GENEVA
Catholic Voices
The Vatican is readying itself for another battering over abuse from the United Nations — this time from its committee against torture. But the difference is that, when the Holy See goes to Geneva on Monday and Tuesday to present its periodic report and face a grilling from rapporteurs, it will be better prepared than in January. Then radical NGOs convinced the UN committee on children’s rights to ignore the Holy See’s evidence on abuse while challenging church teaching on sexuality and abortion (see CV Comment here and here). They will do the same again this week, but the Vatican has seen it coming.
On that occasion, it was the Committee on the Convention of the Rights of the Child or CRC; this time it is the Committee on the Convention Against Torture (CAT), which was signed by the Holy See in 2002. Just as in January, the Holy See is voluntarily going before the committee — as it is bound to, every four years, just as all other 155 governments who have signed it must — to report on the implementation of the convention. Yet as in January, it will find itself suddenly having to answer questions on abortion and homosexuality which were never considered part of the treaty back in 2002 – – as well as (bizarrely) questions on clerical sex abuse of minors.
Given that CAT defines torture as
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. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
it is easy to see why the Holy See was keen to sign the Convention, which seeks to eradicate torture from all situations where force is deployed, including war, public emergency, terrorist acts and violent crime. It is also easy to see how shocked it is to find this same definition driving an ideologically driven attack on the Church over sexual abuse of minors, pro-life legislation, restricting marriage to a man and a woman, and even corporal punishment.
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