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

I’d like to offer a few clarifications, thoughts, and details about our imminent departure from the blogosphere.

1) Reasons for Departure – The natural assumption from some people when they see some someone pulling out from the public spot light is that some tragedy or scandal has happened.  I can tell you that nothing of the kind has happened to yours truly.  Everything is fine (family, work, health).  There’s just a lot of practical things I need to tend to as a father, son, and husband:  house renovations, aging parents, my kids religious formation (I want to develop an apologetics program for my girls), and I want to be a better husband too.  (My poor wife has suffered this fool for years while I engaged in taxing activism, and yet ironically she thinks I should keep going with this blog.)  I also plan to get more active in the pro-life underground with a little project here in Ottawa, as well as testing the waters for a Catholic Mens Group.

2) Not Good Bye, But Farewell -  Running an effective and popular blog is very time-consuming.  You have to be on the ball. You have to post regularly.  And sometimes you have to post within seconds.  I just can’t do that anymore with these other things on my plate.  I’m not a guy that does things halfway.  It’s full board or nothing.  Having said that, it would be a mistake for my opponents to think that this is a permanent departure. I’m leaving that decision to Providence.  And, of course, I will still be moderately active in the social conservative movement here in Ottawa and beyond.

3) Archive - Some of you have mentioned to me that I should keep Socon or Bust online for reference and research purposes.  There is, after all, over 5 years worth of work, some of it pretty good and insightful by yours truly and Steve G, if I do say so myself.  Initially, I was hesitant to do this since I might be tempted to simply continue blogging, but the benefits outweigh any drawbacks so I’m parking this blog’s content at this WordPress address:  http://soconorbust.wordpress.com/.  After the 23rd, socon.ca will also be directed to this wordpress address.

4) Unfinished Business -  There is still the matter of bringing Michael Voris to Ottawa and raising some money for a young Ottawa woman to attend a Pro-Life conference in Florida.  I’ll be posting information on these 2 items at the Legionnaires of St. Maurice website located here.

5) Contact – If any of you wish to contact me, you can do so by visiting the Legionnaires site.

Once again, many thanks for the gratitude and support Socon or Bust readers have provided us through the years.  We couldn’t have “busted” without you.

For Life and Against the Koolaid,

John

Merry Christmas

Studies have found that kids in day care don’t develop as much creativity. When you teach kids something, they tend to learn that something but not much else. Kids need time to fidget and tinker with their toys, invent nonsensical fairy tales and what not. A child’s brain is like a sponge with an incredible capacity to learn and discover. They need to do some of that discovering on their own, through creativity.

What we’re seeing in society today is a generation that can’t think outside the box because they don’t do much thinking at all. People are all too happy to delegate to the State the responsibility for many important decisions in their life. They’re too busy entertaining themselves to be bothered with any thinking.

Studies cited by Ms. Kheiriddin also find that day care may contribute to a lack of attention among children (perhaps explaining the epidemic of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), more illness at a young age (day cares are virtual incubators for colds and flus), and the loss in parenting ability and affection.

That last one is a real biggie. You can’t outsource the raising of your kids to an under-paid and over-worked day-care employee. This isn’t a knock against day-care workers. They’re being asked the impossible. You can’t expect a perfect stranger to provide loving and nurturing care for so many kids of varying needs and backgrounds. Some workers may even intentionally be holding back so as not to be emotionally hurt when the children leave the day care. It’s called “guarding your heart” and I don’t blame them for seeking some detachment.

Let’s be frank for a sec. If a couple is dropping the kids off at the day care at 8 am and picking them up at 5 pm, the kids spend 9 hours per day with the day care workers. How many hours are they spending with the parents? Maybe a couple of hours in the morning and 3 hours in the evening before bedtime? So about 5 hours a day? So they spend almost twice as many hours a day with the day care worker than with the parents? And you don’t think that affects their sense of attachment or their emotional development?

These ain’t just dogs that can be dropped off at the kennel when you go on vacation. If anything, the kids can get confused and start thinking that the day care workers are the real parents. Don’t blame the kids for making these kind of connections:

Day care worker = the people that let me play with toys and scribble all day.

Parents = those grumpy people that force me to eat the broccoli, go to bed early and yell at me because they’ve had a rough day at work.

Humans have complex emotional needs, especially at such a young age. If we wonder why kids have so little respect for their parents when they become adolescents, perhaps we should consider the little respect shown to them as young children by treating them like cattle on a dairy farm (just feed and clean).

I leave you with Ms. Kheiriddin’s conclusion:

When you factor in the billions of dollars a year it would cost to implement ECE [Early Childhood Education] for all two-to-five year olds, it becomes very clear that there are better things to do with this money, including leaving it in parents’ pockets so that one can choose to work less and parent more for those first few years. “We need to turn our family policy junkyard into a human development system”, says the Early Years 3 report. No, we don’t. We need to turn human development back over to families, where it belongs. (Source)

Amen to that.

One of first-wave feminism’s great achievements in the 1970s was to end the denial surrounding wife abuse in even the “best” homes. Resources for abused women proliferated. Traditional social, judicial and political attitudes toward violence against women were cleansed and reconstructed along feminist-designed lines.

But then a funny thing happened. The closet from which abuse victims were emerging had, everyone assumed, been filled with women. But honest researchers were surprised by the results of their own objective inquiries. They were all finding, independently, that intimate partner violence (IPV) is mostly bidirectional.

…

Every major survey has borne out this truth. In fact, the most reliable, like Canada’s 1999 General Social Survey, found not only that most male and female violence is reciprocal, but also that the younger the sample, the more violent the women relative to men. A meta-analysis of mor than 80 large-scale surveys notes a widening, and concerning, spread – less male and more female IPV – in the dating cohort.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has just published its National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey to great fanfare. The survey’s central finding is – yep – that men and women inflict and suffer equal rates of IPV, with 6.5% of men and 6.3% of women experiencing partner aggression in the past year. More men (18%) suffer psychological aggression (humiliation, threats of violence, controllingness) than women (14%). Feminists often define IPV as a “pattern of power and control,” but the survey finds that men were 50% more likely to have experienced coercive control than women (15.2% vs 10.7%).

…

(Source)

The whole feminist power-play about “domestic violence” is just part of the whole attack on masculinity and paternity in general.  I am in no way dismissing true spousal and women abuse which has likely increased in this culture of death.  But one must be able to distinguish and delineate between the facts and the politics of the question.  Most of the “women’s violence” mantra is just dressed-up hatred of men, pure and simple.

If you watch commercials today on TV, the men are represented as being doofers and the woman is super-smart who can do it all. This is a consistent theme in commercials which my wife pointed out to me one day.

Many of D&P’s partners have this ”violence against women” mantra as one of their central objectives, which only goes to show that it’s not just the “biggies” like abortion and contraception that are the problem with the social justice industry in the Catholic Church.  It’s many, many other areas of concern which attack the traditional family.

As I said, pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend.  Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity.  Its value is temporary and must be used.  It is a consumable.

• 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.

Check this out.  Apparently the bishops went to visit Fanm Deside in Haiti.

When arriving in Jacmel late Sunday afternoon, the Canadian delegation was first received by 10 women from Fanm Deside…

Development and Peace has contributed $250,000 over two years to assist Fanm Deside, in part for the construction of a shelter for women and children seeking protection from domestic violence.

But wait!  It looks like the bishops are not that clueless after all.  They know about the allegations.  Check this out:

When asked about some commentators in Canada who say women’s groups such as Fanm Deside are radical critics of Church teaching, [Vicar General, Father Théodule Domond] said this was certainly not true in the southeast region of Haiti, adding he did not know any women in the movement who were critical of the Church or its teachings. At the same time, he said, there can be individuals or currents in any association that do not reflect its basic principles and objectives. “The same is also true for the Church itself,” he added. “There are Catholics and even homilists who criticize everything about women’s issues, even though these critics do not reflect what is the teaching of the Church.”

Really, Father?  Then why was their website littered with feminist propaganda and advocacy for the depenalization of abortion?  Of course the abortion propaganda is not their now. It’s been all scrubbed which is a typical reaction of D&P’s pro-abort groups after they’ve been busted. See also the Arriaga scrub here.  There’s been many others as well, for the record.

Actually, there are now 2 Fanm Deside’s!

They have been divided into 2 web addresses recently (.com and .org.).  The .org address had the objectionable material on it. The .com address is the current one which mentions D&P’s support.  Are they different organizations?

No, they are the same outfit.

Coincidentally, the .com address looks like it was only created this past Summer, and the .org address (around since 2008) has been completely scrubbed and remade into a blog with only two entries.

Were interested parties in the social justice gig involved in the make-over and separation? That’s an interesting question we’d all like to know, fa’ shoah.

Contact Information on the .Com site

Contact
Pour toute question ou commentaire, contactez-nous au:
Sant Sosyal Lakonbit, Lamandou, Jacmel HAITI
Boite postale 81
Tel:(509) 2514-6768/3783-6123/3887-9318

Contact Information on the .Org site is not available now (that’s a surprise!), but lookie what you can find out about this same site using the WayBack Machine (screen capture on Jan.7, 2009):

So both of these websites have the same mailing address and phone number. It’s the same people (or as good as).

That means the “decriminalization of abortion” on their own website charge still sticks on Fanm Deside, however they want to split their websites.

But even the .com address (where D&P is proudly listed) has incriminating involvements on their home page:

• Appuyer les efforts de la CONAP (Coordination Nationale de Plaidoyer pour les Droits des Femmes)
• Participer aux activités de la Marche mondiale des femmes

=

• Support the efforts of CONAP (National Coordination of Advocacy for the Rights of Women)
• Participate in the World March of Women

Here’s what CONAP is about:

Women’s groups have been meeting since November, 2002, in a network called the National Coalition for Women’s Rights (CONAP). Their goal is to pressure Parliament into repealing the laws that criminalize adultery and amending those concerning rape and a women’s right to divorce her husband. They are also seeking the decriminalization of abortion and legislation to protect the numerous domestic workers (restavèk) against abuse. The creation of this feminist platform represents an important step forward and it is to be hoped that Haitian women will pursue this work of integration and develop partnerships with their sisters throughout the continent. (Source: Rights & Democracy, Haiti: A Bitter Bicentennial – Report of a mission by Rights & Democracy September 2003, p.47)

Here’s more interesting information about CONAP’s radical feminism here, here, and here.

When the feminists at Fanm Deside say they support CONAP, does that mean with Catholic money?  It sure looks like it.

No wonder 10 feminists came to greet the Church sugar daddies when they arrrived.   Would you give up $250K?  When has a pro-life group anywhere in the Global South received this kind of cash from the CCCB?

And Archbishop Smith wants us to trust the bishops?

There’s an appropriate response at this time of year to that proposal:

Bah. Humbug.

D&P ABORTION SCANDAL VIDEO & INDEX PAGE

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.

How did Western countries become so prosperous? In part because we learned that small-scale farming was horribly inefficient. We realized that there were huge economies of scale associated with large farms. This dramatically increased food production, made food cheaper, allowed many more mouths to be fed and liberated labour to go work in higher-paid jobs in cities. This is the path that so many countries have taken to exit the Third World and join the group of wealthy nations.

The path to development must necessarily pass through mergers of small farms into ever larger farms to harness these economies of scale.

But D&P, unfortunately, is rooted in Marxist ideologies. They see large farms as intrisically evil because they are based on capitalist principles of growth and moving up. I’m sure they don’t purposely intend to keep the Global South in poverty, but that’s what will happen if they keep pushing for small-scale farming and don’t give those poor people the chance for betterment.

It would actually be much easier for current developing countries to enhance their agricultural practices because the technologies required for large-scale farming have already been invented by the West. Back in the days when Canada and the US were becoming industrialized countries, we had to invent those technologies and farming techniques from scratch. Today, they’re common practice and available to anyone in the world.

Capitalism is far from perfect, but it’s very good at creating material wealth. And not just wealth for the few, as the Occupy crowd claimed. Even the poorest people in Canada are much better off than the average Haitian. In the last few decades, capitalism has allowed hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Latin America to better their lives and move out of abject poverty. All the development agencies in the world combined cannot claim anything near that amount of success.

Any real development agency should seek to foster this type of productivity-enhancing growth that would bring rising incomes to the masses. D&P has it backwards.

We remind our readers to do the Catholic and anti-eco-worship thing:  desist from erecting artificial Christmas trees if at all possible.

Instead, cut one of these things down from Mother earth and put it up in your living room to celebrate Christ’s victory over paganism and false religion.

Who knows? Your days of being able to do it could be short, if David Suzuki and the eco-grinches have anything to do with it.

Merry Christmas!

I greatly encourage all Socon or Bust  readers to take out a subscription.  It’s the medicine that will help you keep your faith in a Church full of dissent and virtual apostasy.

One of the articles which I read over a year ago has been posted online. My eldest daughter was getting treatment with homeopathy for a skin condition.

We stopped after reading this article.

Don’t get sucker-punched by the Devil under the guise of authentic medicine.  And don’t be afraid to call out the devil for his incantations.