Check out this follow-up article over at Embassy magazine.  It gives us the official skinny on why Development & Peace got their funding cut. Read the rest of this entry »

As many of you have already learned, CIDA has cut Development & Peace’s budget by 64%.  And the reason that Development & Peace got their funding cut was not abortion.  It was money, fiscal restraint, and lack of transparency.  Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note:  LSN is using the requested funding to calculate the funding cut (64%).  But really, we should be comparing the funding cut to their previous budget (68%).  Anyhow you look at it, it’s a substantial cut!

March 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Development & Peace (D&P), the international development arm of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), has had its funding cut by the Canadian Conservative Government by 65%.

D&P, which has been embroiled in controversy over the last two years for funding pro-abortion groups, is looking to Catholics in the pews to make up the shortfall at Masses across the country this Sunday.

In July 2010, D&P asked the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for $49.2 million towards its new 5-year program (2011-2016), according to a letter to supporters last week. On February 8, 2012, CIDA informed D&P that they would receive $14.9 million for the five-year period.

The funding from CIDA to D&P for the previous five-year term – 2006 to 2011 – was $44.6 million….read the rest here.

The Canadian International Development Agency has agreed to fund less than one-third of Montreal-based Development and Peace’s $49.2-million five-year request, leaving the large Catholic development NGO contemplating shrinking its programs.

In July 2010, Development and Peace asked CIDA for $49.2 million to fund its regular programming, aside from emergency aid, between 2011 and 2016.

The group is one of Canada’s largest Christian-based international development organizations. It is the official international development group of the Catholic Church in Canada.

The agency had given just under $45 million for the development group’s regular programming between 2006 and 2011.

Development and Peace ran out of that existing funding in September 2011. It has been running its regular programs on a shoestring budget since then, waiting to hear.

It cut back funding to 32 partner groups, and hasn’t been able to renew funding arrangements with 48 others. It also cut Canadian-based programs and operating expenses…

Read the rest here.

A fine rant by Big Blue Wave.

In Canada, we’re just a “corporate” church right now, run by Social Justice bureaucrats.

In a short time from now, however, the “sinful structures” which currently run the Church are going to come crashing down. Thanks be to God.

Michael Voris

Talk:  Igniting the Firewall:  Drawing Boundaries & Preserving Catholic Identity

Thurs. May 24, 2012 | 7:15PM

The Bronson Centre
211 Bronson Avenue, Ottawa
(See Map Below)

Parking at the back of the building in the parking lot and along the side streets.

Price: Free-Will Offering

Sponsored by:  Socon or Bust (socon.ca) & Legionnaires of St. Maurice (legionnaires.ca)

If you plan to attend, please register here:  socon40@gmail.com. (It is not necessary to register, but we would like to have an idea of how many people are planning to attend.)

Click here to donate to
help defray the cost of this event.

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In this interview, Our Channel of Hope interviews Archbishop Richard Smith, president of the CCCB.  The interview was aired January 23, 2012, about 6 weeks before LifeSite reported on +Smith’s trip to Haiti, which you can read here.  As you listen to the segment dealing with the on-going abortion scandal of Development & Peace (22:00-24:27), you might think that, after hearing + Smith, that we are talking about two entirely different controversies. Read the rest of this entry »

This Lent, remember not to give to the abortion-pushers of Development & Peace.  Three years going and the problem still exists.  Social justice is still running over the unborn.

Children of Paraguay is a Catholic charity which spends its money in the service of authentic Catholic teaching, with little admin costs.

It’s real social justice, without the abortion-eco-marxist baggage.

MONTREAL, March 9, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (D&P) has launched its fundraising drive for Lent 2012.  Part of their ‘Share Lent’ campaign this year includes a training session which teaches that 10 per cent of the world population is “homosexual – lesbian”. 

But the beat goes on…just the same.  We live in two different worlds.  The only thing left for us to do is to wait until the social justice generation dies off.

While the U.S. bishops valiantly fight a mandate by the Obama administration forcing people of faith to cover contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs, the Canadian bishops’ international development arm is supporting a Haitian group that has been caught handing out free contraceptives.

Archbishop Richard Smith (L) and Archbishop Paul-André Durocher (R) are guided by APROSIFA coordinator Lody Auguste (centre) through the group’s art exhibit.

The two Archbishops who lead the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) visited the group, called the Association pour la promotion de la santé integrale de la famille (APROSIFA), with leaders from Development & Peace in December as part of a solidarity trip.

Simple web searches reveal that APROSIFA has produced literature on how to obtain abortions and runs a health clinic in a Port-au-Prince shantytown that offers “family planning.”

On February 24, a woman working undercover for LifeSiteNews called the clinic to ask about the possibility of obtaining contraceptives. She told the clinic worker that she is 21 years old and has no children, and the worker informed her that she could come into the clinic from Monday to Friday “for a [family] planning program or for pills.”

Asked if it would cost anything, the worker responded, “No, to the contrary, it is completely free.”

APROSIFA’s work promoting “family planning” is “ground breaking” according to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, one of its funders, because, “family planning is still controversial in some Haitian families” and information about it is “not widely available elsewhere.”… (Source)

In December, I sent in an Access to Information request to obtain the names of all of the groups D&P is funding for the next five years.  My request was denied because releasing the information would put D&P at a “competitive disadvantage” with their application with CIDA.  So the long and short is that we have to wait.  The chances are pretty good, however, that we will still have many, many pro-abort groups (and new ones too!) funded by Development & Peace.

By the way, we covered this story last year.  Check out the these posts…

• CCCB Delegation Led By Feminists (Socon or Bust)
• How much longer? (Socon or Bust)
• CCCB buries head in Haitian sand as D&P continues to support pro-abort group (Socon or Bust)

How tragic it is indeed that the CCCB is more concerned with banning pro-life media from their useless Assemblies than dealing with the push for abortion in the Global South, financed every year by Canadian Catholic Lenten offerings.  They cover their ears and close their minds when the truth is offered to them.

These men have serious, serious spiritual and leadership failings.  It’s now 3 years and counting with this abortion drama.  And they still, still will not admit that repentance on their part is what is required.

God help us all.  They will not permit their pride to be overcome….even for the sake of unborn life.

…However, Zeidler warned, “these pro-life policies in Latin America are in great danger. In fact, in some areas these pro-life laws are hanging on by a thread.” He urged Americans to “show solidarity with our courageous brothers and sisters of Latin America who are engaged in a battle for life, family and Faith” and to “unite to save the Continent of Hope…(Source)

Those laws have been and are in the process of being overturned because the Canadian Bishops have their heads in the sand and continue to support pro-abort groups in the Global South.  The reason for this, of course, is because we don’t have one bishop in this country to openly condemn D&P’s ideology and practices because the bishops have long ceded their individual authority to the machine.  They’re basically altar boys of the Star Chamber…or the Borg.

That’s what a perverse form of “collegiality” has done for us since Vatican II - bishops without balls.

(Sorry to be so graphic, but I try to keep up with good alliteration.)

…I have worked on and off in Africa, for “humanitarian” organizations, for some thirty years, during both Republican and Democratic administrations, and I have not seen that the U.S. Government’s efforts to promote the sexual revolution – with the willing cooperation of the U.S. bishops’ own overseas “humanitarian” organization, and of other “Christian” subcontractors – has varied much in intensity over those years. The “foreign aid” agencies of both the U.S. federal government and the USCCB (the latter a contractor of the former) are both “owned” and staffed by either secularists, or by fellow-traveling-sexual-revolutionist “Catholics” and other vaguely “faith-motivated” types. Regardless of the particular ideology of the sitting president or of the very-theoretical anti-sexual-revolution stance of the bishops, those agencies find ways to effectively advance the sexual revolution. Personnel is policy…(Source)

I bet you don’t know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll, do you?

From a reader from his experience at Mass this past Sunday…

This morning, I nearly stormed out of the church. They had allowed a presentation by the communist subversive organization known as Development & Peace. 

We all know about their unholy alliances with pro-abortion groups, but this year it went much further. It was a 7 minute spiel about global warming and environmentalism.  Pure political propaganda cloaked with a veneer of “Christian” words tossed in.  If not for the fact that I was warned these nutjobs were going to speak after confession this morning, and that I prayed for self-control, I most certainly would have gotten up and walked out and possibly given them a piece of my mind.  Read the rest of this entry »

Socon or Bust has been online for over five years now.  Three of those years have been substantially devoted to exposing the massive social justice fraud in the Catholic Church in Canada.  It’s therefore fitting that the final post here at Socon or Bust should offer a few closing remarks on Development & Peace.

As at the end of 2011, Socon or Bust and LifeSiteNews have uncovered 53 D&P sponsored groups which hold beliefs which are fundamentally opposed to Catholic teaching in one or more of the following areas: abortion, infanticide, contraception, homosexuality, Marxism, feminism, and even overt anti-Catholicism.  (A full diary of our posts on the abortion saga involving D&P can be permanently accessed by visiting our archived blog.)

After being elected as CCCB president, Archbishop Richard Smith asked us to “trust the bishops“, while seemingly being unaware that he was being hosted by feminists during his recent trip to Haiti.  This 53rd group, uncovered by a Socon or Bust reader, was also a beneficiary of George Soros’s largesse.  George gave APROSIFA a $9500 grant to translate to Creole the book “Where there is no doctor“ which has a chapter on how to self-abort.  And as if this was not bad enough – shocker of all shockers! – if you meander over to D&P’s website and access their Haiti page, you won’t see any groups identified.

It’s all part of their major problem with transparency which continues to this day, despite the so-called “reforms”.

The problem with Development & Peace is part of a larger problem with the Catholic Church’s global social justice industry which, in turn, is part of bigger problem of corruption in almost every area of Church life.  As an aside, this is also especially true about the so-called Catholic media who prefer to secure the good graces of weak and compromised bishops rather than to report the truth, so authentic renewal can genuinely begin.  The lapdog ”yes men” press are no true friends of the Church.  I once told a homosexualist who was berating me for my alleged hatred of homosexuals:  “Does love always say yes?”  She never responded.

The imbroglio concerning Development & Peace is part of a larger problem with the Catholic Church’s identity.  Instead of doing authentic social justice, we farmed it out to the secular world.  And the tragic results are before us today.  It’s time for all Catholics to hit the reset button, relying less on the world to do charitable work and more on ourselves.

I want to thank all of you who have offered us support here at Socon or Bust throughout the years.  Your words of support and encouragement have edified and sustained Steve and I.

For Life and Family,

John Pacheco
pacheco377@gmail.com

Socon or Bust (Archive Site)
Legionnaires of St. Maurice
The Rosarium
The Catholic Legate

One of the first D&P pro-abort partners which Socon or Bust outed in our investigation three years ago was a group called Fanm Deside.  Here’s what we found out:

• Fanm Deside (Website: www.fanmdeside.org)
  Listed as a Partner of CCODP’s 2006-2011 Latin America Program, page 127

Fanm Deside has a pro-abortion stance. In their PowerPoint presentation located here at Slide 16, the presentation mentions having organized a day of reflection on the decriminalisation of abortion. (Source)

Soon thereafter, LifeSite News published their own report on this group (along with another group). You can read that report here.

A few posts ago, we highlighted how the CCCB was being hosted by two other anti-life groups in Haiti. (There’s now 4 D&P anti-life groups in Haiti that we know of.)

And just when you thought our bishops could not be more clueless or flippant to concerns raised by the pro-life community, fear not, my dear friends!  The CCCB’s clueless campaign continues!  Yes indeedy. Read the rest of this entry »

Funny how Development and Peace claims to be fighting poverty, but some of their actions just ingrain poverty.

Take for instance their efforts on agriculture.  As you can see on this page, D&P empahsizes the importance of ”small-scale farmers”. In the Global South, small-scale farming barely provides a subsistence income with very little up-side for improving your lifestyle. Read the rest of this entry »

Seriously.

Your Excellency;

It is with regret that I find it necessary to write you during this busy Advent Season.  This past weekend I was quite upset by the initiative put out by Development and Peace.  As a convert to the faith in November 2006, I have been quite distressed by what I have been witnessing in the Church in regards to poor Catechesis but this past weekend was the first time I experienced grave concerns about D&P.   Although there are many positive points to the pledge put out in our Parish last weekend,  the fact that the initiative was linked in any way to Global Warming is very disturbing.  It’s bad enough I have to endure the secular media go on about this unfounded theory whose bottom line is ‘anti-life’,  but that I had it thrown at me in Church, in Advent, was over the top.   I had always been sceptical about the whole Global Warming nonsense when Al Gore’s movie came out in 2006, and I was greatly relieved to come across this wonderful Catholic Investigative Agency’s analysis of Global Warming.  It was comforting to have my suspicions confirmed once and for all.  I just happen to have an extra copy of this DVD and thought perhaps it may be of value to you.  There is also a computer resource CD that contains all the research data that went into this production.  I pray that our Archbishop, armed with this knowledge, will put a stop to further tainting our experience at Mass with more propaganda in regards to Global Warming, released by D&P.  To feel it necessary to educate the faithful about this nonsense with the HUGE crisis of faith is very upsetting.

 Please be assured of my prayers.  In fact, this past fall I had a Novena of Masses said  for your intentions.

Respectfully Yours,

Socon or Bust Reader

__________

From the same reader…

Here’s a link to the garbage I had to look at last weekend.    Many people signed it and placed it in the offering tray as requested.  I wrote my name, mentioning I couldn’t sign it because GW was ‘anti-life’ etc.

As John pointed out on Monday, another Development and Peace partner supporting contraception has been busted.

For those of you keeping score at home, that brings the total list of anti-Catholic, anti-life partners of D&P to 53.

Good grief. 53? Planned Parenthood must be jealous.

For some reason, this incident has disturbed me more than others. I think it’s because it was prefaced by Archbishop Richard Smith’s “trust me” message. If I was a bishop in this country trying to regain the trust of the faithful, I wouldn’t participate in any photo-op with a D&P partner unless a background check had been done to make sure the partner was clean. This obviously wasn’t done. The evidence we exposed wasn’t buried in a secret vault. It just took just 15 minutes and a search engine to dig it up. Somebody couldn’t be bothered for even that.

There’s a sort of flippancy about this whole affair on the part of the bishops. Even now, after all we’ve been through.  Even as they try to reform D&P and regain our trust, the whole thing smells of sloppiness, neglect and half-heartedness, as if being dragged kicking and screaming to where they’d rather not go.

“Trust me,” he says.

This is a bad way to start a 2-year stint as head of the CCCB.

Almighty God, how much longer?

As some of you might know, our CCCB and D&P executives made a recent trip to Haiti to survey Canadian Catholic efforts in rebuilding that country.  Canadian Catholics have been especially generous to these efforts:

…Canadian Catholics donated more than $20 million towards emergency relief and long-term reconstruction efforts in Haiti. Of that money, Development and Peace has already disbursed $2.8 million for emergency relief through 24 partners, including several religious communities. It has committed $10 million for reconstruction projects for 2011-2013. The bishops will also “recognize and encourage the dedicated work of Canadian religious and other Canadian volunteers in Haiti,” according to a Dec. 8 news release announcing the mission…. (Source)

Recently, Socon or Bust  warned our readers to never give D&P any money, despite Archbishop Richard Smith’s plea to “trust us”:

Archbishop Richard Smith of Edmonton told Canadian Catholic News’ Deborah Gyapong that those Catholics who are feeling “panicky and worried” over the D&P situation should “step back and take a breath and look at gently and simply at what the bishops are asking for and simply trust the bishops and the leadership of Development and Peace to move forward on this.” (Source)

Socon our Bust demurred from this trust.  It looks like our decision to demur was well-founded. Check this out from a Socon or Bust reader… (Readers are cautioned on viewing the art. It’s ghastly.)  Read the rest of this entry »

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