UNITED STATES
Washington Times
By Meredith Somers-The Washington Times Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Conservative Catholic groups expressed outrage Wednesday over a U.N. panel’s scathing report on the Vatican’s sex abuse scandal, saying the oversight group overstepped its authority by calling for the Catholic Church to change some of its fundamental laws on homosexuality, birth control and abortion.
The Holy See referred to some parts of the report as “an attempt to interfere” with church teachings, and other Catholic advocates called the document offensive and an attack on the church.
“It shows a certain ignorance of how the church works,” said Ashley McGuire of The Catholic Association. “They don’t just change canon law. The church’s teachings, many of them are thousands of years old and are grounded in deep moral principle. To just fire a shot off the bow and not look at the actual reality of the last 10 years seems totally unfair and undermines the credibility of the report.”
Issued Wednesday by the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, the report is a response to the Holy See’s January update on how it is handling issues related to decades of child sex abuse by priests in the U.S. and around the world, and what it is doing to help the thousands of victims.
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