The Vatican is responding to today's much-anticipated report from the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child. Church officials testified before the committee a month ago.
Today's U.N. report bluntly criticized the Catholic hierarchy for policies that allow priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades. And the report also dipped into the culture wars, criticizing church teachings on abortion, homosexuality and contraception.
Cardinal Baloney of New York was tasked with criticizing the U.N. report. In a press release issued today he responded to criticisms of the Unholy See's actions and positions made in the report. He did so on a point-by-point basis. Here is Baloney's response:
1) The charge is made that Vatican in Rome has systematically protected preditor priests. But there are more than 400.000 priests in the world who live thousands of miles away from Rome. How are we supposed to watch over all of them?
2) The charge is made that we are a party to the "U.N. Convention On The Rights Of The Child" so that putting the protection of priests over children is wrong. But when the Unholy See signed that document we meant it to only apply to the 12 square mile area of Vatican City. Children outside the Vatican are on their own.
3) On the matter of abortion, the U.N. charges that the Unholy See sanctioned a doctor who performed an abortion on a 9-year-old girl, in Brazil in 2009, to save her life. Holy Mother Church is not going to change its stand on its belief in the sanctity of the life of the fertilized egg, even if it's one day old, even if it causes the death of a child or woman. And that also holds true for rape and incest.
4 The UN report says that the children of same-sex couples may be discriminated against within the church and also the world because of the teachings of the Unholy See against homosexuality and same-sex marriage. The obvious response is that the couple should have thought of that before they adopted the children.
5) The UN report goes on and on about how the church should change its stance on contraception, homosexuality and abortion, particularly in the case of impregnated children, rape and incest.
5) (con'd]) This is a violation of the religious freedom of the Unholy See. Neither the UN nor other worldly organizations may comment on our policies or their consequences. His Holy Supreme Majesty Ambrosia IV and the Magisterium Bullshiticum have affirmed that the church's teaching about human sexuality and the sanctity of male sperm is infallibly correct.
