRS were to word-smith and loop-hole its way out of the worst allegations against it, the perception of CRS’s supporting what the Catholic Church deems to be serious sin would not change. The perception of their courting evil is too embedded to be credibly and effectively changed at this point. What does that mean? It means that the image of CRS outlives even a future attempt to amend itself. That, my friends, is what we call scandal. A persistent, viral scandal.

Does anyone have other ideas to effectively remove this cancerous lesion in parishes? Please comment.

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