The John-Henry Westen Show - Where you should and should not donate this Lent

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to this special episode of the John Henry Weston Show, where I'm very pleased to

00:00:04.540 bring to you someone who I've worked with for decades now, and he's really someone who,

00:00:11.260 while many of us love him, he's very disliked, even hated in some quarters for what he does.

00:00:17.140 What he does is expose the truth, the truth in one of the hardest areas,

00:00:21.360 the area of the infidelity of some of our own bishops. You're going to want to stay tuned.

00:00:30.000 Michael Hichborn, it's a great pleasure for me to be with you on the show.

00:00:50.280 Thanks for having me, John Henry. I can't believe that it's been so long since

00:00:53.180 you've had your show and we haven't actually done this. We've talked about it, but we actually

00:00:57.080 haven't been able to connect. I'm glad to be here. Absolutely. So let's begin, as we always

00:01:02.260 do, with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

00:01:09.260 Now, Michael, we've worked together exposing the problems with Catholic Relief Services,

00:01:14.420 CCHD, and many of these groups for decades now. Last spring, you produced six highly detailed

00:01:20.940 reports. Can you tell us about those? Sure. So last spring, it was actually the

00:01:26.280 culmination of a full year's investigation into several projects of Catholic Relief Services in

00:01:31.140 Africa. It started when we discovered a series of documents that CRS had produced, and we found

00:01:36.560 them on CRS's own website, that were promoting condom use. And this is something CRS, as you know,

00:01:43.320 has been saying for decades. Oh, well, we maybe did that at one point, but we don't promote

00:01:48.760 condoms at all. We make sure that our literature doesn't promote condoms. But when I was looking

00:01:53.600 at these documents, they absolutely were promoting condom use. They had one that was, it was an

00:02:01.440 instructional for teenagers to make sure that if they were going to have illicit sex to, well,

00:02:08.860 in order to avoid HIV, to be abstinent, to be faithful if they're going to engage in it,

00:02:13.740 and then always use a condom, and they should know where to obtain them. So we found these documents.

00:02:21.740 We produced, well, actually, the first thing I did, I contacted the head of Catholic Relief Services,

00:02:27.800 and I said, I found these documents. You might want to look into this. And I was told, oh, wow,

00:02:34.440 I'll look into that. Never got a response. Never heard a thing back. And I thought, okay, well,

00:02:41.860 I'm going to have to go ahead and report on this, because, you know, if you guys aren't going to fix

00:02:45.980 the problem, I got to report. So I put out the report on that. Well, after looking into those

00:02:52.800 documents, we found that CRS was involved in a series of projects related to what they call OVC,

00:03:01.060 which is Orphans and Vulnerable Children. And these projects, one of which is called Four Children,

00:03:07.400 it stands for some four C thing, and it's four children, but it's four different elements,

00:03:14.820 four children. So they love their acronyms. Alphabet soup. Anyway, they were conducting these projects,

00:03:23.460 and in this project, they were promoting contraception. What we found was that some of the

00:03:31.960 documents that they were using in order to promote their four children project,

00:03:35.980 the curriculums that they were using were themselves promoting abortion and the dreams 0.94

00:03:41.260 project, which was created by Dr. Birx, by the way. The dreams project established itself with the

00:03:50.040 specific goal of implementing or introducing young girls to contraception. And, you know, I looked through

00:04:00.140 all of the program documents, and it says that those who are implementing the program, even if,

00:04:06.940 and it gives an out for CRS, says even if the project implementer isn't doing all of the

00:04:13.000 implementation into implementing themselves, so CRS necessarily does not have to promote the

00:04:20.940 contraceptive aspect. The full program has to be implemented, which means somebody else has to do it.

00:04:26.560 So what CRS is doing is they set up this program saying we're implementing dreams, but we're not

00:04:33.960 doing the contraceptive component. Somebody else is. So they're introducing this program and then giving

00:04:40.580 the dirty work to someone else. In relation to that, we found that CRS created two health referral

00:04:48.720 networks in Africa, one in Nigeria, one in Cameroon. And those two health referral networks included

00:04:56.100 organizations that are promoting abortion, that are introducing young girls to contraception,

00:05:02.500 and that have also taken girls to have illegal abortions in those countries. So, you know, CRS then,

00:05:11.780 they've never responded to this, by the way. But they created these health referral networks,

00:05:17.340 and they were the ones who chose the organizations that they were going to put into these referral

00:05:22.880 networks. So they're introducing children to these wolves.

00:05:26.400 So this is, I mean, it's really something. Catholic Relief Services is an official arm of the bishops.

00:05:32.300 They're asking for donations from the faithful in the churches. By the way, places which don't actually

00:05:39.100 fund things like the pro-life march or things like that. They're asking funds in the name of the bishops

00:05:44.900 of the Catholic Church, who are supposedly supposed to be against contraception, against abortion. Well,

00:05:50.220 they are. But here, they're doing these things. And you pointed them out. You pointed them out,

00:05:55.060 actually, in a very biblical way, because it says, first, go to them, which you did do. And then,

00:06:00.700 if they're not convinced, you have to go to them with the Church. Well, in fact, when they are the

00:06:05.460 Church, what do we do? But we make it public to the rest of Christ's faithful. And you've done that.

00:06:09.700 So they've received some pushback, but they've still not responded to it. It's just incredible.

00:06:14.860 Well, not only have they not responded to my reports, but I know of an internal memo that is

00:06:20.120 just now circulating. It went out in January, January 22nd. In fact, it was signed by Bishop

00:06:27.000 Caggiano, who is the current chairman of the Board of Catholic Relief Services. And the memo says,

00:06:32.140 well, every Lent, these organizations, he didn't name them, but we know he was talking about Church

00:06:37.740 Militant, LifeSite News, Lepanto Institute. They attack Catholic Relief Services, and we expect them

00:06:45.700 to attack again. And, you know, it was a very preemptive memo that he circulated. And it was

00:06:55.180 directed at and intended to assuage anyone from concern regarding the way Catholic Relief Services

00:07:03.780 conducts its business. And it is a business. It's a billion dollar a year business. It's not it's not

00:07:09.400 really, truly a charity. But anyway, they never responded to our concerns. They never responded

00:07:15.440 to the information we put forward. But they are going around and telling people, don't worry about

00:07:19.400 it. See, it's amazing. Also, this nonsense kind of an excuse that, oh, we're not we're not doing the

00:07:26.540 bad parts. We're just doing the good parts of the work. That is so sickening here. You know,

00:07:31.860 there was an example when we did this many, many over a decade ago, too. There was a group that was

00:07:38.700 giving, oh, we're only giving the good things. But what that does in these remote villages where,

00:07:43.940 you know, the people are really poor, you gain the trust of these groups by giving them something

00:07:49.720 good. And later, the same projects come back to give them something evil, contraception, abortion,

00:07:56.100 and things like this. And the Catholic Church is involved in it. It's it's this absolute scandal.

00:08:02.740 And yet they don't see this.

00:08:04.660 No, you're absolutely right. It's it's it's totally scandalous.

00:08:07.380 Well, it's it's unbelievable that in and of itself, just the CRS stuff. But you've been involved

00:08:12.740 and we've worked together with you on also other Catholic organizations that are taking the money

00:08:19.960 from the faithful and still doing this kind of stuff, despite your diligent pointing it out to

00:08:25.460 them. So you've worked on Catholic Campaign for Human Development. But it seems that no matter how

00:08:31.060 bad the reports are, CCHD never changes. Let's talk about your recent findings with them.

00:08:36.580 Last month, we found five different organizations that were receiving CCHD funding. And collectively,

00:08:42.540 they came to the the total amount came to about quarter of a million dollars, just these five groups.

00:08:47.360 And these five organizations were themselves promoting abortion, promoting LGBT activism. 0.86

00:08:55.100 And two of these groups we actually found were partnered with Planned Parenthood. We found that

00:09:01.300 they not only were partners, they were identified in Planned Parenthood's annual report as community

00:09:06.160 partners, but they were also promoting these Planned Parenthood on their own social media feed.

00:09:11.300 So this group, Workers Dignity Project, not only promoted Planned Parenthood on their social media feed,

00:09:18.800 they interviewed people from Planned Parenthood to talk about abortion, to talk about reproductive rights.

00:09:25.680 They, the executive director of that organization, actually had an interview with the head of a

00:09:33.400 reproductive justice fund, which was set up specifically to fund abortion itself.

00:09:40.100 And they talked about how wonderful it was. And they laughed about Catholics having abortions. 0.91

00:09:46.620 It was sickening. It was absolutely sickening. But this group, $50,000 alone from, from the bishops. 0.99

00:09:53.440 And I like like Planned Parenthood, like it's been there for me when I, you know, had to get an abortion myself.

00:10:00.720 Thank you. You should be able to have an abortion that is comfortable. It's making it seem like 1.00

00:10:05.800 you're celebrating an abortion. And I'm like, I'm celebrating that she got what she needed.

00:10:12.880 Yeah. And that's what you want to do.

00:10:16.360 You know, because all y'all are supposed to be Catholic and Catholics don't have abortions. 0.92

00:10:20.080 And I'm like, oh, that's just unbelievable.

00:10:27.180 How do they even think they're going to get away with this? Do they think no Catholics are ever going

00:10:33.160 to see this?

00:10:34.200 I don't think that the CCHD is, is competent. I think that they're, they're people who go around

00:10:39.260 and vet these organizations. They don't look for these kinds of things because they don't think

00:10:43.480 they're a problem. The CCHD itself was set up to fund Saul Alinsky's community organizing groups.

00:10:49.180 So they're only looking at things like, you know, immigration rights and, and feeding, you know,

00:10:55.760 poverty rights, which means they want welfare. But they don't actually look to make sure that

00:11:02.840 these groups are not involved in gravely immoral and illicit activities, even though they claim they do.

00:11:10.840 Now we've had something very interesting happen in Canada. So in Canada, we've been through the same

00:11:16.600 thing, uh, that you've been going through. We've done it in Canada as well. And, uh, we approached

00:11:22.060 our bishops. Yes. Like two decades ago, um, about the same thing, problems with our version of, uh,

00:11:29.060 CRS, which is development and peace. And very interestingly, it took them 20 years, but they've

00:11:34.780 done a review and they have defunded a whole bunch, I think a couple of dozen groups, um, that they found

00:11:41.980 problematic that we're looking into that to see what exactly that is and what they've done.

00:11:45.880 But, uh, what do you make of that? And do you expect anything like that might happen in the U S

00:11:50.220 as well? Well, I think that one of the most important aspects of this is that the re is the

00:11:54.600 reason why, uh, development and peace actually had to take this step. And it had to do with lay

00:12:01.640 Catholics petitioning their bishops and saying, why is the Catholic church giving money to

00:12:06.760 organizations that are actually attacking Catholic moral teaching? Uh, and then those,

00:12:11.680 those lay Catholics said, you know what, as long as you're funding these, we're not going to give 0.99

00:12:16.340 you money. And that boycott of the bishops caused several dioceses to say, you know what, there's

00:12:22.220 too much controversy here. We're not going to participate. And those dioceses withdrawing from

00:12:27.740 development and peace saying, we're not going to participate in funding development and peace

00:12:31.600 has caused the Canadian bishops conference to reassess and to say, you know what, this program

00:12:38.780 is starting to lose funding and it's losing support from faithful bishops. Uh, so we better do something

00:12:45.520 about it. And what they did is they conducted a review and they defunded those organizations that

00:12:50.620 are attacking moral, the moral teachings of the church. If the bishops in the United States followed

00:12:56.480 suit and actually cared about what faithful Catholics are at, are telling them saying, you know, faithful

00:13:03.880 Catholics, I know in the United States are approaching their bishops and saying, you're

00:13:07.620 giving money to organizations that are supporting Planned Parenthood. How can you possibly expect me to

00:13:12.360 support you in your diocese? And the bishops send back memos saying, oh, you're just listening to

00:13:17.400 the Lepanto Institute. Uh, they're, they're a bunch of cranks. We don't have anything to do with them.

00:13:21.380 And then they never look into the problem. They never fix anything. They never address anything

00:13:25.980 publicly. And as long as they continue to stick their head in the sand, it's just going to be,

00:13:32.080 you know, mission normal. Nothing's going to change. What's really amazing is they think they

00:13:37.400 can say that and get away with it, despite the evidence that you're presenting, you know,

00:13:42.280 and I know you're a great Catholic man and you don't mind when people call you names. And I think

00:13:48.200 that's, that's, that's part of the thing that's really frustrating with you because they can say

00:13:55.260 anything they want about you. But the problem is the evidence you're presenting is real. All people

00:14:01.480 have to do is click on the link that you're providing or God forbid, watch the actual video

00:14:07.540 and there's the evidence in their faces. So there's no way. And the bishops face a real challenge

00:14:14.640 trying to convince their donors, some of whom are faithful Catholics that, oh no, we're not doing

00:14:21.160 anything. And when they get found out, what do you think is going to happen? Unbelievable. So tell me,

00:14:26.600 Michael, you, you've exposed this now for decades yourself. You've, you've taken this on as a, as a

00:14:31.880 calling. And I know it's not an easy thing. It's, it's something that you are not liked for.

00:14:37.880 Um, but give us something positive because I know that you've done a lot of research into a lot of

00:14:44.320 different groups. What can you tell us about your research? And are there any organizations that you

00:14:49.860 do recommend that Catholics can fund in good conscience? Absolutely. Well, the primary reason 1.00

00:14:56.000 we do this work and what really kind of got me when I was first researching CCHD and then Catholic

00:15:01.340 Relief Services was that these organizations are asking faithful Catholics to give them money.

00:15:07.980 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

00:15:13.740 to beat up on these organizations because quite honestly, I have better things to do with my time,

00:15:17.820 but the fact that they are asking money from faithful Catholics sitting in the pews and hiding what is

00:15:24.460 being done in the name of the Catholic church. And with that Catholic money, uh, I just thought,

00:15:31.120 you know, the faithful need to know, they need to know where their money is going. They need to

00:15:36.840 understand how their money is being spent and they need to be able to make those decisions based on the

00:15:42.080 evidence alone. And so I put my reports together in such a way that it's, it's easy for people to

00:15:47.840 see the evidence. It's easy for people to understand what the situation is and to make a decision on their

00:15:53.800 own. And we've, we've researched a ton of different organizations. As you know, we, we, uh, you and I

00:16:00.360 work together on researching care international. We re we work together on researching population

00:16:05.120 services international, all these other agencies that are getting money from Catholic relief services.

00:16:10.320 And, uh, as I've been looking through these groups, we found problems with a whole bunch of

00:16:15.160 them. Catholic medical mission board is promoting condoms, uh, organizations like save the children

00:16:20.560 are actually promoting abortion. So this is something that a lot of people didn't know about.

00:16:24.980 So we put a report list together on our website. If you go to our website, Lepanto, I N dot O R G 1.00

00:16:32.100 and then go to the menu bar at the top, there's a charity reports list. You click on it and we've

00:16:38.520 got close to 80 organizations that we vetted, uh, that we mark as either safe or not safe. And we found

00:16:45.240 several, quite a few actually that are very worthy of Catholic funding. And so our idea is look, stop giving

00:16:52.480 money to the bad guys, stop giving money to the enemies of the church, give money to those

00:16:57.300 organizations that are truly working to fulfill the mission of the church, which, which is to spread

00:17:02.780 the gospel, uh, and to give assistance where assistance is needed. And, and that is what we are

00:17:09.120 encouraging people to do. And I think that it's, it's really the best way for faithful Catholics to

00:17:13.800 understand how the mission of the church works and how we can work to not just further the, uh, the goals

00:17:22.120 of, of the church, but also to help people in need.

00:17:25.640 Excellent. That's awesome. Give us a few recommendations off the top of your head, if you will, just of

00:17:30.420 groups that you've found really stellar.

00:17:33.100 Sure. There's a group called a cross Catholic outreach, which, um, it used to be a part of a Protestant

00:17:39.560 organization called cross, uh, cross outreach or cross international. Uh, but they are now

00:17:45.720 independent. Uh, they have a board of bishops, but these are good bishops. Uh, and I have actually,

00:17:50.720 it's interesting when I went to a core UNAM and I met with core UNAM to talk about the problems with

00:17:56.500 Catholic relief services. They told me, I mentioned cross Catholic and they told me that, uh, it's

00:18:02.300 interesting. Catholic relief services is actually bad mouthed cross Catholic because cross Catholic 0.99

00:18:07.880 doesn't take federal money and, and because they don't participate in the same kind of bad programs

00:18:14.260 that CRS does. Uh, and it makes them look bad and they know it. So cross Catholic is one that I highly

00:18:19.680 recommend. There's another one called, um, St. Bryce missions that we recommend. Uh, and, and there are

00:18:26.360 quite a few others. Uh, Mary's meals is really, really good. So there are quite a few on our list that we,

00:18:32.640 we do recommend. Beautiful. Cause there are, I mean, especially during Lent, uh, we're called yes

00:18:39.100 to, to pray and to, uh, sacrifice to, to, uh, fast, but also give alms. And there's great places to do

00:18:45.720 that this Lent. Uh, Michael Hichborn, thank you so much for being with us on this episode of the John

00:18:50.540 Henry Christian show. May God bless you and all the great work you do. And, uh, I know you don't hear it

00:18:55.580 much, but you're doing awesome work for the church. Well, thank you. Thank you. And God bless

00:19:00.700 LifeSite News and, uh, God bless your audience too. We'll see you next time and God bless you.

00:19:06.280 Hi, this is John Henry Weston, the co-founder and editor in chief of LifeSite News. I'm coming to

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00:21:44.920 co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSite News.

The John-Henry Westen Show - March 05, 2021

Where you should and should not donate this Lent

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