Turning the Screws on the Vatican

"...Anyone bringing attention to the problem [of sex abuse] is moving toward solving it."
"Unfortunately they weakened it by throwing in the whole kitchen sink. Those are culture war issues. Sex abuse isn't a culture war issue -- it's a sin and a crime."
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Amazing what happens within the confines of the United Nations. Time and again the Organization of the Islamic Conference and other Muslim lobbying groups within the United Nations attempted to have a resolution passed by UN members condemning "defamation of religion", a thinly veiled attempt to pass an international law that would defend Islam from any kind of criticism.

As written, the motion's proposed aim was to prohibit any expression that would "fuel discrimination, extremism and misperception leading to polarization and fragmentation with dangerous unintended and unforeseen consequences". A suggestion that human rights activists, other religious groups, free-speech activists and a number of Western countries condemned as an international 'blasphemy law'.

The Islamic bloc and most of the developing world remains in support of the resolution, with Western democracies in opposition. The Islamic bloc has attempted time and again to manipulate the UN's Human Rights Council to move on the issue, but has been unable to get beyond opposition aware of what lies behind the move. Now here is the Human Rights Council hounding the Roman Catholic Church on its most basic, historical tenets of orthodox Christian values.

Under the pretext of concern over abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests whose wholesale predation on those vulnerable to the high regard of the clergy led to their being sexually abused, the Council has turned its focus on critiquing the Vatican's 'attitudes' toward homosexuality, contraception and abortion, urging it to amend canon law, making sex education mandatory in the process.

What incredible hubris. Particularly coming from Council members whose own record of human rights infractions are notorious. To take this uncalled for and illegal overture in the pretense of challenging the Church's record on maintaining the scandalously immoral behaviour of priests in-house, and simply shuffling them about to other parishes where they were free to continue their abuse rather than turn them over to civil authorities to stand trial for criminal action speaks of malice aforethought.

As though if the UN Human Rights Council couldn't get its way over acceding to the attempts of the Islamic bloc, then the West would pay and regret its recalcitrance. And the victim in this malicious little tale of nasty group behaviour is the Catholic Church and more specifically, the Vatican. The attack on Church doctrine conflated with child sex abuse is about as inconstant and wretchedly abusive as the Council can get.

In that sense, it doesn't quite equal the special treatment apportioned regularly to the State of Israel, a tiny country whose credentials within the United States are held with great distaste by the Islamic Bloc and the nonaligned nations that curry favour with the Bloc. The arrogance of the Council has veered from victimizing one of the world's favourite targets, to making a scapegoat of the world's foremost religion.

"It seems as if the document was prepared before the committee meeting, where the Vatican gave detailed responses on various points that weren't reported in this concluding document or seem to not have been taken into consideration", Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, who had headed the Vatican delegation at its January 16 session in Geneva responding to the Council's questions; said, clearly amazed by the tone of the report.

This was the day-long interrogation in January of the Vatican by the Council through its implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Syria, whose regime has so far slaughtered ten thousand children, and brutalized other Syrian children through torture and rape, was last year elected by UNESCO to UN Human Rights Committees.

Archbishop Tomasi, in defence of the Vatican's record, commented that the call to reconsider abortion ran counter to the UN treaty's objective to protect the life of children before and after birth. Robert Dennis, vice-president of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association, commented that the UN panel watered down its own advocacy of child sexual abuse victims in criticizing the Church for its doctrines on homosexuality, abortion and contraception.

In the very act of criticizing core Catholic doctrine and demanding that the Church take action to alter its doctrine, the Council effectively bypassed the serious issue of headlining the decades of covering up of the sexual abuse of children by clergy in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Germany and elsewhere in Europe. 

The report represented a "shocking display of ignorance and highhandedness" in the opinion of Austen Ivereigh, co-ordinator of Catholic Voices, a church advocacy group. Predictable enough that the faithful would defend themselves. Predictable enough that the UN's Human Rights Council is a sham and a disgrace to the name it holds.