ROME
National Review
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
May 5, 2014
Rome – Sunday morning, thousands – many of them young families — poured into St. Peter’ Square, having walked through Rome in an annual pro-life march. From a window above, Pope Francis thanked the ecumenical crowd for its commitment to speaking out to protect innocent human life.
Today in Geneva, that United Nations committee on torture I’ve been mentioning (see here and here and here and here) heard testimony arguing that the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion is psychological torture for women.
Not everyone reading this agrees with the Catholic Church on abortion, but I suspect you may agree with the dangerousness of this New Intolerance, as a report from Catholic Voices USA puts it. (Austen Ivereigh in England has a comprehensive look at what’s going on here.)
The other argument that the committee is hearing is that sexual abuse in the church through the years at the hands of priests — evil, opposite of what the Church teaches — is torture. It’s worth considering, however, what the Holy See (a nation-state), signed onto when it signed the convention against torture:
“For the purposes of this Convention, the term ‘torture’ means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”
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