U.N. to the Catholic Church: "Stop being Catholic, or else …"

By Tom Quiner

Let’s hit it head on: the Catholic Church deserves criticism for the priest abuse scandal.
Lives were shattered. The carnage is beyond calculation. The Church was slow to react.
But they did react in specific ways, and abuse claims have been reduced to a trickle.
The Church took concrete steps to right the ship, including mandatory background checks  and training programs for every paid worker and volunteer in every parish and diocese in the country.
I had to take this mandatory training when I was working with kids at my church. It was good, solid material. For one thing, they told us no adult was to be alone with a child or teen. Ever.
On several occasions, I told kids I could not give them a ride home unless someone else was with me.
There was no wiggle room.
There are some details the public isn’t fully aware of when it comes to the abuse scandal.
For one, it was primarily homosexual in nature. According to a study of documented abuse reports, 79% of the abuse was targeted toward teenage boys. And almost all of this abuse took place between 30 to 50 years ago in an era before mandatory reporting.
Back in the 70s and 80s, the psychiatry profession believed such man-on-boy desires could be treated and cured. When the Church learned of priests acting on such impulses, they pursued the protocols of the era and sent offending priests in for the therapy the medical community said would cure them.
It didn’t.
Ironically, the psychiatry profession suddenly reversed course back in the 80s and said homosexual attractions were no longer a medical disorder. Tell that to the boys who experienced psychic damage at the hands of authority figures who molested them.
So the Catholic Church deserves criticism. To their credit, they have worked hard to rectify this tragic chapter in the Church’s history including screening out men from the priesthood who battle same-sex attractions.
The United Nations has just come out with a report that blasts the Vatican over the abuse scandal. Fair enough. Amazingly, the U.N. demands that the Roman Catholic Church change its canon law to embrace abortion. That would solve the abuse scandal alright.
They demand sex education for Catholic kids which includes information and acceptance of contraception. And it calls for a normalizing of homosexual lifestyles, even though run-amuck same-sex attractions were a root cause of the abuse scandal.
In a world roiling with injustice, the U.N. has put the Catholic Church in its cross hairs. The report fails to acknowledge that the Church is now is now a leading institution in keeping our kids safe thanks to the steps it took to right the terrible wrongs that took place in the past.
This report was not really about righting past wrongs. After all, the U.N. has stacked their Commission on Human Rights with horrendous offenders of human dignity and human rights. This report was all about establishing a radical leftist world order.
This report violates the religious-freedom ideals expressed in the U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Senator Marco Rubio responded forcefully to the U.N.:

“This is a U.N. that counts serial abusers and murderers of men, women, and children as members of its Commission on Human Rights. It has been unable to slow North Korea and Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons. It has proven feckless in its ability to prevent atrocities in places like Syria. It has routinely given a platform for state sponsors of terrorism to successfully condemn Israel. Its own “peacekeepers” have committed crimes against women around the world.
The U.N. is in very real danger of becoming obsolete in the 21st century. I believe it can still play an important role in global affairs, but without reforms to ensure greater accountability and transparency, its ineffective leadership, ethical abuses, and misspending will remain rampant. It is critical that we are able to ensure that American taxpayer dollars sent to the U.N. are actually advancing our national interests.
The United States is still very much a country that stands at the vanguard of protecting religious freedom at home and abroad. The American people have been unequivocal in condemning the abuse of children by priests who violated the law and their vows by preying on kids. But the U.N. has overreached in its efforts to discredit the Catholic Church’s core teachings, and I hope our ambassador to the U.N. will convey this message to her counterparts there.”

Well said, Senator Rubio. Let us hope that our president speaks out as forcefully on behalf of religious liberty.