UN committee lambasts Vatican policies and Catholic moral teachings

In a wide-ranging report released this morning, the UN watchdog for children's rights, has denounced the Holy See for 'adopting policies allowing priests to sexually abuse thousands of children'. The report recommends that the Vatican should "immediately remove" all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers. It also criticises Vatican attitudes towards homosexuality, contraception and abortion. A group representing the victims of abuse by priests in the US welcomed the report.

Read the full report here: http://catholicvoicesmedia.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/un-report.pdf

The Vatican has responded with the following preliminary short statement:

The end of its 65th session, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has published its Concluding Observations on the reviewed Reports of the Holy See and five States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Congo, Germany, Portugal, Russian Federation and Yemen).

According to the proper procedures foreseen for the parties to the Convention, the Holy See takes note of the Concluding Observations on its Reports, which will be submitted to a thorough study and examination, in full respect of the Convention in the different areas presented by the Committee according to international law and practice, as well as taking into consideration the public interactive debate with the Committee, held on 16 January 2014.

The Holy See does, however, regret to see in some points of the Concluding Observations an attempt to interfere with Catholic Church teaching on the dignity of human person and in the exercise of religious freedom.

The Holy See reiterates its commitment to defending and protecting the rights of the child, in line with the principles promoted by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and according to the moral and religious values offered by Catholic doctrine.by saying it will examine the report but says it regret to see... 'an attempt to interfere with Catholic Church teaching on the dignity of the human person' ... and reiterates its commitment to defending and protecting the rights of the child,"

In an article entitled: 'How the Holy See was ambushed by a UN kangaroo court' posted this morning, Austen Ivereigh, from Catholic Voices analyses and comments on the UN report. A summary follows below. Read the full article, and other related comments, here: http://cvcomment.org/

He writes: 'The report is not only ignorant and misguided, peddling myths for which there is no foundation, but betrays an extraordinary misunderstanding of the nature of the Church and the Holy See, while seeking to impose an ideology of gender and sexuality in violation of the UN’s own commitment to religious freedom.

'The 16-page UN report is so full of crass errors and myths that it is impossible to tackle them all. But the principal faults can be gathered under the three headings of 1) ignorance about the Church’s record on abuse 2) misunderstanding about the Church 3) attempt to impose an ideology of sexuality and gender.'

'Nowhere in the Report is there an acknowledgement that the Catholic Church in the western world has led safeguarding, creating guidelines and best practices which are routinely recommended by governments to other institutions to emulate. Nor does it acknowledge that the Holy See at least since 2001 has been the catalyst of those best practices, cajoling bishops’ conferences across the world to put in place measures of the sort pioneered in the US and the UK. Instead, the Report peddles the myth (29) that “the Holy See has consistently placed the preservation of the reputation of the Church and the protection of the perpetrators above children’s best interests”. If there is substance to that claim pre-2000, the opposite is now the case, and nowhere is this acknowledged. This, no doubt, was designed to produce headlines like the BBC’s — ‘UN slams Vatican for protecting priests over child abuse’ — in order to sustain the myth of the Church, and the Vatican in particular, as an unreformed institution, when all the evidence points the other way.'

'In order to sustain that myth, the Report calls for the Vatican, for example, to inculcate the notion that the best interests of children are paramount, when this has been a central tenet of the Holy See’s efforts for at least the past decade. It claims (43-44) that “well-known child sex abusers have been transferred from parish to parish” when this was true of the 1970s-80s but hardly ever at all from the early 1990s, when the bishops began seriously to tackle the problem.'

Ivereigh writes: 'The Report is in deep confusion about canon and civil law, claiming, for example, that child sex abuse has been dealt with in “confidential proceedings providing for disciplinary measures which have allowed the vast majority of abusers … to escape judicial proceedings in states where abuses were committed.” This is an outrageous untruth. The Holy See’s procedures — bound by confidentiality to enable victims to give evidence — refer to canonical processes such as laicization; they do not contradict, interfere with, or prevent in any way action under the civil law of states, and in general demand that the civil law process of states is completed before canonical processes begin. Back when abuse cases were not dealt with, they were not dealt with in either canon or civil law; and once they were dealt with, they were dealt with in both. There is simply no evidence that canonical trials of sex abusers have ever been used instead of, or to subvert, the actions of police and courts in any country in the world.'

'The Report then falls into a state of total confusion when it claims that there was a “code of silence imposed on all members of clergy under penalty of excommunication” as a result of which “cases of child sexual abuse have hardly ever been reported to the law enforcement authorities in the countries where such crimes occurred.” This is breathtakingly false. How to explain the dozens of clergy in prison, or the millions and millions paid out in compensation to victims following convictions? A quick glance at a recent safeguarding report in the US blows apart that astonishing affirmation.'

'In (44d), the Report calls for the Holy See to “amend Canon Law in order for child sexual abuse to be considered as crimes and not as ‘delicts’”. But as anyone with any Latin knows, a delict is a crime. And a canonical crime is as much as crime as a civil crime, even if the types of crime and punishment differ. In (44e) the Report calls for “clear rules, mechanisms and procedures for the mandatory reporting of all suspected cases of abuse” but these have long been in place in the Church guidelines in most countries — unlike institutions such as BBC — and the Holy See has been active in encouraging this to be part of all bishops’ guidelines.' ...

'The Report also treats the Church as a kind of NGO — precisely the opposite of what Pope Francis has insisted it is – when it calls for it (45a) to combat domestic and gender-based violence. It doesn’t suggest how — through a poster campaign? Tweets? — but any ignores the fact that any such campaigns are led by local bishops, not the Vatican.'...'"With breathtaking arrogance, the UN Report tries to change church teaching to bring it line with gender ideologies. In (25) and (26) it peddles the secularist myth that the Church’s teaching that sex is ordained by God for the possibility of procreation within marriage encourages homophobia, and patronisingly suggests that the Holy See condemn all forms of discrimination against gay people — which it does and has done for decades.

'The Committee then criticizes contemporary Catholic teaching on sexuality, regretting how “the Holy See continues to place emphasis on the promotion of complementarity and equality in dignity, two concepts which differ from equality in law and practice provided for in Article 2 of the Convention.” In other words, where the Catechism of the Catholic Church fails to comply with the ideology of gender, it must be amended.'

'Amazingly, the Report also calls (36.) on the Holy See to provide – to whom, it does not say; perhaps via a helpline manned by monsignors? — what it calls “family planning, reproductive health and adequate counselling' to prevent “unplanned pregnancies.” Where this is going becomes clear in (55.), where the Holy See is told to change its teaching on abortion and even to amend canon law “with a view to identifying circumstances under which access to abortion services can be permitted.'

'Lastly, the Report even lectures the Holy See on how it should interpret Scripture. In (39d) the Holy See is told to “ensure that an interpretation of Scripture as not condoning corporal punishment is reflected in Church teaching”.

Read Austen Ivereigh's full article here: http://cvcomment.org/