VATICAN CITY
Catholic News Service
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Vatican said it would continue to adhere to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and give an attentive response to the U.N. committee monitoring adherence to the treaty, despite what it views as unfair criticism and suggestions from the committee that would violate church teaching.
The Vatican will follow the procedures foreseen by the treaty “with openness to criticisms that are justified, but it will do so with courage and determination, without timidity,” said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.
Father Lombardi issued a statement Feb. 7, two days after the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child insisted the Vatican was not doing enough to prevent clerical sexual abuse of children and even suggested that, for the good of children, the Catholic Church change its teaching on abortion, contraception and homosexuality.
Committee members went “beyond their competence and interfered in the doctrinal and moral positions of the Catholic Church,” the spokesman said, adding that the committee’s suggestions reveal an “ideological vision of sexuality.”
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