By Marie Mulvenna

With the theme, “A Time To Grow,” Catholics throughout the country will mark the 1976 Campaign for Human Development (CHD) with a nationwide collection on Sunday, November 21. The drive, held yearly the Sunday before Thanksgiving, is a massive and unique effort of American Catholics to break what Pope Paul VI has called the “hellish cycle of poverty.” Over 1,000 “seed” money grants made by the CHD enable scores of impoverished in the United States to seek dignity and justice, working and sharing together to break the bonds of poverty, injustice and oppression.

In what has been termed one of the most active of Church efforts in the history of American Catholicism, Catholics in every walk of life and in every economic strata have joined forces through the annual drive to fight together the many forces of poverty and the tragic havoc such poverty and deprivation brings to individuals across the land.

Launched in 1970 by U.S. Bishops, the CHD is the Church’s action/education program to attack the very roots of poverty in American society – poverty, that DHD officials say enslaves over 40 million citizens. The 1976 drive will once again seek the response of millions of U.S. Catholics in the fight for dignity and justice. Since its inception, the CHD has provided a tangible means of providing help through means of providing help through countless self-help projects. As one CHD spokesman noted, the drive helps “sow the seed of hope and sustain the miracle of growth.”

The direct and powerful thrust of the effort is an effective means of providing a way out instead of a handout, the CHD office stated. It has offered dignity instead of dependency and has supported long-range social changes instead of stopgap measures.

Father Lawrence J. McNamara, executive director of the CHD, described the ongoing effort as “millions of people: poor, less poor and not poor–together—trying to make justice, compassion, dignity and freedom an experience every human person will someday share.”

Father McNamara explained that the program is at work all year long to educate people to the existence and “appalling reality of poverty.” The campaign, he said, is a many pronged attack on the root conditions that breed poverty and pass it on to future generations. The massive effort uses radio, television, film and print to bring the stark reality of domestic deprivation and social injustice to the American public. The CHD seeks to raise awareness and change attitudes so that all persons will realize a human life of dignity and self-determination.

Seventy-five percent of the funds realized from the collection are sent to Washington national headquarters and are utilized to fund community development programs in almost 1,000 American communities. The remaining 25 percent is retained in the particular diocese for local self-help projects.

Father J.A. Bollmer, executive director of Catholic Social Services Inc. of the archdiocese and diocesan director of the CHD for Atlanta said the yearly effort helps to change the lives of countless thousands of the nation’s poor and needy. “Alone, our efforts seem minute and lost in the fight against all the complexities of poverty and need. But, joined with others, our efforts do make progress. Scores of Americans can testify to the full meaning of CHD assistance. The fruits of our efforts have been manifest over and over again in the multitudes of projects helped.”

Father Bollmer, who is also director of Region 4 of the national CHD program, said the campaign makes “justice not a vague social goal we speak about but a vital Christian principle we live.” Through the drive, he said, “we reaffirm our basic values and concentrate on the quality of life of all persons. We think of society as a whole and its concerns and we then try earnestly to overcome all these dimensions of poverty in Christ’s name and in response to His teachings.”

The national effort, he said, continues to search out the causes that perpetuate the cycle of poverty for millions. Through continuing social action workshops, seminars, publications, teaching materials, public service radio and TV spots, the drive provides an opportunity and a channel for people to know each other and to better understand the potential for human development.

Father Bollmer said that 1976 theme, “A Time To Grow,” was very appropriate for the current campaign. “In this Bicentennial year,” he said, “we have both recognized the greatness of our nation and seen its shortcomings too. In so doing, we’ve achieved a renewed determination to right those glaring wrongs and to try wholeheartedly to break the bonds that bind so many of our fellow people.”

Father Bollmer said, “We have seen the need to grow as a people. Our better comprehension of the needy and hurt, the hungry and jobless, the forgotten and deprived has led us to new purpose and new resolve as well as new hope. Americans are more than ever determined to make a better tomorrow, beginning today.”

He termed the drive a “courageous idea that is working,” and added that the drive needed the support of all Catholic people in the country to continue to make it an effective weapon against poverty. Seed money grants are awarded qualified projects with new grants made yearly to new programs that will assist more and more people in need. Father Bolllmer said the entire campaign enables persons to begin with hope, to grow stronger and to become self-sufficient. Each year, he noted, more and more people are reached in Christ’s name through the annual collection.