“CATHOLIC INVESTING GUIDELINES”
The USCCB investment policies cover the following areas: protecting human life; promoting human dignity; reducing arms production; pursuing economic justice; protecting the environment, and encouraging corporate responsibility.
Protecting Human Life
Abortion
In view of the nature of abortion, the investment policy of the USCCB should remain, as it is, namely, an absolute exclusion of investment in companies whose activities include direct participation in or support of abortion.
Contraceptives
In view of the Church’s clear teaching on the immorality of contraceptive intercourse, the USCCB will not invest in companies that manufacture contraceptives or derive a significant portion of its revenues from the sale of contraceptives, even if they do not manufacture them.
Embryonic Stem Cell Research/Human Cloning
The USCCB will not invest in companies that engage in scientific research on human fetuses or embryos that (1) results in the end of pre-natal human life; (2) makes use of tissue derived from abortions or other life-ending activities; or (3) violates the dignity of a developing person.
Promoting Human Dignity
Human Rights
USCCB will actively promote and support shareholder resolutions directed towards protecting and promoting human rights. For example, USCCB could join efforts to influence corporations that are engaged in extractive industries or are operating in countries with significant human rights concerns.
Racial Discrimination
USCCB will divest from those companies whose policies are found to be discriminatory against people of varied ethnic and racial backgrounds that have been historically disadvantaged.
Gender Discrimination
The USCCB will divest from those companies whose policies are found to be discriminatory against women.
Access to Pharmaceuticals (e.g. HIV/AIDS)
USCCB will encourage companies to undertake or participate in programs designed to make life-sustaining drugs available to those in low-income communities and countries at reduced, affordable prices, consistent with our Catholic values.
Curbing Pornography
The USCCB will not invest in a company that derives a significant portion of its revenues from products or services intended exclusively to appeal to a prurient interest in sex or to incite sexual excitement. These would include, but not be limited to, sexually explicit (X-rated) films, videos, publications, and software; topless bars and strip clubs; and sexually oriented telephone and Internet services.
Reducing Arms Production
Production and Sale of Weapons
The Conference, through its investments as well as its advocacy, seeks to discourage any nuclear and conventional arms race and to limit the distortions in the U.S. and global economy resulting from disproportionate military spending. The Conference will, therefore, avoid investment in firms primarily engaged in military weapons production or the development of weapons inconsistent with Catholic teaching on war (e.g., biological and chemical weapons, arms designed or regarded as first-strike nuclear weapons, indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction, etc.)
Antipersonnel Landmines
USCCB will not invest in companies that are directly involved in the manufacture, sale, or use of anti-personnel landmines.
Pursuing Economic Justice
Labor Standards/Sweatshops
USCCB will actively promote and support shareholder resolutions directed towards avoiding the use of sweatshops in the manufacture of goods.
Affordable Housing / Banking
The Conference will not deposit funds in a financial institution that receives less than a “satisfactory” rating from federal regulatory agencies under the Community Reinvestment Act.
Protecting the Environment
USCCB investment policy will actively promote and support shareholder resolutions which encourage corporations to act “to preserve the planet’s ecological heritage, addressing the rampant poverty in the poorest nations, redirecting development in terms of quality rather than quantity in the industrial world, [and] creating environmentally sensitive technologies.” (Renewing the Earth, 1991)
Encouraging Corporate Responsibility
USCCB will encourage companies to report on social, environmental, as well as financial performance.
