A Holy-See-dependent charity sponsoring the Russian schism

Last Sunday’s edition of the Sydney Catholic Weekly featured the annual Catholic charities guide. That issue’s back page (p. 48, September 6, 2009) was a full-page advertisement for Aid to the Church in Need (A.C.N.), which (the advertisement, that is) described A.C.N. as “A Catholic charity under the guidance of the Holy Father”, and which contained the following startling passage:

In 1992, Fr Werenfried [van Straaten, A.C.N.’s founder] extended Aid to the Church in Need’s work to supporting the Orthodox Church in Russia: for as Pope John Paul II said in Ut Unum Sint, it is “an imperative of charity” to help our Orthodox brethren.

Now A.C.N. is not a charity like the St. Vincent de Paul Society or Caritas; it does things like funding the formation of seminarians and distributing Bibles and catechisms rather than providing social services like those which secular government or non-government organisations provide, so naturally I reacted with consternation to the thought of donations for the support of the Catholic religion going to fund the religious activities of formal schismatics. But could it be that I had misconstrued the advertisement, and that A.C.N funds are just going towards innocent social-services-type activities rather than fomenting schism and disseminating error? (Mind you, even if that were the case, it would still seem to be a misuse of donations, since A.C.N. is supposed to focus on assistance for the support of the Faith as such rather than for non-religious humanitarian activity.) Alas, no:

Before the end of the Gorbachev years, many bishops began to make plans for the daunting task of rebuilding seminary life. The strides they have made over the past ten years have been impressive. A useful benchmark is the remarkable ecumenical venture by the Roman Catholic agency, Aid to the Church in Need. In 1992 its founder, the Dutch Norbertine monk Werenfried van Straaten, already 79 years old, had a vision which challenged him to support the Russian Orthodox Church. His advisers settled on helping Russian Orthodox theological education as the most effective focus for this new outreach. Of the 46 theological academies, seminaries and schools in Russia, Aid to the Church in Need is now
[as at April 4, 2001] helping 26 financially.
[my square-bracketed interpolation,
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2099]

And at A.C.N.’s own official Australian website we find the following things:

He [A.C.N. international president Father Joaquín Alliende] also underlined the charity’s commitment to continue supporting the Russian Orthodox – as well as the Catholic Church in Russia – and developing east-west relations.

and

Last year, ACN gave over $4 million to support Church communities in Russia, prioritising help for the Catholic Church but also some giving help to the Russian Orthodox Church as well as ecumenical projects.
[my square-bracketed interpolation,
both quotations from
http://members4.boardhost.com/acnaus/msg/1227482615.html]

Furthermore, a Google search using the keywords “Aid to the Church in Need”, “Orthodox Church” and “Russia” led me to an article by the respected Traditional Catholic lawyer and journalist Mr. Christopher A. Ferrara, who had the following things, among others, to say:

Meanwhile, as Aid to the Church in Russia seeks funds to build a headquarters for the Archbishop at Moscow, another Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, is giving millions of dollars to the Orthodox Church for its continued functioning in Russia - a fact recited by the Vatican itself as justification for its creation of the Catholic pseudo-dioceses: "Navarro-Valls also reminded reporters that in the past decade Catholic groups such as Aid to the Church in Need have provided more than $17 million in direct aid to the Russian Orthodox Church." (CWNews.com, Feb. 11, 2002) The website for Aid to the Church in Need proclaims: "Following a 1984 decree of the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy, Aid to the Church in Need was recognized by the Catholic Church as a universal public association of faithful." [http://www.kirche-in-not.org/e_home.htm]

So, one Catholic charity combats the agenda of another in Russia! The faithful are asked, on the one hand, to help build up the Catholic Church in Russia, and, on the other hand, to give money to an organization that helps build up its hateful opponent, the Russian Orthodox church, already fattened by the spoils that Stalin robbed from the Catholic Church at gunpoint in the 1940s.
[bracketed content in the original,
http://www.fatimaperspectives.com/cr/perspective208.asp]

(I encourage you to read the whole article.) Now I seem to recall a recent controversy over funds from a Canadian Catholic charity going towards a Latin American organisation which supported abortion, which would and should have generated outrage. But how much more outraged should we be at Church sponsorship (by an “international Catholic charity dependent on the Holy See”, no less) of schism—abortion kills the body, but schism kills the soul. Of course, God only permits an evil in order to avert a greater evil or procure a greater good, and perhaps the indifferentists behind this scandalous funding—ecumenism at its worst—are contributing unwittingly towards, if not what one Angelqueen reader called the ‘material preparation for the conversion of Russia’, then at least, in some inscrutable way, the material preparation for the Consecration of Russia to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of Sts. Protus and Hyacinth, Martyrs, A.D. 2009