UNITED STATES
Commonweal
The Editors
Earlier this month, the United Nations committee that monitors compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child issued a stinging report criticizing the Vatican for its handling of the sexual-abuse crisis. The committee accused the Holy See of “systematically” placing the reputation of the church ahead of the welfare of children, and adopting “policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by, and the impunity of, the perpetrators.” In addition the report made several important recommendations the Holy See would do well to heed. But the UN committee weakened its case by weighing in on doctrinal matters unrelated to abuse. The committee’s scattershot approach has united critics across the ideological spectrum in criticizing the report as counterproductive, if not worse.
The committee’s first mistake is that it treats the Holy See like any other signer of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which contains fifty-four articles covering a range of issues. Wherever the committee sees that a signer is failing to abide by the convention, it makes recommendations to bring them into compliance. For example, the report recommends that the church provide “family planning, reproductive health, as well as adequate counselling and social support, to prevent unplanned pregnancies.” And it asks the church to review canon law “with a view to identifying circumstances under which access to abortion services can be permitted.” Even though the committee refers to the Holy See’s “special nature,” it seems not to grasp that Catholic canon law is not just an administrative tool; it is informed by deeply held religious beliefs. In some cases, changing canon laws would require changing Catholic doctrine, a fact the UN seems not to appreciate.
It’s strange enough for a UN committee to make doctrinal recommendations to a religious organization. But it’s even more puzzling that the committee seems to forget that the Vatican has never hidden its objections to certain aspects of the convention. When the Holy See signed the treaty in 1989, it stated its reservations about provisions that don’t conform to Catholic teaching. The Holy See explicitly warned that the only family planning it would promote was natural family planning. Several other signatories registered similar reservations—including Islamic countries that promised to ignore parts of the treaty they deemed contradictory to Sharia law.
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