Doing good for the wrong reasons is still doing good.

[kwassa]

I worked for Catholic Charities about 20 years ago in a program to help re-settle refugees from Vietnam. I was the only non-Vietnamese in this office. The refugees were former officers in the South Vietnamese army that had been put in "labor camps" by the North Vietnamese, where about 20% of them died in very difficult conditions. There was nothing Catholic about this program, just help.

I am not Catholic, and never will be. Nonetheless, the Catholic Church does a huge amount of charity in the world, with no religious tests to receive services. Catholic Relief Services were working in Darfur before most heard of the place.

I don't believe in the theology of the Catholic Church, but I am still glad they are out there. I really don't care why people arrive at doing good so long as they do that good. There is so much evil in the world that every act of good must be cherished.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Relief_Services

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake

As part of the massive, worldwide humanitarian response to the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, Catholic Relief Services donated $190 million to fund a five-year relief and reconstruction effort to help 600,000 victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.
2010 Haiti earthquake

Catholic Relief Services has served in Haiti since 1954. Over 50 years of experience allowed CRS to respond to the earthquake immediately and has positioned the agency to be a key development actor as the country rebuilds. The agency works through a broad network of partners, including the Catholic Church in Haiti.[12] These relief efforts are in conjunction with the humanitarian response by other non-governmental organizations.

CRS is fostering local leadership and helping communities develop the knowledge, understanding and skills to build local capacity so that Haitians drive their own recovery.[13] CRS has committed to a $200 million, 5-year earthquake recovery program in partnership with more than 200 local organizations, focusing on community revitalization and shelter, health, water and sanitation, and protection.[14]

Highlights of the recovery programming include the $22.5 million reconstruction of St. Francois de Sales Hospital in Port-au-Prince, in partnership with the Catholic Health Association of the United States, turning the facility into a 200-bed teaching hospital; the Catholic Education Initiative, focused on building a vibrant Catholic school system throughout Haiti; and the development of innovative approaches for transforming camps into permanent housing communities, beginning with the construction of 125 housing units at Camp Carradeux.
Syrian Refugees

Since the civil war in Syria began in March, 2011, CRS has been working with their church partners in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt to provide urgent medical assistance, hygiene and living supplies, counseling and support for the nearly 1 million Syrian refugees who are children. Most now live in unfamiliar and uncomfortable surroundings, unable to attend local schools and traumatized by atrocities they have witnessed. To give them structure and a sense of normalcy, CRS is supporting formal and informal education, tutoring, recreational activities and trauma counseling.
Crisis in Central African Republic

Though this crisis in the Central African Republic has received little media attention in the United States, an estimated 930,000 people—20 percent of the population—have fled their homes since rebels ousted the president in March 2013. Millions of people are in urgent need of food, shelter and assistance. Although a new president took office in August, many embassies, including the United States, remained closed. Catholic Relief Services and Caritas Mbaiki are working in the southern part of the country to provide emergency food and agricultural support, as well as supporting the work of Christian and Muslim religious leaders to promote conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
2013 Typhoon Haiyan

Participating in the humanitarian response to Typhoon Haiyan, in the first 3 months after the typhoon CRS collaborated with communities and Caritas partners to provide 40,000 families–200,000 people–with emergency shelter, clean water and sanitation. We are now focusing on long-term recovery and are committed to a 5-year plan that will help 500,000 people. CRS has spent $23.7 million on their response as of September 30, 2014.[15]
2015 Nepal earthquake

For the humanitarian response to the Nepal earthquake, Catholic Relief Services and its partner organizations have begun procuring emergency relief materials, like shelter kits and sanitation and hygiene materials.[16]

[upaloopa]

1. My brother ran Catholic Charities in Wash DC

when Reagan took office. They got money from the Federal government until Reagon ended it. My brother had three main programs going in the US to help poor people.

[PeaceNikki]

2. And doing good does not exempt an organization from criticism for very very bad behavior.

[yeoman6987]

5. If the Catholic Church suddenly stopped charity work

The world would be screwed. At least for years until somehow they found others to take up the work. I think they deserve the praise.

[AuntPatsy]

6. You cannot pick and choose who is more important....that's the trouble with ignoring justice for all

Exactly what the religious leaders truly aspire to is power and ego....nothing more nothing less

[kwassa]

18. There are religious leaders that are entirely sincere.

[PeaceNikki]

9. OK, but doing good still does not exempt an organization from criticism for very very bad behavior.

[kwassa]

17. I agree.

[Humanist_Activist]

3. Catholic Charities in many parts of the nation want to discriminate against LGBT people in adoption.

I wouldn't call that "doing good for bad reasons".

In fact, they were so adamant about it that in a few places, such as Massachusetts and Illinois, Catholic Charities shut down their adoption agencies entirely.

I generally don't care if someone is doing charity "for goodness sake" or for the good of humanity, I do have a problem when they attach religion to it, far too often such charity comes with strings attached.

[kwassa]

12. Outside of the services they refuse to perform, there are no strings attached.

There are no religious tests to receive services.

[LuvNewcastle]

4. Contraception is very important to

poor communities, just as food, water, and clothing are. The people that are helped by Catholic Charities need to be given the tools to control the size of their families so that they can get to the point where they have the necessities of life and are no longer dependent upon others. Charities that don't provide birth control are doing as much to perpetuate poverty as they are to alleviating it.

[kwassa]

13. but fortunately there are other charities that provide contraceptive services.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. How much 'good' does one have to do to excuse hate and ignorance?

You tell me. You make the rules. What's the exchange rate?

[kwassa]

16. I don't make any rules.

I recognize that the Catholic Church and it's charities help millions in this world.

To you, it is rendered worthless by their positions on homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

While I agree that this part of their stance is terrible, I recognize the good that they do.

Do you think we will ever agree on this?

[jeff47]

8. And doing good does not immunize against criticism for doing bad.

We can praise the good and condemn the bad. Neither one erases the other.

[kwassa]

14. I agree.

[REP]

10. Perhaps they're trying to mitigate the evil they've cast into the world

Rampant child abuse, driving people into poverty through demanding no birth control, the spread of deadly disease by insisting no condoms be distributed, the shameful treatment of LGBT people ... I could go on.

[kwassa]

15. No. It is about Catholic social teaching.

Catholic social teaching is the body of doctrine developed by the Catholic Church on matters of social justice, involving issues of poverty and wealth, economics, social organization and the role of the state. Its foundations are widely considered to have been laid by Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical letter Rerum novarum, which advocated economic distributism and condemned both capitalism and socialism, although its roots can be traced to the writings of Catholic thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine of Hippo, and is also derived from concepts present in the Bible and the cultures of the ancient Near East.

..........................................

Pope Francis

Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium, explicitly affirmed “the right of states” to intervene in the economy to promote "the common good."[20] He wrote:

While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control. A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which unilaterally and relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules.[21]

Pope Francis has warned about the "idolatry of money"[22] and wrote:

[S]ome people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.[23]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_social_teaching

[LiberalElite]

11. I worked for several years in the Catholic

Relief Services office when they were in NYC. They did a lot of development work all over the third world and don't require people to convert. They're not missionaries. I'd say they are doing good work for good reasons.
( I was raised Catholic but left it long ago. )