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Help support Catholic Marine’s lawsuit against the Department of Defense: LifeFunder

(LifeSiteNews) — We all realize that it can at times be difficult to stand up for what is right. Imagine, however, if by standing, you lost access to automatic pay, your driver’s license, and eventually you were put in jail not once but several times, cut off from accessing the Blessed Sacrament in the process.

My guest today on The John-Henry Westen Show is Lance Corporal Catherine Arnett, a 25-year-old Marine facing persecution for her refusal to take the abortion-tainted COVID jab, including being placed in the brig without the ability to access to the Blessed Sacrament for weeks on end.

Arnett tells me that she joined the Marines to impose structure in her life, and was interested in becoming a leader. When the Department of Defense (DOD) imposed the COVID jab mandate in August 2021, she was at a military base in Iwakuni, Japan. The following month, according to her, people were told that if they didn’t get the jab by November that year, they would be “separated” from the military.

“At that point, I was putting two and two together,” she tells me. “I’m just like, ‘Well, the vaccine mandate itself is not lawful, so anything … that comes after that, retribution, retaliation, separation, ostracization … it’s unlawful and it shouldn’t be done.” Arnett further explains that she submitted a religious exemption request from the jab, citing her Catholic faith, “objecting to the fetal tissue cells” used to make the jabs.

According to Arnett, the consequences for refusing the jabs were “enacted en masse,” and that by April and May of 2022, she was one of the remaining Marines that did not “separate” as a result of their refusal. She further holds that there was “already a big red target on my back” as of the previous September, since she helped people file religious exemption requests.

In the spring of 2022, the Marines began imposing penalties on her, starting with the loss of automatic pay, something she tells me “leadership” did for her refusal to “separate” over the jab order. “After April of 2022, I had to … go in … twice a month and have … special pay allotted to me because I was still working,” she recounts, stressing that the Marines did not stop her pay entirely.

The following month, meanwhile, she lost her driver’s license for refusing to board a plane for California to be “separated” from the Marines. According to Arnett, military leadership at Iwakuni sought to limit her to base for the sake of “risk management.” At the end of the 30 days, she was allowed to leave the base, having proven herself not to be a “liability,” though she was not reissued her driver’s license.

Since the previous September, meanwhile, Arnett was fighting with a particular commanding officer from another command about the jab. Both were Catholic, and the commander attempted to convince Arnett to get the jab, claiming that he got it even as a Catholic. Arnett, however, said that he compromised on the faith. “He wasn’t happy about that,” she says, adding that the two were at odds with each other since.

In December last year, however, the commander told Arnett that she had been moved to his command, at his request, for “rehabilitative efforts.” She began a “formal redress request,” claiming that the situation looked like “retaliation.” 

In the redress, she explained that she filed a similar request in May 2022, stating that she saw that she saw “this retaliation devolving into arrest.”

“I brought that up, and no proper answer,” Arnett tells me. “Have all these retaliatory things looming over my head, and I have this commander calling me to his command,” explaining that if she switches commands her new commander will imprison her on January 23, 2023. When January 23 arrived, Arnett was arrested, at the behest of her new commander.

Having been moved to the military base on Okinawa off the coast of Japan, Arnett was imprisoned for a period of four months. While she had previously been able to get to daily Mass at Iwakuni, receiving the Eucharist every day, something she calls her “spiritual sustenance,” Arnett was able in the course of her time in the Okinawa brig to receive Our Lord only once.

In April of this year, Arnett was moved out of the Okinawa brig and had a court martial date set for June 5, being kept at a brig in San Diego. While the court marital charges were “pulled,” the Marine Corps decided to “administratively separate” Arnett. On the 23rd, Arnett spoke to the military police on the base, explaining that she was not willing to “separate” from the Marines. As a result, she was arrested.

“At 4 a.m. on June 24, with nothing but the green Marine Corps uniform on my back and a binder of crumpled up papers, they take me to … a gas station a mile or two out, dump me, unceremoniously, and they’re just like, ‘Good luck,’” Arnett recalls, adding that she had no money with her. “I have a federal trespassing charge on me, and still waiting for the court summons. But that’s what I’m looking at, because quite frankly, my fight’s not over.” 

When I asked what people can do to help her, Arnett asked for prayers, especially the Rosary, though if people do not have the time, she asks for three Hail Marys in Latin, for her commanders’ repentance and conversions, especially the one responsible for her imprisonment, as well as the military leadership as a whole.

Arnett also has a LifeFunder set up for her. She intends to use any funds for further research on the jabs, more FOIA requests if need be, legal consultations, and travel expenses for her personal effects. LifeSite has also launched a LifePetition demanding that the Marine Corps reinstate Arnett. 

The John-Henry Westen Show is available by video on the show’s YouTube channel and right here on my LifeSite blog.

You can send me feedback, or ideas for show topics by emailing [email protected].

Help support Catholic Marine’s lawsuit against the Department of Defense: LifeFunder

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John-Henry is the co-founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.com. He and his wife Dianne have eight children and they live in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada.

He has spoken at conferences and retreats, and appeared on radio and television throughout the world. John-Henry founded the Rome Life Forum, an annual strategy meeting for life, faith and family leaders worldwide. He is a board member of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family. He is a consultant to Canada’s largest pro-life organization Campaign Life Coalition, and serves on the executive of the Ontario branch of the organization. He has run three times for political office in the province of Ontario representing the Family Coalition Party.

John-Henry earned an MA from the University of Toronto in School and Child Clinical Psychology and an Honours BA from York University in Psychology.

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