U.S. Catholic Bishops self investigating Funding of ACORN

The Campaign for Human Development has been giving grants to ACORN. Juliea Duin of Washington Times announced in a Nov 4 article that the U.S. Catholic Bishops have hired forensic accountants to track funds given to Acorn due to reports of partisan (Obama leaning) and fraudulent spending which could jeopardize the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church.

Earlier this year, the Bishops suspended funding to ACORN. Catholic News Service was informed in October that the Campaign for Human Development was no longer funding ACORN at any level, due to suspicion of embezzling occurring way back in 1999 and 2000.

In the last 10 years, the Campaign for Human Development gave over 300 grants to ACORN totalling more than 7.3 million dollars.

While it is nice that a self investigation has been proceeding (before attention was given by the mainstream media) and funding to ACORN has been frozen, I recommend for the time being that in November, people allocate their funding to another worthy charity. Perhaps next year, a truly ACORN - free Campaign for Human Development might merit your charitable contributions. My idea is that pinching this fund off in November might influence the U.S. Catholic Bishops to be more careful with their spending in the future.