Catholic Relief Services -- another anti-life laundry for the death peddlers

By Randy Engel

Strike One

It's time the American Bishops applied the "three strikes and you're out" rule to Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' international relief program, which has become a laundering mechanism for millions of Catholic parish donations and tax-dollars into the coffers of the International Population Control Establishment.

In January 2010, the U.S. Coalition for Life, which I direct, issued its first warning shot regarding the new "partnership" between CRS and the billion dollar anti-life Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. [1]

According to the CRS official website (www.crs.org), the Gates Foundation is "guided by the belief that every life has equal value." CRS praises the foundation's work "to help all people lead healthy, productive lives," and "to ensure that all people... have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. ..."

In exchange for perpetuating this glorious deception and maintaining a silence on the Gates/Buffett world-wide killing machine, CRS has received in excess of $40 million from Gates/Buffet for global and agricultural development and financial services for the poor from 2003 to 2009.

When Most Rev. Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of CRS, and Thomas Price, CRS Senior Communications Manager were asked, "Why Catholic Relief Services is in a partnership with two of the world's greatest promoters of abortion and population control?" no answer was forthcoming from Dolan, but Price sent the following response to the USCL.

Thank you for your letter of concern on the Gates Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. As an official agency of the Catholic Church, Catholic Relief Services strictly adheres to the teaching of the Catholic Church and the policies of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Our first Guiding Principle states that "all human life is sacred and possesses a dignity that comes directly from our creation and not from any action of our own, ..." The Catholic Church often participates in humanitarian initiatives that include a large range of partners – and we do not always agree with everything they stand for. However, the work that is undertaken directly with any of our partners always strictly adheres to Church teaching. We do not provide or promote artificial birth control and would never accept funding from any donor that would compromise the agency's adherence to Catholic teaching. ..."

Sincerely, Tom Price

Score: Lions 1 Christians 0

Strike Two

On July 10, 2013, LifeSiteNews released information on Catholic Relief Services current affair with the pro-abortion international "relief"agency CARE. According to LifeSiteNews:

As the U.S. Bishops' development agency [Catholic Relief Services] was taking heat last summer for handing out over $5 million to the abortion- supporting group CARE, they were in the midst of giving a total of $13.8 million in grants to the same pro-abortion group during 2012, according to its recently- published IRS filings.

And how do we [and CRS officials] know that CARE is anti-life?

Well, if we go to the official website of the pro-abort Population Action International (formerly the Population Crisis Committee) at http://populationaction.org/what-we-do/our-partners/ we can see that CARE is listed as a member of PAI's International Family Planning Coalition " along with Catholics for Choice, Center for Reproductive Rights, NARAL Pro-Choice America, etc. etc. etc.

Score: Lions 2 Christians 0

Strike Three – CRS is OUT!

On July 19, 2013, I received a follow-up mailing from LifeSiteNews titled "'Heads should roll – Pro-life leaders react to U.S. Bishops agency's funding of abortion giant PSI," by Patrick B. Craine.

As reported by Craine, "Catholic Relief Services is distributing a two-year $2.7 million grant to Population Services International (PSI), which networks and trains local providers throughout the developing world to offer 'safe abortion.'" Most Americans would not know the PSI from the KKK, but I remember it very well.

In 1977, this writer testified for the USCL before the Committee on International Relations of the U.S. House of representatives in Washington, D.C. in opposition to all tax-funded foreign population control programs of the Agency for International Development (USAID) under Title X of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 as amended in 1968. Among those anti-life agencies singled out for special attention was the PSI.

Population Services International was created in 1970 at one of USAID's population control centers, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as "a non-profit family planning firm specializing in the application of business techniques to solve social problems," in this case, the war against the proliferation of people.

The masterminds behind PSI were Timothy Black of England and Philip Harvey, formerly with CARE. Now isn't that a coincidence! Dr. Black believed in the non-medical, hard sell, Madison Avenue approach to population control including contraception, surgical abortion, abortifacients, and sterilization.

The PSI got its first federal grant of $100,000 from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare/Office of Economic Opportunity for the purpose of setting up a condom-stamp program for teenage boys using OEO government mailing lists to mail the coupons to the young boys. After the condom-stamp program was suspended by government officials, Black and Harvey went over to USAID where they began to pick up multi-million contracts for population control projects abroad. Thanks to the American tax-payer, PSI soon had an international network of PSI affiliates around the world and PSI moved its headquarters to New York City. Among the most infamous Board of Directors of BSI was abortionist Malcolm Potts, a long time associate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation and a director of the International Pregnancy Advisory Services, which was created by with tax-funds for the purpose of designing and distributing all forms of surgical fertility control equipment including sterilization clips and mini-abortion kits. In March, 1977, PSI drew public fire from Australia's pro-life Senator Brian Harradine from Tasmania, when the PSI/Australia announced that it was going to set up an abortion clinic in the Australian Capital Territory. As Harradine noted in his press statement, while PSI is a "non-profit" organization and therefore does not pay income tax or a dividend, those individuals associated with PSI "do not appear to be financially disadvantaged," and he provided financial records from PSI abortion clinics performing first and second trimester abortions to make his point. [2] One of the abortion methods employed by PSI/Australia aboritoriums in 1977 was called exsanguination which involved the rupture of the amniotic sac and the cutting of the umbilical cord causing the preborn child to bleed to death. After a 12-hour waiting period, the baby was dismembered via a D&C. The method of exsanguination had been perfected by PSI/Bangladesh in 1975.

Score: Lions 3 Christians 0

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

There is no great mystery why Catholic Relief Services is "partnering" with population control leaders and organizations around the world. The answer is $$$$, millions of dollars of it. More than half of CRS's annual budget comes from federal agencies including USAID. In the movie Forest Gump, the lead character uses the phrase, "stupid is as stupid does" meaning that actions are more important than mere words. If a man does a stupid thing, however intelligent he may be, he is being stupid. And I say to any bishop, who continues to promote CRS, and to any Catholic who puts one bloody cent into the CRS national campaign scheduled for next March 1214, you are very, very stupid indeed, to say nothing of being highly immoral.

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© Randy Engel