What Covenant House doesn't talk about in its fundraising pitch

Agent 3 reports that  Covenant House Toronto has recently flighted a massive repeat of its successful fundraising video ad, which opens with a long shot of a poor waif, sitting, cold and hungry, in the doorway of a downtown building, as a strange man (possibly a "chicken hawk") approaches.

"Amazing Grace" (of course) plays softly as we go to the voiceover which suggests Covenant House saves little white "barely legals" like this from a fate worse than death. The ad would melt the heart of a Scrooge, which is the intention of course.

If that one doesn't get to you, perhaps you'll be persuaded by this snippet scraped from the Covenant House Toronto website.

Even Ayn Rand couldn't refuse to help a sweet little girl like that "find a path forward", dontcha think? Sadly, young women like her are in the minority [the visible minority? Ed.] of Covenant House's "clients". The majority, in Toronto at least, include:

* "international students", getting into Canada by the back door -- a student visa to study at the likes of the Singh School of Truck Driving,

* drug addicts who won't get treatment, seeking only need a place to crash, and

* bogus refugees, asylum-seekers and other illegal immigrants (read: benefits shoppers) avoiding deportation, not that deportation is just as much a threat in Canada as it is in the US of A.

Jasmine Ramze Rezaee, the Director of Advocacy & Communications for YWCA Toronto, which undertakes similar work, told an interviewer that for those who are new to Canada, students included, housing challenges can sometimes be magnified. "I do think that refugees and people with precarious immigration status and even folks who have not yet obtained their refugee status, deal with a lot of compounding challenges and vulnerabilities because they can't oftentimes access even the minimum level of support that our society provides. And it's not uncommon for them to end up in the shelter system."

For a more accurate picture of the kind of marginalized yoofs the charity protects from the realities of life, check out "Rising above hate to build a better life", on their website. I suppose that it would be churlish to suggest that poor Nathaniel would have been better of had he stayed in his own country and straightened out his personal life. But don't let them guilt you into feeling like an ogre for suggesting that "how he is" is his own choice, and it's somehow our duty to shield him from the consequences.

On its website and in its literature, Covenant House Toronto says "We are part of an international network. Covenant House is an internationally recognized child care agency with 'houses' in 34 cities in Canada (Toronto and Vancouver), the U.S. and Latin America."

For some reason, Covenant House downplays the fact that it is, in theory at least, a Catholic charity. The mother organization was founded by Franciscan Father Bruce Ritter to provide shelters for homeless teenagers. Father Ritter was forced to resign a few years ago over accusations of financial and sexual misdeeds. (Source: Toronto Star, 3/3/16) I beg your forgiveness for wondering in the, errr, misdeeds involved Lolitas like the one in the TV ad.

Well, no matter. Covenent House Toronto has been a high-profile Catholic charity in Toronto for the past several years now. Although their "Impact Report 2023" (a model of wokeness and DEI) says they receive only 2% of their funding from Catholic Charities and the Archdiocese of Toronto's annual ShareLife appeal, the executive director of ShareLife Toronto, told an interviewer that $1 million a year comes from Toronto’s ShareLife, and $1.5 million dollars comes from Covenant House, New York. The balance of the over $3 million yearly budget is supplied from provincial and municipal funds.

Funny, then, that according to an article in The Interim, Covenant House Toronto -- "set up to help street kids rehabilitate themselves" -- hands out condoms and does abortion referrals! While condom distribution is a matter of public record and is sanctioned by the Archdiocese of Toronto, abortion referrals are made quietly and depend on which worker a girl seeks at the House. Both practices have been publicly justified by several Canadian theologians on the grounds of "the lesser of two evils."

A director of ShareLife Toronto defended the practice of giving out condoms to high-risk street kids. He described many of them as homosexuals who were possibly AIDS carriers, and claimed this provided some measure of protection from them. He said the policy had been approved by the Catholic board of Covenant House after extensive consultations with moral theologians whom he would not name. 

I am not telling you not to respond to Covenant House's insistent appeals. I believe in "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Unlike the perpetrators of the Help Kids Canada scam, the people running Covenant House are trying to do something to help the marginalized and less fortunate. God knows their intentions and will surely forgive them if, in their zeal, they do or advocate things that are morally questionable. But that doesn't mean that it's racist or homophobic or uncharitable or un-Christian to disagree with what they're doing. To give or not to give, the choice is yours.