Political provocateur goes from pro-life atheist to full fledged Catholic who embraces motherhood
Summary
Many of you know her as a very outspoken conservative activist who really took the stage by storm. Today, we re going to learn about her conversion to the Catholic faith, which I think came as a shock to some. Caitlin Bennett is a YouTuber, podcaster, and all-around entertainer who recently came out as a Catholic.
Transcript
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Being pro-life as an atheist, it's just lacking. It's just lacking. Why do people have inherent
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value? Why is it wrong to kill? Why is it wrong to do anything? Where does right and wrong come from?
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Welcome to the John Henry Weston Show. Ladies and gentlemen, you're going to want to stick
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around for this one. We have with us someone who's actually quite famous. Her name is Caitlin Bennett.
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Many of you know her as a very outspoken conservative activist who really took the stage
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by storm. We're going to learn, though, about her conversion to the Catholic faith,
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which I think came as a shock to some. So stay tuned.
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Let's begin as we always do at the side of the cross.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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So Caitlin, while many, many know a lot about you, about your show, and about what you do,
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tell, for those who don't know, please tell us a little bit about yourself,
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and really what brought you to the public stage?
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I am basically just a conservative YouTuber. I don't like to call myself an influencer or anything
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like that. I'm just a YouTuber, and I go out there, and I go into the lion's den where I'm not
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welcome, which is usually college campuses, liberal rallies, and pro-choice rallies, and basically just
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confront them about the things that they believe in, the things that they push, and why are they
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lying to tons of people about their propaganda? And what kind of got me into the spotlight was
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gun rights activism on my college campus, Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. I took a picture
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with an AR-10 on my campus to protest gun laws there, and that kind of just opened the door for
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How many fans or subscribers on YouTube do you have?
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On YouTube, I think we have a little over 600,000. On Facebook, I almost had a million. We can get
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into that later, but that's Twitter. I don't know. I don't really use Twitter, but yeah.
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Okay, so a massive, massive following. And just recently, not too long ago now, you sort of came out,
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if you will, as a Catholic. A very beautiful video you put out explaining a bit your faith.
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Wanted to delve more into that, because that's a radical move. I'm sure it shocked some of your
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fans. Why don't you start telling us a little bit about your background, because you came from
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atheism and how you got there in the first place.
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So in my video, I kind of go into just dipping my toes into the water, explaining how I arrived at
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atheism. I would say a lot of it has to do with being very confused and also being very scared.
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I was very, very scared at what I heard about religion. I was very scared about what I heard
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if you did something wrong. I also had a lot of influences from adults in my life that also told
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me that not everything in the Bible is true, and you don't need to go to church, and church is just
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for money. So all of those things coming down on a 10 to 12 year old, you just kind of start to
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dismiss it all. And Christ and God and religion and church was never the focus of anything, any part of
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my life growing up and not blaming my parents too much. I love them very much because I wouldn't be who
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I am without them. That's one thing that I think made me who I was and really led me down the path
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of atheism. I ended up learning that what I believe in and what I know is right and wrong and what I can
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come to my senses about with just common sense and using my brain, it didn't end up making a lot
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of sense in the long run. And I really rejected and I dismissed that conversation that I would have
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with myself every night when I was lying awake scared of dying. I was just so overwhelmed with
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this feeling of why am I here? What happens when I die? If I'm wrong, what's going to happen? And
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furthermore, not even just for my sake and my salvation, I was really worried about what it meant
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for my family and what it meant for my friends. And it just scared me. It scared me a lot. So I started
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asking questions. And I guess that's, that's a little bit of the background. I just started asking
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questions. You lived your life for a long time. As an atheist, you came to some kind of peace that way,
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I presume. What unsettled you more recently to make you consider the faith? Or maybe it wasn't
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unsettling. Maybe it was some kind of assurance or what? My husband has always been a very devout
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Catholic. And before we got married, he decided let's have a second wedding in the church so that
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he can do the sacrament of holy matrimony. And I was like, oh, whatever, you know, I'll do it for you.
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It's fine or whatever. And it was just, it was, it was a beautiful experience. It was very touching
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and seeing how much it meant to him really made me wonder like, what is it about all of this? What is
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it about the church and Catholicism and Christianity in general that draws him so far to where he wanted
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to have a whole nother second wedding just for this sacrament? What is a sacrament? What does this mean?
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I would think, I would say my turning point in all of this was when I was at a college campus,
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Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and I was being attacked by a mob of four to 500 students.
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And one, one person, I can credit him to making me just kind of flip a switch. He was badgering me.
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He was following me. I had hot, I had burns on my skin because I was being burned with hot coffee that
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was being dumped on me. And he goes, you Christians, you know, you told somebody that he was going to
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hell because he's gay. You, you tell people they're going to hell. I turn around and I said,
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I'm an atheist. I've never said that. And his eyes just lit up with a sparkle. And they were like,
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you, you're an atheist. I had, I had no clue. I'm so sorry. Oh, I wouldn't have treated you like
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this. And I'm sitting here thinking, this cannot be the group that I fit in with. I can, I cannot align
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with somebody who, whose eyes sparkle at the news that I am like them in that certain way. And I was
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like, this cannot be right. I can, I cannot be in this same mentality of this guy who is chasing me,
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a woman down the parking lot of being, while being mobbed and out of campus. I can't fit in here.
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This can't be right. So I must be the wrong person here. I must be in the wrong here. The second moment
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would probably be learning about the seven deadly sins and learning that pride was the worst one,
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you know, the, the most deadly of the seven deadly sins, as we would say, and realizing that, um,
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we have a whole month dedicated to that. And there is no coincidences with the amount of perversion
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and just disgustingness that goes on within that entire movement and the assaults that I've had
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during pride month at, uh, pride parades. And it just, all of it started making connecting dots.
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And, uh, that's when I started asking more questions and just being mind blown at the truth.
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You know, a lot of people have come to faith after seeing evil. And, uh, when you see it,
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and then it's sort of related to yourself, uh, that becomes very unsettling. Indeed,
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when you, um, went toward the faith, there's often something that draws you in. Obviously,
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uh, some of the people I know who were happily atheist before, uh, believe themselves to be
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pretty darn good. And, uh, just when they saw evil in the faith realized, oh my gosh, there's a devil.
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There must be a God. And then had that quest for, uh, learning of the faith. Did you get that
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hunger for learning about the faith as well? I did. I did. I got it from watching, like I said,
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my husband, I got it from learning and understanding why all of these terrible
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things were happening in our country and that it can't just be because people just decided one day
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to, you know, do all the, push these things on our children and try to sexualize our children
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and try to lock us in our homes and all of these crazy, crazy, crazy things. There had to be a reason
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why this was happening. And then, like I said, I connected the dots and, um, asking about why
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these dots would be connected ends up, you end up just wanting to learn more about it in general,
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which led to the discovering more about Catholicism and Christianity and the church and the good
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aspects of the faith. I want to ask why Catholicism? Because Christianity has its own,
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um, you know, moral, that's very similar, but there are very, very many, especially in the United
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States who would say, Oh, why did you do that? Why did you choose the Catholic faith? Um, so what led
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you there other than your husband? I know Justin's a great guy, but, uh, if you would explain that.
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Yeah. So that was going to be probably the number one influence was I married him because I trust him
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and I married him because I love him. And I, I trust that he would not lead me down a path that
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was bad for me. If you were marrying someone and you don't trust them to lead you, uh, as a woman,
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if you're a woman and you're marrying a man and you don't trust him to lead you, uh, and in different
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aspects of life, then probably shouldn't marry him. So when he was asking me to go down this journey
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and he was leading me here, I just, I knew it was right because I trusted him. But more than anything,
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I would say it's learning the history of the Catholic church, knowing it started with Jesus
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Christ himself. And there is an answer for almost any question you have that has either been debated
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and has been written about. There have been councils about it and meetings among the church fathers
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and all kinds of people that have answered very, very deep and meaningful questions to where
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we can trust that the answers the Catholic church gives us are true and they're meaningful and they
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mean something. And it's not just read the Bible for yourself, come to your own conclusion. I really,
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really love that the Catholic church has a history of just being truthful, being honest,
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and just getting into these dirty details to figure out these questions for us because it takes an
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awful lot of weight off of my shoulders to open this massive book that was not originally written in
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the English language to understand what it's supposed to mean for me. And I don't think it's very settling
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knowing that there are, there's millions, billions of people out there that can read the same book
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and come to a different interpretation. And furthermore, I believe it is the only church,
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and I don't like saying Catholicism is a denomination because it's not, it's the one true church. So it's not
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like Presbyterian or Baptist or anything. It is the only church and the only group of people who give,
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I would say, the honor to Mary that she deserves. I see a lot of hatred for our mother among Protestants,
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especially in my comment section. And I don't understand where it comes from because how the
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Catholic church honors her is so beautiful. And as someone who is expecting, who is a mother now,
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I love the grace and I love, I love the love that the church has for Mary. It's very,
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very touching to me as someone who is currently pregnant. So that's in a gist how I ended up to
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where I am. I also, and I didn't just go along with my husband and say, oh, you know, thanks for
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all the answers. I'll just go along with you. I talked to so many different people. I talked to
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people who weren't even Christians and I asked them all the same exact questions. The only people
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who came back to me with a fulfilled answer and an answer that made sense and had proof and backing
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and, like I said, documents with it were my Catholic friends. They were very confident in
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their answers because these questions have already been answered for them. It's not something they
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made up. It's something that they've gotten from people far more knowledgeable than themselves.
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The scriptures themselves in 1st St. Peter talk about Paul. They're describing, St. Peter's actually
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describing Paul's writings and say, he says that many of Paul's writings are things that people
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interpret to their own destruction, which is a very instructive little passage in the scriptures
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themselves. So tell us about some of these questions that you had personally, questions that
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were bothering you that you found a satisfactory answer for, if you're able to share one of those.
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I would say a lot of them had to do with the Bible itself. And one of the most revealing things
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I learned was that we aren't meant to take the Bible 100% literally. There could be,
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you know, stories involved. There could be different types of language used to get the point across to
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people. And I'm like, well, there's no way that a snake could talk to Eve and do all this stuff.
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And Justin's like, well, we don't know if it's actually a snake. And I'm like, so you're telling me
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not everything has to be the way that it's drawn up in pictures and given to us as kids and everything.
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That was very, that was very defining where the Bible came from. That was one of the first
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questions I had. How do we know that this is something that we can trust? Where did it come
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from? And learning that the Catholic church compiled the Bible and then Protestants later took parts out
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in mixed up context. That was an eye-opener for me. And asking my friends, like, why,
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how can you, you know, they, they hate the Catholic church. There are people who hate the Catholic
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church, as I'm sure you know. Answering, listening to their answers, it wasn't good enough for me. It
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just wasn't good enough about why they take the book that the Catholic church compiled and mess with it
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and then say that the Catholic church has been wrong all along. That was a big one. Um, and I would say
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another good question is that I asked was basically the concept of love and what love means and knowing
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that God is love and that I'm getting emotional and, and knowing that, um, I would say being pregnant
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and trying for a baby and going through this experience was really touching because learning
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how God has formed men and women to be together through love and then everything that we do is for
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the purpose of showing God's love and we show God's love through a baby and through a marriage and a
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family and everything like that. That was just so important to me and I would notice that my Protestant
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friends didn't have that same aspect of what love means and they didn't have that same aspect
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of what it meant to have a family and what it meant to procreate children, you know, and make
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children and everything. So I found that their ideologies, their theologies were just lacking and
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it was kind of upsetting because of the beauty of the Catholic church is that it teaches so much about
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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
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just really meant so much to me. Right now as we are just having celebrated Christmas, Catholics go on
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with the celebration of Christmas not only even for the first eight days but also into the whole
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Christmas season whereas everybody takes their lives down. We're still putting them up and keeping
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them up well into the month of January. First of all, congratulations, you're expecting. When are
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you due? Are you due anytime soon? It's in the springtime. Okay, beautiful, beautiful. Well, I think
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there's going to be a lot of people praying for you for your baby and that things go well. Tell us, if you
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will, your convictions around what you do. You're a conservative activist, if you will. Has your Catholic
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faith influenced that at all? Do you find yourself taking a bit of a different take on things from
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when you were an atheist before? I would say yes, I have. One of them is how angry I always was at the
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people who would treat me poorly in public. It made me also lash out back at them. It also made me just
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really bitter in resentment towards this entire group of people just because they had a political
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leaning and I hated them. I hated them for what they would tell. I hated them for the policies. I
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hated them for what they would say about me and how they would treat me and my family and everything
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like that. Now I just step back and I can say, you are hurt. You are burdened by some type of
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evilness surrounding you and it's not me that you're mad at. You need grace. You need God. You need to
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seek out what's hurting you and why you're hurting me. It's allowed me to calm down, not have such a
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hate-filled heart, and it's allowed me to just accept circumstances a lot. It's not influenced any of
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my convictions, I would say. It's just changed how I react to the people who don't share them with me.
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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
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meaning to the evils of abortion and what's going on in our country. And in my video that I released,
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I explained that being pro-life as an atheist, it's just lacking. It's just lacking. Why do people have
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inherent value? Why is it wrong to kill? Why is it wrong to do anything? Where does right and wrong
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come from? So getting it to a deeper understanding on a different level of those questions has made
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me stronger in my convictions. It's just made me accept the people who don't agree with me so much.
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One of the neat things about your video is your video where you come out as a Catholic and reveal
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your faith is your evident love for Our Lady. How did you get there specifically on that
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question? And what does Our Lady mean to you? I would say a lot of it has to do about how I got to
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this point is seeing how much people dragged her, how much people lied about her, and how many people
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just reacted so negatively to images of her, to quotes from her. And I just started to wonder,
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why is the mother of our Lord so disregarded and even hated and called an incubator and called a
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vessel to so many non-Catholics, especially in America? I don't know what it is about this country,
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but this country really rejects Mary or the idea that she is important. So when I started trying to
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understand where they would come from from this, it didn't make sense. None of it made sense. We know
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that in their Bibles, they kind of changed the context and called her a favored one. And this is
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something else about the Catholic Church that I really, really love. We know that that quote is
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actually not favored one, it's full of grace. And in the original language that that was written in,
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that means without sin, that means blessed, that means perfect. And knowing that the church
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comes from a place where we study the original context, the languages and the customs that
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happened during Jesus's time period, we have a full understanding of what they mean. We don't have
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to guess and we don't have to change words to get to that point. I wouldn't go back to just saying
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my pregnancy has really related me and drawn me to her about what it means to be a good mother,
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what it means to be a good woman, what it means to just love and be accepting and just let God's will
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work through you and accepting it and not trying to fight it so much. So I just, I just love it. I really,
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It's in the scriptures that we hear from St. Elizabeth, who said when Our Lady came to her
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as her younger cousin, who's only just a young girl, and Elizabeth is already an older lady who
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was owed in that time massive respect by this young cousin of hers. And yet she exclaims when she sees
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Mary, who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
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That gives me goosebumps. And it's so funny you bring that up because I was just asking Justin last night,
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why, how do people read that? You know, the solo scripture of people, how do people read that?
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And Elizabeth didn't claim, oh, my Lord came to me. She said, the mother of my Lord came to me. Who am I
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that you should come to me? She was talking about Mary. And Mary's a very important person because she
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was the first Christian. She's the first person to say yes to Christ. And I also have a wonderful
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priest. And I'm so blessed. I'm so blessed to have him in my life and in my family's life that
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really just does an awesome job of paying honor to her. He explains it so much better than I ever
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could. He's like a he's like Google. He's like Google for Catholics. But the way that he talks about
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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
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My fans who might be seeing this interview, open your mind a little bit to perhaps maybe I'm not,
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I don't worship statues. I don't worship Mary. We don't. We're not doing witchcraft in the church.
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I promise you there's none going on there. It just makes me sad that there's so much,
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there's so much more to offer my fans who don't so much agree with the Catholicism part.
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I would just, just keep an open mind and please continue to pray for me. And while you can be
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angry with my conversion to Catholicism, I know it comes from a place of concern and caring. And I
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appreciate everybody who's concerned for me. And I just ask that everybody continue to pray for me
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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.
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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
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church has. That's how St. Louis de Montfort puts it. And you know, what else is true is that no one
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could love Our Lady more than her son, Jesus did. Thank you so much for being with us, Caitlin.
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God bless you. And we wish you all the best for your baby that you're carrying now.
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And God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time on the John Henry Weston Show.
00:24:43.580
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