Un-forgivable

New York Daily News
February 10, 2014

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/un-forgivable-article-1.1606477


Down through the years, various arms of the United Nations have passed resolutions condemning what the world body calls defamation of religion. Now, the UN has committed the very offense it so heartily condemns.

The target was the Catholic Church, the one religious faith that is open to bashing in the best of circles. The perpetrator was the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The committee used an investigation into the Vatican’s troubled history of dealing with child sex abuse cases to roam far and wide into church doctrine. The church views homosexual sex as sinful, thus the church has contributed to “the social stigmatization of and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adolescents and children raised by same sex couples.”

The church’s moral teachings hold against contraception and abortion, thus the church is complicit in the abandonment of unwanted babies.

After calling on the church to seek salvation by changing such fundamental positions, the committee added that the Vatican should write into Canon Law prohibitions on corporal punishment both in schools and at home. A spank must lead to damnation.

No one, least of all Pope Francis, minimizes the harms done when the church turned a blind eye to child sex abuse by priests. But even there, the committee was palpably unfair in failing to mention remedial actions taken by the Vatican. As one example, the Archdiocese of New York mandates that all cases of alleged sexual abuse must be reported immediately to a district attorney.

Meanwhile, the committee also left out that the church and its affiliate Catholic Charities provide more help to children and poor families than just about anyone in the world.

Who cares about that? Not the self-righteous and presumptuous lot at the United Nations.