The John-Henry Westen Show - ‘We took an oath'： Devout Catholic school board member fights back against LGBT mob

00:00:00.000 Today, I'm going to give you a chance to meet and to help a Catholic hero.

00:00:04.840 Michael Del Grande is a Catholic school trustee in Toronto.

00:00:08.560 He's been targeted by LGBTQ activists and their allies on the Catholic school board in Toronto since November 7th, 2019,

00:00:16.960 when he tabled a motion opposing the addition of terms like family and marital status, gender expression, gender identity,

00:00:24.360 as protected categories under the Catholic school board's code of conduct.

00:00:28.160 He wanted to protect the right of Catholic schools to forbid things like men dressed as women from teaching Catholic students.

00:00:35.320 His motion suggested that trustees consider what would happen if they added other sexually aberrant categories of behavior,

00:00:42.520 such as pedophilia or cannibalism, as protected categories.

00:00:46.800 It was, of course, an attempt to illustrate that the Catholic board was on a slippery slope by adding gender terms to the code in contradiction of Catholic teaching.

00:00:56.060 The motion sparked outrage, as well as the number of complaints against Del Grande for allegedly violating the trustee code of conduct.

00:01:05.180 He was cleared at first by an independent review, but as the left always does, they try and try again with bullying in between to get their wish.

00:01:14.000 And sure enough, one of the trustees switched their votes, and now Del Grande is lawyered up and fighting.

00:01:20.140 Not so much for his rights as for Catholic students and parents who deserve to have a Catholic education.

00:01:28.040 There's a hero coming right up.

00:01:30.080 Stay tuned.

00:01:44.000 Michael Del Grande, welcome to the program.

00:01:52.520 Thank you for having me.

00:01:53.900 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.

00:01:56.520 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

00:02:00.660 Amen.

00:02:00.920 As I said off the top, it is a great privilege for me to be speaking with you.

00:02:06.780 I really do consider you a hero.

00:02:09.820 Not only a Catholic hero for the faith, but also for moms and dads of Catholic parents who send their children to Catholic schools for a Catholic education.

00:02:21.780 Mike, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, about your position right now, and we'll start there.

00:02:27.220 Well, I'm retired, and I got elected to an official position to be on the board of trustees for the Catholic school board in the city of Toronto.

00:02:37.340 My previous background had been as a chartered accountant, or as you would say in the States, a CPA in Canadian terms.

00:02:47.040 I've got a Master's of Theological degree.

00:02:49.820 I have a Bachelor of Education for teaching purposes, and I have a Bachelor of Commerce.

00:02:56.560 And I worked for 20 years with a drug retailer in Canada, known as Shoppers Drug Mart, who used to own people's drugs in the States.

00:03:07.200 I also became a City of Toronto councillor for 11 years, after I finished my professional work with Shoppers Drug Mart.

00:03:17.380 And so I've had about 27 years of public service, elected public service, but prior to that, I was also involved in other local volunteer activities.

00:03:33.380 Absolutely.

00:03:33.820 And one thing to understand, I think everyone needs to understand about this, is that in Canada, the Catholic schools are actually publicly funded.

00:03:42.800 So it's basically they're like public schools, but because of our agreements in our charter and so on, we have funding for Catholic schools that comes out of the public purse, as it were.

00:03:53.860 So it's basically just like public schools, but they are Catholic ostensibly under the charge of the Bishop of the Diocese, but it's run by a trustees board.

00:04:04.280 Explain that a little bit, if you will, and your position there.

00:04:07.440 First of all, in Canada, not all the provinces fund Catholic schools.

00:04:13.720 Some of them fund up to 50%, some fund 100%, and some fund absolutely zero.

00:04:20.560 So as part of the Confederation of Canada, the Building of Canada, the Constitution allowed for education for French Catholics and English Protestants, basically, in order to form our perfect union,

00:04:38.900 that there would be an understanding that schools would be recognized under our constitution, and that the issue of education would become a provincial jurisdiction.

00:04:55.080 And we, at the time, didn't have all 10 provinces in 1867.

00:05:01.880 So in some provinces, for example, in Quebec, French majority, their schools were basically background in French Catholic.

00:05:13.540 In Ontario, the province that I am from, it basically was English Protestant.

00:05:20.300 And so there was recognition that English Protestants in Quebec would be recognized,

00:05:26.060 and French Catholics in Ontario would be recognized primarily.

00:05:30.980 But the French part got dropped, and the English part got dropped.

00:05:35.140 So it became Catholic and Protestant with respect to the two major provinces in Canada.

00:05:41.000 And the governance of those schools were with ratepayers who elected officials to represent them on the schools in order to determine the budget for the school, the taxation.

00:05:55.760 At one point, the taxation for Catholic schools was being taxed on your property tax.

00:06:01.840 So you had to declare, if you were Catholic, your taxes were directed to the Catholic system.

00:06:06.280 If you were public, by default, everything went to the public school system.

00:06:11.780 And up until about 1985, that system was in place when the government came out and said that they were going to now fund per student.

00:06:21.720 They were going to fund each student, depending on where they wanted to go, and to either a public school or a Catholic school.

00:06:27.980 So we have per-pupil funding.

00:06:30.060 And people sometimes confuse the fact that because we're publicly funded that somehow we owe a specific allegiance to the government because we're publicly funded.

00:06:40.340 But in 1847, when our first school was in place, the ratepayers paid directly to support the schools, I guess, in the same ways parochial schools, until such time as an act was passed in 1863 called the Scott Act.

00:06:57.700 And it then recognized that the state would help to fund, to an extent, Catholic schools in Ontario.

00:07:05.760 So that's where we find ourselves in with representation, I guess, of our Catholic schools.

00:07:12.740 We have to follow curriculum set up by the province.

00:07:16.820 We have to follow various rules and regulations.

00:07:19.480 But we have constitutionally embedded a right of denominational rights to teach in our schools our faith.

00:07:28.680 Right. So the school system in Ontario, at least most of the school boards, seem to have gotten out of the practice of Catholicism.

00:07:39.180 One of the things that we've seen that's been very much of concern to Catholic parents who want the real faith is that the Catholic teachers union is pushing all sorts of anti-Catholic agendas, particularly the LGBT agenda.

00:07:57.700 How does that figure for Catholic trustees such as yourself?

00:08:03.540 And what have you seen of that debate?

00:08:05.080 Well, first of all, we need to understand what constitutes a Catholic school.

00:08:10.520 And a Supreme Court decision in Canada established that a Catholic school is only Catholic with respect to the teacher in the classroom.

00:08:19.100 So that means whether I'm a trustee or the principal of the school or a superintendent, that does not define a Catholic school, nor does the name on the school define a Catholic school.

00:08:30.420 The Catholic school is defined by the Catholic teacher in the classroom.

00:08:35.120 So the teacher has to be Catholic.

00:08:36.820 And that's what defines a Catholic school.

00:08:38.900 That's that's enshrined in constitutional law that the Supreme Court established.

00:08:45.940 So the the union is a separate entity from the trustees or the Catholic ethos, if you will.

00:08:57.160 And they march to their own tune.

00:09:00.940 They're there for their union members.

00:09:05.540 I've never really heard them claim that they're there for the kids, although they say, well, we're doing this for the kids.

00:09:10.600 We're going on strike because of the kids.

00:09:12.760 But at the end of the day, they have their own concerns, which are basically their members, which is, in my opinion, somewhat different than my responsibility, which is the children directly and their parents basically indirectly.

00:09:29.600 In the school board, as you've been representing Catholic parents and Catholic students, you have been attacked quite vehemently for your Catholic beliefs, trying to represent the Catholic faith.

00:09:44.020 What's happened there?

00:09:45.440 And where are things at currently?

00:09:46.840 Well, first of all, I should explain that I have a public and a religious component in terms of in the public sphere.

00:09:57.940 I have to be over 18 and I have to be a Canadian citizen in order to run for office.

00:10:05.520 And in order to run for Catholic office, I have to be a Roman Catholic.

00:10:10.960 Now, it doesn't mean I have to be a practicing Roman Catholic.

00:10:13.700 I just have to be Roman Catholic that I got baptized at some point.

00:10:17.800 OK.

00:10:19.500 And there's a difference between Roman Catholic and faithful Catholic.

00:10:22.540 So the situation here that I've been attacked on is that with the concept of the Catholic teacher being in the Catholic school, the board has taken on the position that the government, through its human rights branch, has mandated that certain protected rights be given to various groups.

00:10:49.360 And they have indicated that we have to adopt gender identity, we have to adopt gender expression, we have to adopt marital status, and we have to adopt family status in our system.

00:11:07.240 Now, the danger with that is that if you adopt that in what is called our code of conduct, I personally felt that that was an infringement upon our denominational rights. 0.76

00:11:21.260 And I was concerned about the concept of that if the teacher is no longer Catholic, the classroom, the school can no longer be Catholic.

00:11:31.320 If scandal is caused in our church, in our schools, which have the nomenclature of Catholic, then it's something that needs to be addressed.

00:11:41.580 You can't just sweep that under the carpet.

00:11:44.240 A lot of things go unchallenged.

00:11:46.260 People don't go hunting for divorced teachers, for example. 1.00

00:11:52.740 They don't do that unless it causes some sort of scandal in the public domain.

00:11:57.680 It's scandalous.

00:11:58.740 So if we adopt, for example, marital status, if there's a problem now that our teachers are no longer married, they're divorced, their conditions are such that it could be questioned whether they really are Catholic anymore, then that disrupts the apple cart with respect as the classroom Catholic.

00:12:22.220 If two teachers of the same sex are married and pronounce that, you cannot discipline, you cannot dismiss those teachers, whereas before you could dismiss teachers that weren't Catholic. 0.50

00:12:42.500 So if a principal of a school became a member of another religion, etc., then you can't say, well, how can that person now be a leader in the Catholic faith when they no longer believe in the Catholic faith?

00:12:58.080 So it's just common sense logic to say you can no longer teach here because your viewpoint of the Catholic world, of the Catholic understanding, is no longer there, and you shouldn't be allowed to influence children with your own personal decisions that you've made.

00:13:15.800 So I don't have to say about gender identity, which has been a big, big thing in the Catholic world, and the church is undergoing a turmoil in this as well, which lay people like myself look to the church for guidance as to what is proper and what is not proper.

00:13:34.620 But we're affected by, but we're affected by, I think it was Pope Pius X with this issue of modernity.

00:13:40.460 Part of the defense, if you will, of my colleagues on this issue is that it's a human right, and the times dictate that human rights supersede denominational rights, supersede Catholic rights. 0.52

00:13:57.020 And that's a bit of an oxymoron to me because if you have a system that is supposed to be Catholic, how can you undermine that system with these other things that are creeping in?

00:14:09.540 The ongoing battle right now is flying the pride flag, not just for the day or recognizing it for the day, but flying it for the month.

00:14:18.300 And that opens up a whole kettle of issues, but again, the Catholic hierarchy, you have bishops that don't toe the line.

00:14:27.900 I mean, they like when Pope Francis says, who am I to judge?

00:14:32.320 So they jump on all that stuff, but then they don't want to deal with the fact that says you can't bless sin.

00:14:39.560 That is abhorrent.

00:14:40.680 And so we're getting to the situation that, for example, if we have these codes in our school board, if you have a same-sex couple that decides they want to send their child to a Catholic school,

00:14:54.940 and the teacher should be talking about the sacrament of marriage, and the teacher says, you know, it's one man and one woman and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

00:15:05.400 then we could set, I believe, we can set ourselves up for a complaint to say, oh, you violated human rights because I don't subscribe to that,

00:15:14.740 and you're teaching this to my child, and you shouldn't be teaching this to my child.

00:15:19.040 Well, we're in a Catholic school environment.

00:15:21.820 I mean, it just really, from my perspective, it upsets the whole table cart.

00:15:27.680 It's a slow movement, if you will, to undermine the Catholic school system to become secular.

00:15:33.400 I mean, what actual point is there to having a Catholic school system if you're not allowed to be Catholic anyway?

00:15:40.200 Interesting point that you made about these different groupings.

00:15:45.180 The Catholic faith is there for all, not just to pick on any particular sexual orientation.

00:15:51.920 So it was interesting you mentioned, you know, people who are divorced.

00:15:55.260 I mean, imagine a teacher who was married and had a few kids, and then, very public in the community,

00:16:02.220 and then decides for whatever reason to leave his wife and abandon those children, marry another woman,

00:16:09.540 and wants to have kids with her, and then decides, oh, by the way, I might as well marry two. 0.98

00:16:13.940 So it enters into a multiple-person union, but very public about it.

00:16:18.940 That's supposedly a Catholic and a Catholic teacher.

00:16:22.220 The principal can't draw attention to that under these newly proposed ways of going forward,

00:16:28.680 and discipline that teacher and say, wait a minute, you're not showing a Catholic example.

00:16:33.340 You're not being Catholic. 0.95

00:16:34.320 Therefore, you shouldn't be teaching in the Catholic school.

00:16:37.020 Please go and teach in the public schools.

00:16:39.980 We can't even do that, John.

00:16:41.320 We can't do that because the person runs through the teacher's union,

00:16:45.600 and the teacher's union then defends that person, that we cannot dismiss them,

00:16:51.300 that we should not dismiss them.

00:16:52.720 They will file a grievance.

00:16:54.560 We will go to arbitration.

00:16:55.840 We'll do all this stuff.

00:16:57.160 It becomes very legalistic and very expensive.

00:16:59.820 And so when you asked about the teacher's union, et cetera, that's what I meant by they're there for their members.

00:17:07.700 They have to defend their members.

00:17:10.440 I would say most cases.

00:17:12.220 I'm not part of the union, but I do know that if you want to dismiss a teacher,

00:17:16.500 it's very, very, very difficult to do so.

00:17:20.200 So you're in a lawsuit right now.

00:17:22.300 Why don't you tell us about that, how it started, and where it's at right now?

00:17:25.200 Well, I don't want to get into some specifics because it's called a judicial review.

00:17:34.640 And so what happened was we had a debate on November the 7th, 2019.

00:17:41.880 This is where the board wanted to talk about adopting these four terminologies in our code of conduct.

00:17:48.960 And there were myself and three other trustees who felt that this could not be done.

00:17:55.140 And part of that, John Henry, was that we took an oath as Catholic school trustees as opposed to public school trustees.

00:18:02.320 We took an oath to the magisterium that we would obey and follow the teaching magisterium.

00:18:08.400 So that's basically over our heads.

00:18:10.780 Not only are we public school trustees, but we're Catholic school trustees with other obligations.

00:18:17.140 So you have a conflict between public and Catholic in this kind of debate.

00:18:24.940 And so we debated that evening, and the item was supposed to be sent to another committee.

00:18:31.520 And the meeting was about seven hours long.

00:18:34.760 It went into the three o'clock in the morning, started at six o'clock the previous day.

00:18:40.960 And we were losing the battle.

00:18:43.400 We were losing the battle, and I got up, but three minutes worth, maybe the debate was 10 minutes of that seven hours.

00:18:51.080 I got up, and I said, look, facetiously, like, why stop at these four terms?

00:18:57.560 Why not look at everything?

00:18:58.900 Look at everything and tell me which is acceptable and which is not acceptable, and send it to committee.

00:19:05.600 And I began to read from Google.

00:19:09.520 I had Googled philias.

00:19:12.280 And there were all kinds of philias that were in there that, I mean, are beyond the pale for Catholic whatever.

00:19:19.500 But I said, look, let's not get into this thing every two, three years that we're going to add something and add something and add something.

00:19:25.460 Tell me what it is that was going to be acceptable and what isn't going to be acceptable.

00:19:30.980 And so I got taken to task because I was accused that I was comparing, for example, bestiality to the LGBT community, which I had not.

00:19:45.620 I did not compare.

00:19:47.220 I wasn't making any comparison.

00:19:48.880 I didn't say or point to any group or any person or whatever.

00:19:52.760 I was saying in general terms, tell me how far we're going to go with changing who we are.

00:20:01.880 And so the Cardinal of Toronto, Cardinal Collins, Thomas Collins, came out a few days later with a statement that they were not accepting the transgendered side of things.

00:20:21.400 I actually came out with a statement, didn't mention me at all or the other trustees, but said we cannot.

00:20:30.080 But we had been told in the debate that the archdiocese was okay with all this stuff, which I find out later through the, I don't know, news release or whatever from the archdiocese, that they were not okay with this particular thing.

00:20:45.560 And then about three, four days later, not a peek from anyone, I believe someone ran to the CBC, which is the National Television Radio Network of the Canadian government, and did what I call the big lie.

00:21:05.920 They associated my mentioning those feelings that I was talking about LGBT plus people, and I was making comparisons, and I was being hurtful, and I was this, and I was that. 0.78

00:21:19.460 And then all the other news networks, rather than checking, they ran with what I would call the big lie.

00:21:27.560 And so I was branded that I had done this when I had not done this.

00:21:32.940 And so the repercussions were fast and furious, because I held a teacher's license.

00:21:41.300 Some went so far as to remove my teacher's license to have me dismissed from the teaching profession.

00:21:49.000 I had not taught, but I had the degree for it, and I'm going in the process of trying to defend myself with the teacher's college.

00:21:59.480 But so they continued, and they continued, and then people in the government got involved, and politics being politics.

00:22:06.320 It's almost comparable, not quite with the master cake issue that you guys had in the States, where a baker decides, I'll bake cakes, et cetera, but I'm just not going to bake a cake that give an impression that I'm supportive of this.

00:22:23.680 But the complainants go after this guy to have his livelihood taken away, have his business license taken away, have his fundamental religious rights taken away.

00:22:40.880 We look at that master cake issue as part of the overall issue when we don't have a situation like that in Canada.

00:22:50.600 We look to Britain, and we look to the U.S. to look at precedents elsewhere if we don't have our own precedent.

00:22:58.280 So mine is somewhat of a precedent from the point of view.

00:23:03.820 The Education Act, which is what trustees fall under, have a section with respect to code of conduct.

00:23:11.800 And every board is to adopt a code of conduct.

00:23:14.460 Now, some boards adopt items in the code that go beyond the legislation, and there's a whole issue of can you do that, can you not do that, how far can you go.

00:23:26.380 So, but given that there was a code of conduct complaint made against me, the board decided that I had violated the code, that I was to be censured, I could not participate as a chair or vice chair of any committee.

00:23:46.520 I could not represent the board on any outside groups or committees, I was required to give an apology that I was wrong, and I had to go to re-education camp to learn about human rights and et cetera, et cetera.

00:24:05.420 So the process in that legislation said that I could appeal that decision of the board, so I did.

00:24:17.720 Ironically, this took place in the year 2020, November of 2020.

00:24:26.180 The quote, the infraction occurred November 2019.

00:24:30.140 In December of 2019, we had elections, we have elections every year for chair and vice chair of the board, et cetera.

00:24:37.920 I was elected by my peers to head some committees, to be chairs of some committees, okay?

00:24:44.960 They voted for me to be chairs of some committee.

00:24:47.800 We have 12 trustees, and seven is the majority.

00:24:51.380 So I got the majority to be on outside committees, et cetera, et cetera.

00:24:55.060 And then this thing became more and more and more political.

00:24:59.840 And on August the 20th, the board decided to make their vote as to whether I had violated the code of conduct.

00:25:11.200 And our bylaws say that you need seven out of the 12 to pass that resolution.

00:25:18.340 They didn't get seven.

00:25:20.400 They got six.

00:25:21.860 And so, therefore, the determination, as outlined by the legislation, was that, for lack of word, not guilty, okay?

00:25:33.180 But in the meantime, between that and the 2019, there were all kinds of back and forth accusations between trustees and that I had done something to the student trustee.

00:25:45.700 And it was like everything but the kitchen sink was thrown at me, that I was such a terrible, horrible guy, and look what he did, et cetera, and things were leaked.

00:25:54.580 And I was under the whole time.

00:25:56.800 I couldn't speak because everything was private and confidential, but all kinds of stuff was leaking out, and I couldn't respond to it.

00:26:04.320 So on August the 20th, when the determination was made, the political people at the Ontario government decided to get involved as well, too.

00:26:14.340 And we had the former Premier of Ontario, Kathleen Wynne.

00:26:19.140 Who, by the way, is a lesbian herself and one of the most anti-Catholic ministers we've ever had.

00:26:25.540 But anyway, please keep going. 0.66

00:26:26.900 You said that.

00:26:27.620 I didn't say that.

00:26:29.680 But she got involved.

00:26:31.720 She embarrassed the government.

00:26:33.640 The Minister of Education got involved as well, too.

00:26:37.520 And the board, through some of the trustees that were incensed that I wasn't found guilty, they have a provision to review the decision, et cetera.

00:26:51.080 And one of the people that wasn't on side with them, got on side with them, they got their seven votes and bang.

00:26:59.440 I was now guilty.

00:27:03.160 And so, you know, I had to hire a lawyer, et cetera, a very expensive lawyer, because the provision said that I could appeal it, which I did.

00:27:12.380 And then I could have a judicial review.

00:27:17.200 OK?

00:27:17.360 I don't believe there's been any situation where any trustee has gone for a judicial review.

00:27:22.500 Sounds kind of simple.

00:27:24.360 But the process is, like, worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars to fight, because what's occurred in my situation right now is that the board is defending their position.

00:27:41.600 And I guess, opposing my judicial review.

00:27:46.260 So that's the board.

00:27:47.640 And there are two government departments with two lawyers each.

00:27:52.260 So there's five lawyers.

00:27:53.400 So I have the might of the school board with deep pockets and the government with deep pockets fighting a simple trustee, OK, saying, look, I don't think this decision or how I've been treated is fair.

00:28:06.500 I think it should be reviewed.

00:28:07.940 Why?

00:28:08.180 Because if you continually can open up something, so a determination was made, you didn't get the result that you wanted, so you try again.

00:28:17.400 You don't get that.

00:28:18.480 You try again.

00:28:19.320 You try again.

00:28:20.060 You try.

00:28:20.500 How many times can you be tried for running a red light or, you know, any kind of legal infraction?

00:28:27.740 So I thought, you know, that's rather unfair.

00:28:31.100 You can't keep going until you get the decision that you want by pressuring the trustees to change their opinion to find me finally guilty.

00:28:38.340 And we had an ombudsman who basically indicated to other people that were unhappy with code of conduct violations against trustees saying, hey, the only way that this can be undone is to have a judicial review.

00:28:53.520 They didn't say that the decision can be reviewed over and over and over again.

00:28:59.500 So it's like double and triple and quadruple jeopardy until you get the decision that you want.

00:29:04.880 And that, I think, no matter where you go, this is a quasi-judicial application that occurred at the school board, okay?

00:29:15.580 It's still enshrined in the Education Act as to the process.

00:29:21.800 And so that process is quasi-judicial.

00:29:24.740 It puts upon the board to make a decision based upon legislation.

00:29:29.860 So they act in a position of authority to do that.

00:29:34.540 So my point is, look, I haven't been treated fairly, my belief.

00:29:40.300 Secondly, I was found not to be in violation because the number of seven was not reached.

00:29:47.320 And, you know, let me get on with my life.

00:29:49.720 And they came back and said, no, we're going to come at you again.

00:29:54.660 And so I asked the question.

00:29:56.240 I said, well, how many times can you come after me?

00:29:58.400 Well, we can come after you again and again, five times, six times, seven.

00:30:02.660 Well, even if you wanted to appoint a lawyer, you want to get appointed a lawyer six, seven times, et cetera, to keep battling and fighting.

00:30:11.740 That's just not fair in any kind of legal or fairness jurisdiction.

00:30:17.760 It's just not right.

00:30:18.920 Yeah.

00:30:19.000 Now, Mike, we are going to launch a Life Thunder campaign to help you to get Catholics to support what really is just a Catholic trustee trying to do his job that he was elected for to represent parents on the Board of Education so that their children could have a Catholic education.

00:30:39.160 But what's stunning to me in all this, you mentioned the deep pockets of the board and of the government that are funding the case against you, basically.

00:30:48.600 What have you heard in terms of support of your position from the place you think it would come from most, the Catholic bishop, the Catholic diocese?

00:30:59.840 It's kind of an oddity because maybe your viewers are not aware of this, but you have to look at the composition of the board and you have to say to yourself, why did this happen?

00:31:12.160 Okay, so we can call ourselves Catholics, but we have different views of what Catholicity means.

00:31:18.940 There are Catholics that believe in abortion, that it's okay, your president being one of those people. 0.77

00:31:26.620 You have people that believe in all kinds of rights, all kinds of recognitions for things that are not compatible with the Catholic faith.

00:31:36.640 I say that because there have been instances at our board where, one instance, someone came and quoted from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

00:31:48.800 Let me repeat that.

00:31:50.440 The Catechism of the Catholic Church in a Catholic school board meeting.

00:31:56.300 And that person was not allowed to quote the Catechism.

00:32:01.260 Okay?

00:32:01.480 Okay, so the cardinal got involved and said that that's not proper.

00:32:10.300 You are allowed to quote the Bible and you are allowed to quote the Catechism.

00:32:16.140 Another parent came in, an actual parent with children came in and also quoted the Bible and the Catechism.

00:32:27.440 And what they did to this poor man, a parent, every right to be there, to express his view about Catholic school being Catholic.

00:32:36.200 And this had to do with flying the gay pride flag.

00:32:39.820 Okay?

00:32:41.440 He was chastised and they went after this guy.

00:32:45.860 They went to his account on a professional, Lincoln, I believe it's called, Lincoln, to find out where did this guy work.

00:32:59.820 Okay?

00:32:59.980 And when they found out where he worked, they contacted his employer, which was a university in Ontario.

00:33:09.040 And the university, my understanding was that he was, he cannot teach.

00:33:15.260 He was teaching a program having nothing to do with religion, nothing to do with anything.

00:33:21.320 He was teaching about the insurance industry from which he comes from.

00:33:25.720 And the university, I understand, said that he was not with keeping with their values.

00:33:33.080 Okay, and this is a big problem for all of us everywhere, because corporations are now defining what their values are.

00:33:40.480 And if you don't fit into their values, you can't work for them, which is like, you know, freedom of religion is out.

00:33:47.740 So, they got him dismissed from that position.

00:33:52.860 And the cardinal then, once again, through the Catholic registrar, which is the newspaper of the archdiocese, again, indicated to the trustees that the parent had every right to speak and talk about the Bible and the catechism.

00:34:12.080 And that his reference to about little children, etc., taking a millstone, putting it around your head and, you know, drowning yourself, the opponents of this gentleman were trying to claim that he was trying to incite murder and violence against the people that supported the gay pride flag.

00:34:34.280 So, again, you know, the thing is stretched out to make black into white and white into black.

00:34:40.900 I mean, it's just a total, you know, whatever.

00:34:43.320 But the cardinal never came out to defend me in a key position of the workings of the Catholic school system to say, trustee Delgrande had every right to defend and maybe I'm not happy with what he chose to defend or the examples that he gave, but he certainly has every right.

00:35:08.560 And so, John Henry, I find it rather ludicrous that I'm there, I got invited to the archdiocese before this debate on November the 7th.

00:35:20.440 The archdiocese wasn't happy with what was going on.

00:35:23.120 And that was my understanding.

00:35:24.860 That was my direction, if you will, to fight this.

00:35:29.500 And I just felt lost.

00:35:31.580 I felt, you know, the other two guys, the archdiocese was very direct about them by name, the parent for sure, and myself hanging to dry.

00:35:45.580 No fundraisers, no nothing.

00:35:47.420 But then they feature in the Catholic register some of the people that came after me, and I don't want to get into it too much, but they're there, you know, featured articles about them.

00:36:06.840 And I'm scratching my head, and I'm going, and like, I'm not even one of the lost sheep of the 99.

00:36:14.360 I've been a faithful servant, John Henry.

00:36:19.600 I'm so disappointed because I am systemic.

00:36:23.360 I have systemic bias.

00:36:25.140 I do.

00:36:26.260 And my systemic bias is towards the faithfulness of my faith to the Catholic Church, okay?

00:36:32.580 And I just find, in this world today, that instead of being one holy Catholic and apostolic, in order to be one, the gospel and the values and the magisterium have to be taught in Samoa, as they have to be in Brazil, as they have to be in Africa, as they have to be in North America and the West.

00:36:52.140 You don't deviate, you don't have the luxury of deviating, otherwise you're not one.

00:36:58.080 And part of the problem, I believe, with our Catholicity, if you will, is many of our people don't get good catechism.

00:37:06.160 They don't, they're in name only Catholics.

00:37:08.780 They don't get good catechism.

00:37:09.880 And secondly, the higher echelon aren't speaking up in a way that makes everything seem united.

00:37:21.460 It's all kinds of confusions.

00:37:23.140 You have bishops in the United States.

00:37:26.220 I just got one recently promoted to the Vatican who is not on side with respect to abortion, not on side with respect to sexual activities, et cetera, et cetera.

00:37:37.880 And this is a bishop being promoted to this.

00:37:42.260 So what are lay people supposed to do and think?

00:37:46.460 And so I've also studied church history, and I know that the church history has not been perfect from the point of view of people, point of view of popes, point of view of anti-popes, point of view that St. Catherine of Siena had to grab the pope from France and bring him back to Rome.

00:38:05.720 The seat of Catholicism, that various saints with heresies, et cetera, had to bring the church back, the areas heresies, et cetera.

00:38:19.720 What lay people have had to do in order to bring the church back.

00:38:24.060 And we're in a time, as I say, much confusion, much difficulty.

00:38:27.540 And, you know, good Catholics are scratching their heads because one parish preaches one thing and another parish preaches another thing.

00:38:35.260 And we are servants.

00:38:36.480 Like, I'm a servant.

00:38:37.580 I don't express, you know, I'm accused of being a perfect Catholic.

00:38:42.820 You know, I'm mocked for being a perfect Catholic.

00:38:45.700 I'm not a perfect Catholic.

00:38:47.460 I am a faithful, a sinful, but faithful, practicing Catholic.

00:38:54.680 I go to mass every Sunday.

00:38:56.620 I always have been, but to follow everybody else because everybody's doing it, because, you know, it's human rights or it's modernity.

00:39:05.800 Like, the church has got to get in tune with what's going on.

00:39:09.280 They've got to adapt to the modern world.

00:39:11.840 And I'm going, that's basic Catholicity 100.

00:39:15.500 The church does not adapt to the modern world.

00:39:18.940 Okay?

00:39:19.500 The church is not part of the modern world.

00:39:22.040 The church is responsible for holiness and getting to heaven.

00:39:27.540 Yeah, absolutely.

00:39:29.320 There is incredible betrayal of the faith, of the faithful and of our Lord Jesus Christ on the behalf of the hierarchy.

00:39:39.320 So many in the hierarchy today are losing it, have lost it.

00:39:44.020 But, you know, what's really weird?

00:39:46.480 I'm used to that bishop you were speaking of who was just appointed to the Vatican.

00:39:51.160 That's Bishop McElroy. 0.51

00:39:53.560 And he's terrible.

00:39:55.260 He's against the church's teaching, really, on life, on family issues, and appointed by Pope Francis to a position of Vatican.

00:40:02.980 Actually, not very surprising, considering the track record of Pope Francis.

00:40:06.700 However, I am so perplexed by those in the hierarchy like Cardinal Collins, because you have a very strange thing there.

00:40:19.100 He's not consistently left.

00:40:22.320 Left in political terms is kind of weird to say, I know.

00:40:26.540 But he's not consistently faithful either.

00:40:29.740 This is the most bizarre thing.

00:40:31.440 He's back and forth.

00:40:32.600 He's sort of like lukewarm, if you will.

00:40:34.160 So, this is the same Cardinal who objected to Henry Morgenthaler having the Award of the Order of Canada.

00:40:41.820 Great thing to do.

00:40:43.300 This is the same Cardinal, though.

00:40:44.760 However, when the government of Ontario pushed to have these gay and lesbian clubs in Catholic schools, originally said, oh, don't worry, I'm going to deal with this.

00:40:57.600 And then what?

00:40:58.440 When they passed the law, he himself invited all Catholic schools.

00:41:03.880 This is the Cardinal invited all Catholic schools to have these LGBT clubs.

00:41:10.800 Unbelievable.

00:41:11.320 But it comes from a place of, well, you know what?

00:41:15.540 I don't even know what place that comes from.

00:41:17.620 But it shows.

00:41:18.560 So, I'm not surprised at all to see that, yes, he made a little bit of an objection when a parent said something.

00:41:24.460 And then people on the school, the Catholic school board, went after this Catholic parent and got him fired from his job.

00:41:31.760 Yeah, the Cardinal might have said a little something there.

00:41:33.860 The fact that the Cardinal is not backing you publicly here, the fact that they are not funding your case,

00:41:40.240 is it absolutely scandalous?

00:41:43.380 These are hard things.

00:41:45.600 And Catholic faithful need to stand up and say the hard things right now.

00:41:52.820 To protect you, to defend you, definitely.

00:41:55.960 To defend their brothers who are standing up for the faith heroically under these insane pressures.

00:42:00.880 But you know what?

00:42:01.500 Also, to defend the soul of their spiritual fathers.

00:42:06.340 Because when our Lord talked about the millstone to be tied about your neck and you'd be thrown into the sea,

00:42:13.520 he wasn't talking to just anybody.

00:42:15.500 He was talking to the apostles.

00:42:16.600 When the successors of the apostles, the bishops, Cardinal Collins, puts the faithful into these dangerous situations where it endangers their faith,

00:42:32.360 he's doing so exactly what our Lord warned against.

00:42:36.480 I don't want to, I use the words of Pope Francis, I don't want to judge the Cardinal.

00:42:42.340 I don't want to judge any hierarchy.

00:42:45.500 But I do have the right to be sad.

00:42:47.700 I do have the right to be confused.

00:42:51.440 I'm not going to, as I say, you know, part of our faith is to forgive.

00:42:56.960 Not that the Cardinal's asked me for forgiveness.

00:42:59.640 But I have to do what I have to do as a faithful Catholic.

00:43:03.700 I believe in heaven.

00:43:06.720 I believe in hell.

00:43:08.880 Ironically, there's a movement that is indicating that we shouldn't teach children about hell. 0.57

00:43:15.580 And we shouldn't teach about that homosexuality as described in the catechism. 1.00

00:43:22.620 There are people that say we shouldn't do that.

00:43:24.720 And again, you know, I'm saying, what are we doing in a Catholic school?

00:43:28.640 What's our purpose if we can't teach our faith?

00:43:31.020 We have to now bridge, we can't talk about this, but we can talk about that.

00:43:35.600 We can talk about forgiveness.

00:43:37.080 We can talk about all the niceties kinds of things.

00:43:40.400 I am driven by simplicity of what Jesus Christ said.

00:43:45.360 Repent and believe.

00:43:48.160 Okay?

00:43:48.600 Repent and believe.

00:43:50.400 And I have to, you know, when I get judged because I believe in the resurrection and the life hereafter, and I'm sounding like people would say, oh, you know, he's a wingnut.

00:44:01.520 He's one of these radical, you know, right-wingers and stuff.

00:44:05.160 I'm not.

00:44:05.720 I really am not.

00:44:06.920 But there's nothing wrong with me knowing my faith and talking about my faith.

00:44:11.780 So if I believe in the Catholic faith, I believe in the resurrection, we say that in the creed every Sunday.

00:44:19.580 Those are our basic beliefs.

00:44:22.080 I'm accountable for myself at the end of the day.

00:44:26.160 I can't blame the cardinal.

00:44:28.140 I can't blame this group or that group, etc.

00:44:30.860 But in my conscience, if I know the difference between what I believe is right and wrong, I, as a Catholic school trustee, cannot, because of convenience, say, well, I don't want to talk about that or I don't want to defend that because it's going to get me into trouble.

00:44:50.200 Then what am I doing?

00:44:51.740 What am I doing here in this position?

00:44:54.040 So I get where many of us are upset with our leadership in the church.

00:44:59.880 As I said, you know, in Catholic history, we've had 2,000 years.

00:45:04.080 It hasn't been, you know, like for me, things like the Crusades where people were being killed, etc., or the Inquisition.

00:45:13.080 Where in our faith did it ever say that we are to kill on behalf of God in order to convert people and stuff?

00:45:18.860 People have free will.

00:45:20.200 That was the whole idea.

00:45:21.320 So we've gone through a period of history that's not been very good or kind in terms of what the church has done or not done.

00:45:29.880 But that doesn't excuse me, who has taken catechism, who has done catechism, who has taught catechism, to say, well, that's their fault.

00:45:43.880 That's, you know, the guy over there.

00:45:45.480 I, again, have contributed financially to LifeSite, to Campaign Life here in Canada, because they're doing the work that I would like to do, but they're better organized.

00:46:00.120 And so I give what I can to support those groups, your group.

00:46:07.000 And I'm very thankful.

00:46:09.040 I forgot to mention right off the bat.

00:46:11.120 I want to thank you and John Jesuwek up here in Canada for the work that you guys do with respect to LifeSite.

00:46:17.180 And, you know, again, conservatives generally, even here in Canada, you can't say anything that goes against Google or Facebook or what have you.

00:46:28.800 They censor you.

00:46:30.020 They censor you extremely bad, which, again, most people should worry about because we criticized the people of Germany in 1933.

00:46:39.380 And we think we're going to learn the lessons from history, that we're not going to repeat some of those things.

00:46:46.260 And there's some really dangerous parallels that are going here when you shut down free speech, when you guys in the States, you want to take people's arms, because that's what the Germany 1933 did, is remove people to have their arms, to change the judges, change what was being taught in the schools, etc. 0.60

00:47:08.460 And people say, oh, you know, that could never happen in 2021.

00:47:14.660 Surely and slowly, you don't cook the frog in the beaker by putting it in boiling water.

00:47:22.420 You boil the water slowly, slowly and slowly and incrementally and incrementally.

00:47:29.700 Next thing you know, you've repeated history.

00:47:33.020 Yeah, yeah.

00:47:34.480 Unbelievable.

00:47:35.160 Mike, I want to let you know that we will support you.

00:47:37.740 We will try and help you with this case of yours.

00:47:41.360 Let me tell all of you viewers out there, if you really want to do something to assist a good man fighting the good fight for you, for the faith,

00:47:51.100 please consider donating to the Life Funder campaign for Mike Delgrande,

00:47:55.680 who is standing up for the Catholic faith inside the schools in Ontario, inside the schools in Toronto, and really up against a juggernaut.

00:48:08.860 What I really truly believe is a precedent-setting kind of a case where he's not being supported by the Archdiocese, but he will be by faithful Catholics.

00:48:21.560 Mike, God bless you for all of your good and hard work and for standing up for the faith under these terrible circumstances.

00:48:27.080 Thank you very much, John Henry.

00:48:28.580 Thank you to Life Sight.

00:48:30.820 I pray for you guys as well, too, for the courage, because it's people like yourself, like the organization that gives people like myself the hope that we're not fighting alone, that we have to band together.

00:48:43.780 We tend to separate our various organizations, but all of us that are in the same philosophy, if you will, that we see a danger to our church, a danger to our teachings, a danger to our faith.

00:48:59.220 We have to take a stand collectively.

00:49:02.420 It's not enough just to be sitting comfortably in the pews of our churches and forgetting about everything else that's going all around us.

00:49:09.860 We are our brother's keeper.

00:49:11.380 However, we do have to maintain our faith.

00:49:15.420 And as they say, you know, if you find one bad parish, you leave that one and go to a better parish.

00:49:20.720 You go what's going to feed you food as opposed to stone.

00:49:25.820 So that's the way I feel about things.

00:49:28.220 And I'm grateful for my faith.

00:49:32.600 I just wish my health was as strong as my faith.

00:49:35.260 I've had some serious medical issues.

00:49:38.020 This stress has not been good for me.

00:49:41.380 Nor my family, as you can appreciate that.

00:49:44.680 But I do want to thank you and your viewers for any and all support that you've given me.

00:49:51.380 Thank you very much.

00:49:52.440 Awesome, Mike.

00:49:53.020 God bless you.

00:49:54.540 And God bless all of you.

00:49:56.000 We'll see you next time.

00:49:56.920 I just need to let you know that the Canadian National March for Life is coming up.

00:50:03.200 Please check this out.

00:50:06.200 Join Pro-Life speakers, Tony McFadden, Joseph Backholm, Jay Watts, and Will Witt.

00:50:12.700 For I am with you, the National March for Life Youth Conference, hosted by Campaign Life Coalition Youth and Niagara Region Right to Life.

00:50:21.260 May 14th from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. at marchforlife.ca.

00:50:25.420 And thanks to our donors, the cost is free.

00:50:28.060 So register at the link below and we'll see you on May 14th.

00:50:31.060 Hi, this is John Henry Weston, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSite News.

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00:53:13.320 I'm John Henry Weston, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSite News.

00:53:16.940 I'm John Henry Weston, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSite News.

The John-Henry Westen Show - April 28, 2021

‘We took an oath'： Devout Catholic school board member fights back against LGBT mob

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