Melinda Gates Has Money, But She Doesn't Have the Truth

Even though the times have changed, God has not—and neither has the Church.

Melinda Gates speaks at the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning.
Melinda Gates speaks at the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning. (photo: Source: DFID - UK Department for International Development, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Dear Melinda Gates,

Money you’ve got, but the truth is eluding you. Agreeing to disagree with the Catholic Church is not an option for members in good standing.

You got off to a wonderful start being baptized into the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. The truth doesn’t change and Catholic teachings haven’t changed in over 2,000 years. That should be your first clue that your idea to convert the Church is a bad one.

At the recent Global Family Planning Summit in London, you announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $375 million to organizations providing contraceptives and abortions. You said the money would only go towards contraceptives [not acceptable for some very good reasons, so do your homework] and sex education.

You are actually not entirely accurate, Melinda, about what your money is doing so look into that too. LifeNews.com explained: “The fungibility of money makes it easier for pro-abortion organizations to provide abortion internationally. In other words, every dollar the Gates Foundation gives to Planned Parenthood for distributing birth control or building an abortion-friendly clinic frees up a dollar in Planned Parenthood’s budget to spend elsewhere.”

Between 2009 and 2013, you and Bill also handed out $71 million to Planned Parenthood both in the U.S. and internationally plus $46.1 million to the British-based abortion service Marie Stopes International.

Melinda, you may be living on easy street, but that doesn’t mean population control for the lowly is kindness on your part. Poor people and their babies have a right to life too. Why don’t you use your money for adoption services and care to mothers and babies that would help them both live well? Improve lives rather than end them and leave post-abortive women in your wake. 

 

You and the Church

In a recent BBC interview, you said that you are “optimistic” that the Catholic Church will reverse its teaching on contraception in order to help women in developing countries.

You stated that: “we have agreed at this point to disagree” on contraception. You said you were “optimistic” that the Catholic Church would re-examine its teachings on contraception. How did you come to the conclusion that your opinion is superior to 2,000 years of Church history?

In 1968, Pope Paul VI wrote Humanae Vitae, an encyclical that spells out Church teaching on family planning and contraception. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that contraception is “not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality...The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle...involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.” (CCC 2370).

 

False Teaching is Heresy

Do not play the Catholic card while pushing contraception and abortion onto the Third World because it makes you an enemy of the Church. When you said that you and the pope have agreed to disagree on Catholic teaching on contraception, you admitted to being a heretic.

Even though the times have changed, God has not — and neither has the Church. They are a package deal. Melinda, it’s foolish to think that you can convince the Church to reverse the teaching on contraception after 265 previous Popes have not done so.

For the record, the Church does not teach that Catholics must have endless children. For serious reasons, people can use Natural Family Planning (NFP) to avoid pregnancy. There are even fertility monitors now that can tell a woman if she is fertile at a click of a button, and it's 98% effective. Isn’t that better than having women fill their bodies with Type 1 carcinogens?

To fully follow Christ, we need to follow the authority he laid down for us. Jesus cannot oppose himself.  If you have an opinion opposite from the Catholic Church’s, you cannot both be right. Who did Jesus promise to lead in truth with the Holy Spirit, his Church or Melinda Gates?

“But if I should be delayed, you should know how to behave in the household of God which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Tim. 3:1).

“Obey your leaders and defer to them, for they keep watch over you and will have to give an account...” (Heb. 13:17).

I hope that everyone reading this will pray for you, Melinda. Understanding the truth and living in union with God’s will is the goal. Then, praying to influence your husband would be a good next move. We will help with that.