ROME
National Review
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
May 5, 2014
Rome — On Friday, my friend Ashley E. McGuire defended the Holy See Friday before a United Nations committee on torture on behalf of Catholic Voices USA (a group I help found). In an interview for National Review Online, we talk a bit about what’s going on here.
KJL: What was it like testifying on behalf of the Holy See?
MCGUIRE: I would use the same word that I used in my opening remarks to the committee: “surreal.” It is always an honor to stand up and defend the Church, but it was surreal to have to pack my bag and leave my world behind to fly thousands of miles to sit in a small room and tell a panel of men and women that no, the Church is not a house of torture. That should be obvious, but groups that hate the Church and everything that she stands for are trying to use this committee, just as they did the Committee on the Rights of the Child, to bully the Holy See.
KJL: Why bother defending the Holy See? Can’t it take care of itself? Isn’t God supposed to be on its side? Isn’t Pope Francis a superhero?
MCGUIRE: Catholics so often fall into the trap of thinking that it is only the job of someone with a collar to defend the Church. If the Second Vatican Council, which Pope Francis just affirmed by canonizing together the two men most emblematic of the reforms the Council brought, has taught us anything, it’s that the laity has a role to play as well. We see this in America, where the Department of Health and Human Services abortion-drug mandate has forced lay people to step up to the plate. And now we are seeing it in the international arena. We know that the truth will prevail in the end. But that does not give lay Catholics license to sit back and watch the Church struggle against a culture that is increasingly intolerant of her views.
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