Where you should and should not donate this Lent
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Summary
In this special episode of the John Henry Weston Show, I sit down with Michael Hichborn, who has worked with me for decades to expose Catholic Relief Services, CRS, and other Catholic organizations that promote abortion and illicit sex in Africa. In this episode, we discuss how CRS promotes abortion in order to promote condom use, and how the Catholic Church in Africa is encouraging illegal abortions.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to this special episode of the John Henry Weston Show, where I'm very pleased to
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bring to you someone who I've worked with for decades now, and he's really someone who,
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while many of us love him, he's very disliked, even hated in some quarters for what he does.
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What he does is expose the truth, the truth in one of the hardest areas,
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the area of the infidelity of some of our own bishops. You're going to want to stay tuned.
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Michael Hichborn, it's a great pleasure for me to be with you on the show.
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Thanks for having me, John Henry. I can't believe that it's been so long since
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you've had your show and we haven't actually done this. We've talked about it, but we actually
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haven't been able to connect. I'm glad to be here. Absolutely. So let's begin, as we always
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do, with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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Now, Michael, we've worked together exposing the problems with Catholic Relief Services,
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CCHD, and many of these groups for decades now. Last spring, you produced six highly detailed
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reports. Can you tell us about those? Sure. So last spring, it was actually the
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culmination of a full year's investigation into several projects of Catholic Relief Services in
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Africa. It started when we discovered a series of documents that CRS had produced, and we found
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them on CRS's own website, that were promoting condom use. And this is something CRS, as you know,
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has been saying for decades. Oh, well, we maybe did that at one point, but we don't promote
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condoms at all. We make sure that our literature doesn't promote condoms. But when I was looking
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at these documents, they absolutely were promoting condom use. They had one that was, it was an
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instructional for teenagers to make sure that if they were going to have illicit sex to, well,
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in order to avoid HIV, to be abstinent, to be faithful if they're going to engage in it,
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and then always use a condom, and they should know where to obtain them. So we found these documents.
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We produced, well, actually, the first thing I did, I contacted the head of Catholic Relief Services,
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and I said, I found these documents. You might want to look into this. And I was told, oh, wow,
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I'll look into that. Never got a response. Never heard a thing back. And I thought, okay, well,
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I'm going to have to go ahead and report on this, because, you know, if you guys aren't going to fix
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the problem, I got to report. So I put out the report on that. Well, after looking into those
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documents, we found that CRS was involved in a series of projects related to what they call OVC,
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which is Orphans and Vulnerable Children. And these projects, one of which is called Four Children,
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it stands for some four C thing, and it's four children, but it's four different elements,
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four children. So they love their acronyms. Alphabet soup. Anyway, they were conducting these projects,
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and in this project, they were promoting contraception. What we found was that some of the
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documents that they were using in order to promote their four children project,
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the curriculums that they were using were themselves promoting abortion and the dreams
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project, which was created by Dr. Birx, by the way. The dreams project established itself with the
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specific goal of implementing or introducing young girls to contraception. And, you know, I looked through
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all of the program documents, and it says that those who are implementing the program, even if,
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and it gives an out for CRS, says even if the project implementer isn't doing all of the
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implementation into implementing themselves, so CRS necessarily does not have to promote the
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contraceptive aspect. The full program has to be implemented, which means somebody else has to do it.
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So what CRS is doing is they set up this program saying we're implementing dreams, but we're not
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doing the contraceptive component. Somebody else is. So they're introducing this program and then giving
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the dirty work to someone else. In relation to that, we found that CRS created two health referral
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networks in Africa, one in Nigeria, one in Cameroon. And those two health referral networks included
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organizations that are promoting abortion, that are introducing young girls to contraception,
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and that have also taken girls to have illegal abortions in those countries. So, you know, CRS then,
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they've never responded to this, by the way. But they created these health referral networks,
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and they were the ones who chose the organizations that they were going to put into these referral
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networks. So they're introducing children to these wolves.
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So this is, I mean, it's really something. Catholic Relief Services is an official arm of the bishops.
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They're asking for donations from the faithful in the churches. By the way, places which don't actually
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fund things like the pro-life march or things like that. They're asking funds in the name of the bishops
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of the Catholic Church, who are supposedly supposed to be against contraception, against abortion. Well,
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they are. But here, they're doing these things. And you pointed them out. You pointed them out,
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actually, in a very biblical way, because it says, first, go to them, which you did do. And then,
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if they're not convinced, you have to go to them with the Church. Well, in fact, when they are the
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Church, what do we do? But we make it public to the rest of Christ's faithful. And you've done that.
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So they've received some pushback, but they've still not responded to it. It's just incredible.
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Well, not only have they not responded to my reports, but I know of an internal memo that is
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just now circulating. It went out in January, January 22nd. In fact, it was signed by Bishop
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Caggiano, who is the current chairman of the Board of Catholic Relief Services. And the memo says,
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well, every Lent, these organizations, he didn't name them, but we know he was talking about Church
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Militant, LifeSite News, Lepanto Institute. They attack Catholic Relief Services, and we expect them
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to attack again. And, you know, it was a very preemptive memo that he circulated. And it was
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directed at and intended to assuage anyone from concern regarding the way Catholic Relief Services
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conducts its business. And it is a business. It's a billion dollar a year business. It's not it's not
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really, truly a charity. But anyway, they never responded to our concerns. They never responded
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to the information we put forward. But they are going around and telling people, don't worry about
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it. See, it's amazing. Also, this nonsense kind of an excuse that, oh, we're not we're not doing the
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bad parts. We're just doing the good parts of the work. That is so sickening here. You know,
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there was an example when we did this many, many over a decade ago, too. There was a group that was
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giving, oh, we're only giving the good things. But what that does in these remote villages where,
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you know, the people are really poor, you gain the trust of these groups by giving them something
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good. And later, the same projects come back to give them something evil, contraception, abortion,
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and things like this. And the Catholic Church is involved in it. It's it's this absolute scandal.
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No, you're absolutely right. It's it's it's totally scandalous.
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Well, it's it's unbelievable that in and of itself, just the CRS stuff. But you've been involved
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and we've worked together with you on also other Catholic organizations that are taking the money
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from the faithful and still doing this kind of stuff, despite your diligent pointing it out to
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them. So you've worked on Catholic Campaign for Human Development. But it seems that no matter how
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bad the reports are, CCHD never changes. Let's talk about your recent findings with them.
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Last month, we found five different organizations that were receiving CCHD funding. And collectively,
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they came to the the total amount came to about quarter of a million dollars, just these five groups.
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And these five organizations were themselves promoting abortion, promoting LGBT activism.
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And two of these groups we actually found were partnered with Planned Parenthood. We found that
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they not only were partners, they were identified in Planned Parenthood's annual report as community
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partners, but they were also promoting these Planned Parenthood on their own social media feed.
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So this group, Workers Dignity Project, not only promoted Planned Parenthood on their social media feed,
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they interviewed people from Planned Parenthood to talk about abortion, to talk about reproductive rights.
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They, the executive director of that organization, actually had an interview with the head of a
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reproductive justice fund, which was set up specifically to fund abortion itself.
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And they talked about how wonderful it was. And they laughed about Catholics having abortions.
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It was sickening. It was absolutely sickening. But this group, $50,000 alone from, from the bishops.
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And I like like Planned Parenthood, like it's been there for me when I, you know, had to get an abortion myself.
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Thank you. You should be able to have an abortion that is comfortable. It's making it seem like
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you're celebrating an abortion. And I'm like, I'm celebrating that she got what she needed.
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You know, because all y'all are supposed to be Catholic and Catholics don't have abortions.
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How do they even think they're going to get away with this? Do they think no Catholics are ever going
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I don't think that the CCHD is, is competent. I think that they're, they're people who go around
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and vet these organizations. They don't look for these kinds of things because they don't think
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they're a problem. The CCHD itself was set up to fund Saul Alinsky's community organizing groups.
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So they're only looking at things like, you know, immigration rights and, and feeding, you know,
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poverty rights, which means they want welfare. But they don't actually look to make sure that
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these groups are not involved in gravely immoral and illicit activities, even though they claim they do.
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Now we've had something very interesting happen in Canada. So in Canada, we've been through the same
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thing, uh, that you've been going through. We've done it in Canada as well. And, uh, we approached
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our bishops. Yes. Like two decades ago, um, about the same thing, problems with our version of, uh,
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CRS, which is development and peace. And very interestingly, it took them 20 years, but they've
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done a review and they have defunded a whole bunch, I think a couple of dozen groups, um, that they found
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problematic that we're looking into that to see what exactly that is and what they've done.
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But, uh, what do you make of that? And do you expect anything like that might happen in the U S
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as well? Well, I think that one of the most important aspects of this is that the re is the
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reason why, uh, development and peace actually had to take this step. And it had to do with lay
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Catholics petitioning their bishops and saying, why is the Catholic church giving money to
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organizations that are actually attacking Catholic moral teaching? Uh, and then those,
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those lay Catholics said, you know what, as long as you're funding these, we're not going to give
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you money. And that boycott of the bishops caused several dioceses to say, you know what, there's
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too much controversy here. We're not going to participate. And those dioceses withdrawing from
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development and peace saying, we're not going to participate in funding development and peace
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has caused the Canadian bishops conference to reassess and to say, you know what, this program
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is starting to lose funding and it's losing support from faithful bishops. Uh, so we better do something
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about it. And what they did is they conducted a review and they defunded those organizations that
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are attacking moral, the moral teachings of the church. If the bishops in the United States followed
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suit and actually cared about what faithful Catholics are at, are telling them saying, you know, faithful
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Catholics, I know in the United States are approaching their bishops and saying, you're
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giving money to organizations that are supporting Planned Parenthood. How can you possibly expect me to
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support you in your diocese? And the bishops send back memos saying, oh, you're just listening to
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the Lepanto Institute. Uh, they're, they're a bunch of cranks. We don't have anything to do with them.
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And then they never look into the problem. They never fix anything. They never address anything
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publicly. And as long as they continue to stick their head in the sand, it's just going to be,
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you know, mission normal. Nothing's going to change. What's really amazing is they think they
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can say that and get away with it, despite the evidence that you're presenting, you know,
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and I know you're a great Catholic man and you don't mind when people call you names. And I think
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that's, that's, that's part of the thing that's really frustrating with you because they can say
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anything they want about you. But the problem is the evidence you're presenting is real. All people
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have to do is click on the link that you're providing or God forbid, watch the actual video
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and there's the evidence in their faces. So there's no way. And the bishops face a real challenge
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trying to convince their donors, some of whom are faithful Catholics that, oh no, we're not doing
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anything. And when they get found out, what do you think is going to happen? Unbelievable. So tell me,
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Michael, you, you've exposed this now for decades yourself. You've, you've taken this on as a, as a
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calling. And I know it's not an easy thing. It's, it's something that you are not liked for.
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Um, but give us something positive because I know that you've done a lot of research into a lot of
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different groups. What can you tell us about your research? And are there any organizations that you
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do recommend that Catholics can fund in good conscience? Absolutely. Well, the primary reason
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we do this work and what really kind of got me when I was first researching CCHD and then Catholic
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Relief Services was that these organizations are asking faithful Catholics to give them money.
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And I, I looked at this situation and I said, I, I'm not here to beat up on the bishops. I'm not here
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to beat up on these organizations because quite honestly, I have better things to do with my time,
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but the fact that they are asking money from faithful Catholics sitting in the pews and hiding what is
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being done in the name of the Catholic church. And with that Catholic money, uh, I just thought,
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you know, the faithful need to know, they need to know where their money is going. They need to
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understand how their money is being spent and they need to be able to make those decisions based on the
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evidence alone. And so I put my reports together in such a way that it's, it's easy for people to
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see the evidence. It's easy for people to understand what the situation is and to make a decision on their
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own. And we've, we've researched a ton of different organizations. As you know, we, we, uh, you and I
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work together on researching care international. We re we work together on researching population
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services international, all these other agencies that are getting money from Catholic relief services.
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And, uh, as I've been looking through these groups, we found problems with a whole bunch of
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them. Catholic medical mission board is promoting condoms, uh, organizations like save the children
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are actually promoting abortion. So this is something that a lot of people didn't know about.
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So we put a report list together on our website. If you go to our website, Lepanto, I N dot O R G
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and then go to the menu bar at the top, there's a charity reports list. You click on it and we've
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got close to 80 organizations that we vetted, uh, that we mark as either safe or not safe. And we found
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several, quite a few actually that are very worthy of Catholic funding. And so our idea is look, stop giving
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money to the bad guys, stop giving money to the enemies of the church, give money to those
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organizations that are truly working to fulfill the mission of the church, which, which is to spread
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the gospel, uh, and to give assistance where assistance is needed. And, and that is what we are
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encouraging people to do. And I think that it's, it's really the best way for faithful Catholics to
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understand how the mission of the church works and how we can work to not just further the, uh, the goals
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of, of the church, but also to help people in need.
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Excellent. That's awesome. Give us a few recommendations off the top of your head, if you will, just of
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Sure. There's a group called a cross Catholic outreach, which, um, it used to be a part of a Protestant
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organization called cross, uh, cross outreach or cross international. Uh, but they are now
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independent. Uh, they have a board of bishops, but these are good bishops. Uh, and I have actually,
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it's interesting when I went to a core UNAM and I met with core UNAM to talk about the problems with
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Catholic relief services. They told me, I mentioned cross Catholic and they told me that, uh, it's
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interesting. Catholic relief services is actually bad mouthed cross Catholic because cross Catholic
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doesn't take federal money and, and because they don't participate in the same kind of bad programs
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that CRS does. Uh, and it makes them look bad and they know it. So cross Catholic is one that I highly
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recommend. There's another one called, um, St. Bryce missions that we recommend. Uh, and, and there are
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quite a few others. Uh, Mary's meals is really, really good. So there are quite a few on our list that we,
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we do recommend. Beautiful. Cause there are, I mean, especially during Lent, uh, we're called yes
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to, to pray and to, uh, sacrifice to, to, uh, fast, but also give alms. And there's great places to do
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that this Lent. Uh, Michael Hichborn, thank you so much for being with us on this episode of the John
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Henry Christian show. May God bless you and all the great work you do. And, uh, I know you don't hear it
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much, but you're doing awesome work for the church. Well, thank you. Thank you. And God bless
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LifeSite News and, uh, God bless your audience too. We'll see you next time and God bless you.
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Hi, this is John Henry Weston, the co-founder and editor in chief of LifeSite News. I'm coming to
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