Blogs
Featured Image

April 12, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Surely it must be impossible that a charity overseen by Canada’s Catholic bishops funds pro-abortion organizations in poor countries? No Catholic charity aimed at helping the poor could possibly be involved with something like that. Right?

Unfortunately, since LifeSite began investigating the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace’s grantees in 2009, it has found — and continues to find to this day — scads of irrefutable evidence showing that monies collected by D&P are being funneled to partners that promote abortion.

LifeSite’s March 28 investigative report on D&P’s current partners was filled with enough evidence to satisfy even a pro-abortion jury that the charity does in fact fund pro-abortion groups.

And how did D&P react? It obfuscated. It persisted in what can only be called the “big lie.”

The “big lie” is the name for a startlingly successful method of propaganda. According to the method, if one tells a lie big enough and keeps repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it’s true. The “big lie” has been used by some of history’s worst dictators and despots to control the populace while maintaining power.

And what is D&P’s big lie? After LifeSite’s March 28 report, D&P’s new executive director Serge Langlois stated that the charity “does not support in any direct or indirect manner programs related to abortion,” adding that the “criticism is unsubstantiated.”

But the facts show otherwise.

Indeed, in a 2010 interview D&P’s former executive director, Michael Casey, admitted that the charity does in fact partner with organizations campaigning to have abortion decriminalized. “It is a fact that we do get involved in these situations,” he told the Catholic Register.

In 2009 Peruvian Archbishop Antonio Eguren “formally” requested that the bishops of Canada cease funding pro-abortion groups in his country through D&P. He wrote that it was “very disturbing to have groups which work against the Bishops of Peru by attempting to undermine legal protection for the right to life of unborn children, be funded by our brother bishops in Canada.”

In 2011 Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast cancelled the speaking engagements of the head of one of D&P’s partners, after personally investigating and finding that the actions of the partner were what he called “incompatible with the Church’s defence of the right to life from conception to natural death.”

The same year, Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City wrote the Canadian bishops asking why they were allowing their charitable arm to fund a notorious pro-abortion group in his country. He told the bishops that the group D&P partnered with “does not represent the sentiments of the Church” since it works with “pro-abortion groups and promote[s] the purported woman’s right over her body, against unborn life.”

Based on the testimony of D&P’s former executive director, a bishop, an archbishop and a cardinal, Langlois’ claim that D&P does not support abortion programs can simply be chalked up to a big lie. The same goes for a statement by D&P Communications Officer Gay Decker who told LifeSite for its March 28 report: “In 50 years of existence, of solidarity, and of work for social justice, Development and Peace has never, nor have any of its partners supported or promoted abortion in any way.”

It was after LifeSite went public with dozens of reports in 2009 showing D&P partnering with pro-abortion organizations that the charity came up with the strategy of denying all the evidence, stating that it had done no wrong. The strategy has proved to be startlingly successful among over-trusting Catholics, and even a large number of bishops.

Part of D&P’s strategy is to shift the ground of the argument. D&P attempts to defend itself in its latest letter by suggesting that just because its partners might happen to network with other groups that advocate evil doesn’t make the charity ‘guilty by association.’

Langlois writes:

The groups we partner with belong to larger networks so that they can advance their own activities in common struggles. Working in networks and alliances is a fundamental way of operating nowadays, and we encourage our partners to do so as well, but it is the nature of working in networks and alliances is such [sic] that one cannot always guarantee who else is a member or what their interests are.

Later he adds:

We will not … be held accountable for the actions of other organizations that we do not support nor work with.

But LifeSite provided copious evidence that D&P partners are directly, themselves, advocating for evil causes such as abortion. D&P’s response simply ignores that evidence.

And moreover, for D&P to say it will “not…be held accountable” for who their partners network with is like a mom saying that she will not be held accountable if she hires a babysitter who happens to network with the North American Man/Boy Love Association.

It’s time to expose D&P’s obfuscation and end the big lie that it does not partner with pro-abortion groups. It’s time for Catholic leaders in Canada to acknowledge the massive evidence of the works of darkness being funded through D&P’s programs. It’s time for Catholic bishops to take back moral leadership of this rogue charity that operates on their behalf and to set it back on track of doing God’s work.

Finally, it’s time for Catholics everywhere working for social justice to take serious the words of Christ who said, speaking about the littlest ones, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”

 

Featured Image

Pete Baklinski is Director of Communications for Campaign Life Coalition, a Canadian pro-life organization working at all levels of government to secure full legal protection for all human beings, from the time of conception to natural death. He has a B.A. in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College and a masters in theology (STM) from the International Theological Institute.