The John-Henry Westen Show - Political provocateur goes from pro-life atheist to full fledged Catholic who embraces motherhood

00:00:00.000 Being pro-life as an atheist, it's just lacking. It's just lacking. Why do people have inherent

00:00:06.220 value? Why is it wrong to kill? Why is it wrong to do anything? Where does right and wrong come from?

00:00:14.360 Welcome to the John Henry Weston Show. Ladies and gentlemen, you're going to want to stick

00:00:17.340 around for this one. We have with us someone who's actually quite famous. Her name is Caitlin Bennett. 0.84

00:00:23.080 Many of you know her as a very outspoken conservative activist who really took the stage

00:00:30.260 by storm. We're going to learn, though, about her conversion to the Catholic faith,

00:00:35.100 which I think came as a shock to some. So stay tuned.

00:00:53.080 Caitlin Bennett, thank you for being with us.

00:00:58.540 Thank you so much for inviting me to come on.

00:01:00.840 Let's begin as we always do at the side of the cross.

00:01:03.380 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

00:01:10.340 So Caitlin, while many, many know a lot about you, about your show, and about what you do,

00:01:17.740 tell, for those who don't know, please tell us a little bit about yourself,

00:01:20.800 and really what brought you to the public stage?

00:01:23.940 I am basically just a conservative YouTuber. I don't like to call myself an influencer or anything

00:01:30.080 like that. I'm just a YouTuber, and I go out there, and I go into the lion's den where I'm not

00:01:36.280 welcome, which is usually college campuses, liberal rallies, and pro-choice rallies, and basically just

00:01:45.720 confront them about the things that they believe in, the things that they push, and why are they

00:01:50.660 lying to tons of people about their propaganda? And what kind of got me into the spotlight was

00:01:57.580 gun rights activism on my college campus, Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. I took a picture

00:02:03.820 with an AR-10 on my campus to protest gun laws there, and that kind of just opened the door for

00:02:10.020 my platform, which I'm so grateful for.

00:02:12.560 How many fans or subscribers on YouTube do you have?

00:02:15.700 On YouTube, I think we have a little over 600,000. On Facebook, I almost had a million. We can get

00:02:23.920 into that later, but that's Twitter. I don't know. I don't really use Twitter, but yeah.

00:02:30.380 Okay, so a massive, massive following. And just recently, not too long ago now, you sort of came out,

00:02:38.880 if you will, as a Catholic. A very beautiful video you put out explaining a bit your faith.

00:02:44.400 Wanted to delve more into that, because that's a radical move. I'm sure it shocked some of your

00:02:50.040 fans. Why don't you start telling us a little bit about your background, because you came from

00:02:56.020 atheism and how you got there in the first place.

00:02:58.860 So in my video, I kind of go into just dipping my toes into the water, explaining how I arrived at

00:03:05.420 atheism. I would say a lot of it has to do with being very confused and also being very scared.

00:03:12.540 I was very, very scared at what I heard about religion. I was very scared about what I heard

00:03:18.580 if you did something wrong. I also had a lot of influences from adults in my life that also told

00:03:24.580 me that not everything in the Bible is true, and you don't need to go to church, and church is just

00:03:29.920 for money. So all of those things coming down on a 10 to 12 year old, you just kind of start to

00:03:37.560 dismiss it all. And Christ and God and religion and church was never the focus of anything, any part of

00:03:44.900 my life growing up and not blaming my parents too much. I love them very much because I wouldn't be who

00:03:51.720 I am without them. That's one thing that I think made me who I was and really led me down the path

00:04:00.180 of atheism. I ended up learning that what I believe in and what I know is right and wrong and what I can

00:04:07.560 come to my senses about with just common sense and using my brain, it didn't end up making a lot

00:04:14.680 of sense in the long run. And I really rejected and I dismissed that conversation that I would have

00:04:20.620 with myself every night when I was lying awake scared of dying. I was just so overwhelmed with

00:04:28.140 this feeling of why am I here? What happens when I die? If I'm wrong, what's going to happen? And

00:04:36.080 furthermore, not even just for my sake and my salvation, I was really worried about what it meant

00:04:41.740 for my family and what it meant for my friends. And it just scared me. It scared me a lot. So I started

00:04:47.820 asking questions. And I guess that's, that's a little bit of the background. I just started asking

00:04:53.980 questions. You lived your life for a long time. As an atheist, you came to some kind of peace that way,

00:05:02.020 I presume. What unsettled you more recently to make you consider the faith? Or maybe it wasn't

00:05:10.300 unsettling. Maybe it was some kind of assurance or what? My husband has always been a very devout

00:05:15.880 Catholic. And before we got married, he decided let's have a second wedding in the church so that

00:05:23.180 he can do the sacrament of holy matrimony. And I was like, oh, whatever, you know, I'll do it for you.

00:05:30.100 It's fine or whatever. And it was just, it was, it was a beautiful experience. It was very touching

00:05:37.240 and seeing how much it meant to him really made me wonder like, what is it about all of this? What is

00:05:43.360 it about the church and Catholicism and Christianity in general that draws him so far to where he wanted

00:05:50.840 to have a whole nother second wedding just for this sacrament? What is a sacrament? What does this mean?

00:05:56.560 I would think, I would say my turning point in all of this was when I was at a college campus,

00:06:04.200 Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and I was being attacked by a mob of four to 500 students.

00:06:12.020 And one, one person, I can credit him to making me just kind of flip a switch. He was badgering me.

00:06:21.040 He was following me. I had hot, I had burns on my skin because I was being burned with hot coffee that

00:06:26.200 was being dumped on me. And he goes, you Christians, you know, you told somebody that he was going to 0.61

00:06:34.200 hell because he's gay. You, you tell people they're going to hell. I turn around and I said, 1.00

00:06:39.140 I'm an atheist. I've never said that. And his eyes just lit up with a sparkle. And they were like,

00:06:46.880 you, you're an atheist. I had, I had no clue. I'm so sorry. Oh, I wouldn't have treated you like 1.00

00:06:52.400 this. And I'm sitting here thinking, this cannot be the group that I fit in with. I can, I cannot align

00:06:58.320 with somebody who, whose eyes sparkle at the news that I am like them in that certain way. And I was

00:07:06.300 like, this cannot be right. I can, I cannot be in this same mentality of this guy who is chasing me,

00:07:13.260 a woman down the parking lot of being, while being mobbed and out of campus. I can't fit in here. 0.86

00:07:20.340 This can't be right. So I must be the wrong person here. I must be in the wrong here. The second moment

00:07:27.440 would probably be learning about the seven deadly sins and learning that pride was the worst one,

00:07:35.120 you know, the, the most deadly of the seven deadly sins, as we would say, and realizing that, um,

00:07:41.540 we have a whole month dedicated to that. And there is no coincidences with the amount of perversion

00:07:47.960 and just disgustingness that goes on within that entire movement and the assaults that I've had

00:07:55.900 during pride month at, uh, pride parades. And it just, all of it started making connecting dots.

00:08:02.160 And, uh, that's when I started asking more questions and just being mind blown at the truth.

00:08:07.080 You know, a lot of people have come to faith after seeing evil. And, uh, when you see it,

00:08:14.800 and then it's sort of related to yourself, uh, that becomes very unsettling. Indeed,

00:08:20.280 when you, um, went toward the faith, there's often something that draws you in. Obviously,

00:08:26.700 uh, some of the people I know who were happily atheist before, uh, believe themselves to be

00:08:32.320 pretty darn good. And, uh, just when they saw evil in the faith realized, oh my gosh, there's a devil.

00:08:38.200 There must be a God. And then had that quest for, uh, learning of the faith. Did you get that

00:08:43.660 hunger for learning about the faith as well? I did. I did. I got it from watching, like I said,

00:08:49.460 my husband, I got it from learning and understanding why all of these terrible

00:08:54.220 things were happening in our country and that it can't just be because people just decided one day

00:09:00.420 to, you know, do all the, push these things on our children and try to sexualize our children 1.00

00:09:06.320 and try to lock us in our homes and all of these crazy, crazy, crazy things. There had to be a reason

00:09:12.820 why this was happening. And then, like I said, I connected the dots and, um, asking about why

00:09:19.300 these dots would be connected ends up, you end up just wanting to learn more about it in general,

00:09:25.800 which led to the discovering more about Catholicism and Christianity and the church and the good

00:09:31.260 aspects of the faith. I want to ask why Catholicism? Because Christianity has its own,

00:09:37.560 um, you know, moral, that's very similar, but there are very, very many, especially in the United

00:09:44.500 States who would say, Oh, why did you do that? Why did you choose the Catholic faith? Um, so what led

00:09:50.880 you there other than your husband? I know Justin's a great guy, but, uh, if you would explain that.

00:09:56.760 Yeah. So that was going to be probably the number one influence was I married him because I trust him

00:10:03.580 and I married him because I love him. And I, I trust that he would not lead me down a path that

00:10:08.800 was bad for me. If you were marrying someone and you don't trust them to lead you, uh, as a woman,

00:10:15.220 if you're a woman and you're marrying a man and you don't trust him to lead you, uh, and in different

00:10:20.380 aspects of life, then probably shouldn't marry him. So when he was asking me to go down this journey

00:10:26.800 and he was leading me here, I just, I knew it was right because I trusted him. But more than anything,

00:10:33.580 I would say it's learning the history of the Catholic church, knowing it started with Jesus

00:10:40.720 Christ himself. And there is an answer for almost any question you have that has either been debated

00:10:48.060 and has been written about. There have been councils about it and meetings among the church fathers

00:10:53.120 and all kinds of people that have answered very, very deep and meaningful questions to where

00:10:59.900 we can trust that the answers the Catholic church gives us are true and they're meaningful and they

00:11:08.360 mean something. And it's not just read the Bible for yourself, come to your own conclusion. I really,

00:11:14.880 really love that the Catholic church has a history of just being truthful, being honest,

00:11:21.740 and just getting into these dirty details to figure out these questions for us because it takes an

00:11:27.480 awful lot of weight off of my shoulders to open this massive book that was not originally written in

00:11:34.740 the English language to understand what it's supposed to mean for me. And I don't think it's very settling

00:11:41.840 knowing that there are, there's millions, billions of people out there that can read the same book

00:11:47.840 and come to a different interpretation. And furthermore, I believe it is the only church,

00:11:54.620 and I don't like saying Catholicism is a denomination because it's not, it's the one true church. So it's not

00:12:00.740 like Presbyterian or Baptist or anything. It is the only church and the only group of people who give,

00:12:08.520 I would say, the honor to Mary that she deserves. I see a lot of hatred for our mother among Protestants,

00:12:17.140 especially in my comment section. And I don't understand where it comes from because how the

00:12:23.520 Catholic church honors her is so beautiful. And as someone who is expecting, who is a mother now,

00:12:30.380 I love the grace and I love, I love the love that the church has for Mary. It's very,

00:12:37.120 very touching to me as someone who is currently pregnant. So that's in a gist how I ended up to

00:12:44.820 where I am. I also, and I didn't just go along with my husband and say, oh, you know, thanks for

00:12:50.260 all the answers. I'll just go along with you. I talked to so many different people. I talked to

00:12:54.920 people who weren't even Christians and I asked them all the same exact questions. The only people 0.97

00:13:01.680 who came back to me with a fulfilled answer and an answer that made sense and had proof and backing

00:13:08.380 and, like I said, documents with it were my Catholic friends. They were very confident in

00:13:15.580 their answers because these questions have already been answered for them. It's not something they

00:13:19.440 made up. It's something that they've gotten from people far more knowledgeable than themselves.

00:13:25.160 The scriptures themselves in 1st St. Peter talk about Paul. They're describing, St. Peter's actually

00:13:30.600 describing Paul's writings and say, he says that many of Paul's writings are things that people

00:13:35.440 interpret to their own destruction, which is a very instructive little passage in the scriptures

00:13:39.640 themselves. So tell us about some of these questions that you had personally, questions that

00:13:46.160 were bothering you that you found a satisfactory answer for, if you're able to share one of those.

00:13:52.220 I would say a lot of them had to do with the Bible itself. And one of the most revealing things

00:14:00.480 I learned was that we aren't meant to take the Bible 100% literally. There could be,

00:14:07.680 you know, stories involved. There could be different types of language used to get the point across to

00:14:17.100 people. And I'm like, well, there's no way that a snake could talk to Eve and do all this stuff. 0.72

00:14:25.560 And Justin's like, well, we don't know if it's actually a snake. And I'm like, so you're telling me

00:14:29.820 not everything has to be the way that it's drawn up in pictures and given to us as kids and everything.

00:14:36.600 That was very, that was very defining where the Bible came from. That was one of the first

00:14:41.580 questions I had. How do we know that this is something that we can trust? Where did it come

00:14:46.420 from? And learning that the Catholic church compiled the Bible and then Protestants later took parts out

00:14:53.440 in mixed up context. That was an eye-opener for me. And asking my friends, like, why,

00:14:59.880 how can you, you know, they, they hate the Catholic church. There are people who hate the Catholic

00:15:04.640 church, as I'm sure you know. Answering, listening to their answers, it wasn't good enough for me. It

00:15:12.600 just wasn't good enough about why they take the book that the Catholic church compiled and mess with it

00:15:18.760 and then say that the Catholic church has been wrong all along. That was a big one. Um, and I would say

00:15:25.320 another good question is that I asked was basically the concept of love and what love means and knowing

00:15:34.100 that God is love and that I'm getting emotional and, and knowing that, um, I would say being pregnant

00:15:43.760 and trying for a baby and going through this experience was really touching because learning

00:15:48.520 how God has formed men and women to be together through love and then everything that we do is for

00:15:57.540 the purpose of showing God's love and we show God's love through a baby and through a marriage and a

00:16:04.400 family and everything like that. That was just so important to me and I would notice that my Protestant

00:16:09.560 friends didn't have that same aspect of what love means and they didn't have that same aspect

00:16:15.300 of what it meant to have a family and what it meant to procreate children, you know, and make

00:16:21.040 children and everything. So I found that their ideologies, their theologies were just lacking and

00:16:27.840 it was kind of upsetting because of the beauty of the Catholic church is that it teaches so much about 0.95

00:16:33.020 God's love and how it's how it's shown to us in very real things and one of them is a baby and that

00:16:40.140 just really meant so much to me. Right now as we are just having celebrated Christmas, Catholics go on 1.00

00:16:47.860 with the celebration of Christmas not only even for the first eight days but also into the whole

00:16:51.460 Christmas season whereas everybody takes their lives down. We're still putting them up and keeping

00:16:55.260 them up well into the month of January. First of all, congratulations, you're expecting. When are

00:17:03.640 you due? Are you due anytime soon? It's in the springtime. Okay, beautiful, beautiful. Well, I think

00:17:09.260 there's going to be a lot of people praying for you for your baby and that things go well. Tell us, if you

00:17:15.500 will, your convictions around what you do. You're a conservative activist, if you will. Has your Catholic

00:17:23.720 faith influenced that at all? Do you find yourself taking a bit of a different take on things from

00:17:30.540 when you were an atheist before? I would say yes, I have. One of them is how angry I always was at the 0.86

00:17:39.460 people who would treat me poorly in public. It made me also lash out back at them. It also made me just

00:17:47.240 really bitter in resentment towards this entire group of people just because they had a political

00:17:53.580 leaning and I hated them. I hated them for what they would tell. I hated them for the policies. I

00:18:00.680 hated them for what they would say about me and how they would treat me and my family and everything

00:18:05.520 like that. Now I just step back and I can say, you are hurt. You are burdened by some type of

00:18:14.720 evilness surrounding you and it's not me that you're mad at. You need grace. You need God. You need to

00:18:23.540 seek out what's hurting you and why you're hurting me. It's allowed me to calm down, not have such a

00:18:29.580 hate-filled heart, and it's allowed me to just accept circumstances a lot. It's not influenced any of

00:18:37.220 my convictions, I would say. It's just changed how I react to the people who don't share them with me.

00:18:44.420 It's made me a lot more pro-life. Not that I wasn't pro-life before, but now it just has a whole new

00:18:51.360 meaning to the evils of abortion and what's going on in our country. And in my video that I released,

00:18:59.320 I explained that being pro-life as an atheist, it's just lacking. It's just lacking. Why do people have

00:19:06.440 inherent value? Why is it wrong to kill? Why is it wrong to do anything? Where does right and wrong

00:19:12.080 come from? So getting it to a deeper understanding on a different level of those questions has made

00:19:17.920 me stronger in my convictions. It's just made me accept the people who don't agree with me so much.

00:19:24.840 One of the neat things about your video is your video where you come out as a Catholic and reveal

00:19:29.680 your faith is your evident love for Our Lady. How did you get there specifically on that

00:19:36.040 question? And what does Our Lady mean to you? I would say a lot of it has to do about how I got to

00:19:43.160 this point is seeing how much people dragged her, how much people lied about her, and how many people

00:19:52.060 just reacted so negatively to images of her, to quotes from her. And I just started to wonder,

00:20:00.860 why is the mother of our Lord so disregarded and even hated and called an incubator and called a

00:20:11.900 vessel to so many non-Catholics, especially in America? I don't know what it is about this country, 1.00

00:20:19.800 but this country really rejects Mary or the idea that she is important. So when I started trying to

00:20:27.220 understand where they would come from from this, it didn't make sense. None of it made sense. We know

00:20:33.360 that in their Bibles, they kind of changed the context and called her a favored one. And this is

00:20:39.540 something else about the Catholic Church that I really, really love. We know that that quote is

00:20:45.660 actually not favored one, it's full of grace. And in the original language that that was written in,

00:20:51.340 that means without sin, that means blessed, that means perfect. And knowing that the church

00:20:58.740 comes from a place where we study the original context, the languages and the customs that

00:21:05.760 happened during Jesus's time period, we have a full understanding of what they mean. We don't have

00:21:10.860 to guess and we don't have to change words to get to that point. I wouldn't go back to just saying

00:21:17.000 my pregnancy has really related me and drawn me to her about what it means to be a good mother,

00:21:25.300 what it means to be a good woman, what it means to just love and be accepting and just let God's will

00:21:33.540 work through you and accepting it and not trying to fight it so much. So I just, I just love it. I really,

00:21:41.480 I really just love it.

00:21:42.600 It's in the scriptures that we hear from St. Elizabeth, who said when Our Lady came to her

00:21:50.260 as her younger cousin, who's only just a young girl, and Elizabeth is already an older lady who

00:21:56.140 was owed in that time massive respect by this young cousin of hers. And yet she exclaims when she sees

00:22:02.260 Mary, who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

00:22:06.840 That gives me goosebumps. And it's so funny you bring that up because I was just asking Justin last night,

00:22:12.220 why, how do people read that? You know, the solo scripture of people, how do people read that?

00:22:18.160 And Elizabeth didn't claim, oh, my Lord came to me. She said, the mother of my Lord came to me. Who am I

00:22:26.120 that you should come to me? She was talking about Mary. And Mary's a very important person because she

00:22:33.300 was the first Christian. She's the first person to say yes to Christ. And I also have a wonderful

00:22:39.680 priest. And I'm so blessed. I'm so blessed to have him in my life and in my family's life that

00:22:47.160 really just does an awesome job of paying honor to her. He explains it so much better than I ever

00:22:54.020 could. He's like a he's like Google. He's like Google for Catholics. But the way that he talks about 0.87

00:23:00.520 her to seeing a priest talk about her in the way he does is something that's very touching as well.

00:23:06.080 Well, Caitlin, any other words of encouragement or advice for any of your fans that might be seeing

00:23:13.240 this interview?

00:23:14.040 My fans who might be seeing this interview, open your mind a little bit to perhaps maybe I'm not,

00:23:21.760 I don't worship statues. I don't worship Mary. We don't. We're not doing witchcraft in the church.

00:23:28.780 I promise you there's none going on there. It just makes me sad that there's so much,

00:23:33.360 there's so much more to offer my fans who don't so much agree with the Catholicism part.

00:23:39.920 I would just, just keep an open mind and please continue to pray for me. And while you can be

00:23:46.500 angry with my conversion to Catholicism, I know it comes from a place of concern and caring. And I

00:23:52.280 appreciate everybody who's concerned for me. And I just ask that everybody continue to pray for me

00:23:58.020 that I end up on the right path and I go down the right path and I end up where I'm supposed to be.

00:24:04.080 And that's it. I guess please just continue to pray for me. That's all I can ask.

00:24:09.240 That's beautiful, Caitlin. The teaching of the church is very clear that compared to Jesus Christ

00:24:14.940 himself, Our Lady is nothing, not even a grain of sand in the greatest work on Our Lady that the

00:24:19.600 church has. That's how St. Louis de Montfort puts it. And you know, what else is true is that no one

00:24:26.300 could love Our Lady more than her son, Jesus did. Thank you so much for being with us, Caitlin.

00:24:33.080 God bless you. And we wish you all the best for your baby that you're carrying now.

00:24:37.320 Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

00:24:39.600 And God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time on the John Henry Weston Show.

00:24:43.580 We have been warning everyone who would listen and attempting to build up alternative platforms

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The John-Henry Westen Show - January 04, 2022

Political provocateur goes from pro-life atheist to full fledged Catholic who embraces motherhood

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