Who Are These Fake Catholic Groups?

As every American teenager knows, fake IDs are easy to come by.  The same is true in politics. 

Anne Hendershott, writing at Catholic Advocate, has explained why organizations like Catholics United, Catholic Democrats, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good are “fake Catholic groups.”

What other than a fake Catholic group would pay for TV ads in Michigan condemning Cong. Bart Stupak for insisting abortion funding be removed from the health care bill.  Well, that’s precisely what Catholics United has done.

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It would be very interesting to find out where the money for that ad buy came from!

Frankly, what other than fake Catholic groups would be promoting the passage of this health care bill with both abortion funding and no conscience protection. 

Hendershott has done some research on the funding for these three groups and what she had uncovered may surprise you, or it may not.  Why, for example, did the head of Catholics United, Chris Korzen, receive the bulk of his salary from Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good in 2007?

As she shows, Catholics United was created basically to be the 501 (c) (4) arm of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a 501 (c) (3).  That Korzen can be paid with (c) (3) money (deductible for donors) to run a (c) (4) program of partisan lobbying is, on the surface of it, surprising.

As for the funding itself, Hendersholt writes:

Despite their inability to engage in extensive lobbying, Catholics in Alliance has been extremely successful in attracting large donors. Never a friend to the Catholic Church, George Soros, one of the earliest donors, contributed $50,000 to Catholics in Alliance in 2005 and another $100,000 in 2006 through his Open Society Institute. Likewise, Smith Bagley, a major Democratic donor and fundraiser, whose wife, Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, is Chairman of the Board of Catholics in Alliance, came close to matching Soros with grants from his family’s Arca Foundation. With a long history of supporting progressive organizations like ACORN, the Gamaliel Foundation, People for the American Way, and Planned Parenthood, Arca contributed $50,000 to Catholics in Alliance in 2007 and another $75,000 in 2008.

Read the entire article here.

During the 2008 election, Archbishop Chaput publicly exposed the distortions of Catholic teaching spread by these groups — now more bishops, such as those in the Michigan Catholic Conference, are doing the same.

Somebody ought to start collecting all those fake Catholic IDs.

 

Author

  • Deal W. Hudson

    Deal W. Hudson is ​publisher and editor of The Christian Review and the host of “Church and Culture,” a weekly two-hour radio show on the Ave Maria Radio Network.​ He is the former publisher and editor of Crisis Magazine.

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