Vatican waffles on enforcing children’s rights outside of Vatican City

October 6, 2014 • 11:07 am

As far as I can see, Vatican City isn’t a member of the United Nations, but it’s been taken to task by the UN for covering up Church-related cases of sexual abuse. And the Vatican’s response was neither silence, stonewalling, nor even denial, but a ludicrous defense that it has no power to enforce priests’ behavior outside the confines of Vatican City. As the Associated Press reports in a piece picked up by many papers (here it’s USA Today, published Sept. 26):

The Vatican accused a U.N. human rights committee on Friday of sowing confusion and violating its own norms and the church’s religious freedom with a report into the Holy See’s record on child sexual abuse.

The Vatican released its formal response to a February report by the U.N. committee on the rights of the child. The committee monitors implementation of the key U.N. child rights treaty.

After publicly grilling the Holy See in a daylong hearing, the committee concluded that the Vatican maintained a “code of silence” that enabled priests to sexually abuse tens of thousands of children worldwide over decades with impunity.

You can see the UN’s report on the “Holy See” here. Besides the child abuse problem, the committee criticized the Vatican’s position on abortion, homosexuality, and women’s rights. The Vatican’s response? (my emphasis):

In its response, the Vatican complained that the committee “dismissed or ignored” the measures it had taken to combat abuse.

At the same time though, the Holy See insisted that it is only responsible for implementing the treaty in Vatican City, a tiny city state in the center of Rome.

Suggestions by the committee that it was responsible for implementing it in Catholic institutions around the world violates the concept of non-interference in the internal affairs of states and “offers a controversial new approach to ‘jurisdiction’ which clearly contradicts the general understanding of this concept in international law,” the Vatican said.

The “profundity of confusion” sown by the committee over jurisdiction “has led to a grave misunderstanding of the Holy See’s legal obligations under the convention,” the Vatican said.

That’s about as weaselly as you can get.  The Church falls back on “legal obligations,” yet neglects the moral obligations that should certainly fall to an institution that sees itself as a beacon of moral leadership.  And of course the Church can take action to prevent child abuse, for every priest is ultimately responsible to Rome.

As for changes in abortion, forget it:

[The Vatican] accused the committee of having made “fundamentally flawed” interpretations of the church’s legal system and of making a “completely unacceptable” recommendation that the Holy See change its law on abortion. The committee had urged the Vatican to identify circumstances when abortion services could be permitted, such as to save the life of a pregnant young girl.

One would think that, given all the trouble in Ireland and elsewhere about women in medical distress being refused abortions by Catholic hospitals, the Church might rethink its policy. But of course its policy comes from God, and is therefore unchangeable. Abortion is murder, even if it’s needed to save the life of the mother or if a fetus results from rape or incest. Is there any Christian organization more odious than Catholicism?

Thanks, Pope Francis.

 

51 thoughts on “Vatican waffles on enforcing children’s rights outside of Vatican City”

  2. Vatican City is complicated. No, Vatican City isn’t a member of the UN. Neither is the Holy See, although the Holy See is a permanent observer state. Which is odd, because the Holy See isn’t a country, it is legally an international corporation. Vatican City is the country. So the UN has relations with the corporation that controls the country, not the country itself.

    CGP Grey gives the best explanation I’ve seen on how wacky this is: http://youtu.be/OPHRIjI3hXs

    1. Sorry, didn’t read that carefully enough. No, there is no more odious Christian organisation that the Roman Catholic Church, and its odiousness is multiplied many fold because it has a presumed jurisdiction throughout the world, and yet refuses to take responsibility for the harm that is done by its employees. It also has its fingers in many political pies, as in El Salvador, Ireland, Poland, and does great harm as a result.

      1. Indeed, I have a friend that I correspond with in Ireland. He is an atheist. Phillip speaks of the influence the Church has on Irish society as though it is an occupation.

      2. Certainly the most damaging. There are Christian white supremacist groups which I find even more loathsome, but their impact is fairly small.

      3. And when they aren’t doing all that, they are teaching children to be afraid of hell. I have a cousin (in her 60s) who was shown pictures of devils raping people and people burning in hell. Of course, she is still afraid of such things to this day.

        If that isn’t child abuse, I’m not sure what is.

        1. I once feared Hell for several months because I thought to myself,”When will this fucking decade [of the rosary] be over?” This was when I was maybe 11 and my parents had pulled me away from whatever enjoyable activity I was doing to repeat mantras about how we are rotten and need prayers at the hour of our deaths. Odious, insidious, vile, controlling, yes indeed.

  4. This reminds me of the case of the US Catholic hospital that, when sued by a patient who lost her pregnancy on alleged malpractice, dismissed the woman’s claim because, well, it’s a fetus, not a baby…

  6. If the Vatican is worried about the “concept of non-interference in the internal affairs of states” then of course they will immediately refer all child abuse cases to local authorities and cooperate fully with any such investigations, right? No chance that they will, say, handle things internally and transfer offending priests to other countries as a way of avoiding prosecution. That would just be crazy!

  7. The point that you make by saying, “Thanks, Francis,” is so apt, because so many people think that he is bringing about a sea change in the church. Certainly, he has brought a different tone to the papacy, but he has not really significantly changed the church for the better. He is no revolutionary. Sadly, popes are trapped by their supposed “infallibility.” Since there is no easy way of discerning when a pope is speaking (in the technical sense) infallibly, they have to respect what popes before them have said. Paul VI was trapped this way, even when his commission on sexuality recommended the advocacy of “artificial modes of contraception”, he did not dare question Pius XII’s encyclical Humani Generis, to the great harm to millions and millions of women and unwanted children.

    1. Perhaps if they adopted another definition of papal infallibility?

      Temporal infallibility – the pope was absolutely right for the time

      Papal multiverse: All infallible decisions will be made and we happen to be in the verse governed by choice ‘x’.

    2. I grow more disgusted with Pope Francis as time goes on. His faux humility, from shedding the fancy dress and jewelry to his vague statements trying to cover up the more insidious teachings of the Church, he reminds me thoroughly of the ultra conservative crowd of Catholics I was exposed to as a child. Condescending and patronizing arrogance cloaked in a facade of humility, yet I can think of no organization less humble than the RCC.

  8. It has never occurred to me to define catholic, but the Apple Thesaurus gives new meaning to hypocrisy:

    catholic
    adjective
    “her musical tastes are quite catholic”: universal, diverse, diversified, wide, broad, broad-based, eclectic, liberal, latitudinarian; comprehensive, all-encompassing, all-embracing, all-inclusive. ANTONYMS narrow.

    The antonym is the only close approximation to the truth. I will never use catholic as an adjective except to describe someone who lacks courage and is morally despicable.

    1. Wow. I mean, talk about self-aggrandizement:

      catholic c.1350, “of the doctrines of the ancient Church,” lit. “universally accepted,” from L.L. catholicus “universal, general,” from Gk. katholikos, from phrase kath’ holou, from kata “about” + gen. of holos “whole” (see safe (adj.)). Applied to the Church in Rome c.1554, after the Reformation.

      They basically decided, after the Reformation, to designate themselves the church that was literally “universally accepted”. Because the best way to oppose people who disagree with you is to declare that you are uncategorically correct and everyone knows it, implying that your opponents are just being irrational.

      1. I wonder if the coiners of ‘catholic’ Xtinanity were inspired by the precedent of ‘Mahayana’ Buddhism. Also if Lenin had these in mind when arranging the Bolshevik/Menshevik schism in 1903…

    2. It makes more sense in the light of the internecine theological battles leading up to the Council of Nicaea, at which various heresies were agreed to be heresies, matters of church discipline were decided and much hot air was wasted. The church that resulted was intended to be “universal, wide, broad-based, comprehensive, all-encompassing, all-embracing, all-inclusive” etc. And so, “Catholic”.
      And so the schisms began. Again.
      Clap trap, all of it. But the meaning of the word hasn’t changed, just what most people (who don’t read dictionaries) think it means.

      1. I muttered the words, “I believe in one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church” every week of my life as a child. I always thought the meaning of “catholic” as a word was taught and known by all serious Catholics. In fact, I remember my father teaching me that calling it The Catholic Church is redundant and unnecessary. It is The Church, since it is universal. It’s a sly way of slipping in the No True Scotsman Fallacy with regard to every other religion. It pays to remember that every time we read the words “Catholic Church” we’re observing a multi-layered, fractal fallacy.

        1. And the religious take umbrage at the irreligious describing their brainwashing of their children as “brainwashing”. but brainwashing is … le mot just.

          2. Where’s that report on Hadza dietary habits?
            Prepare … let’s put it this way – before or after eating doesn’t make much difference, but give it a bit of a gap in time between reading and eating, in either direction.

            Once the animal had been processed more or less, I was amazed to see all three men take a handful of the partially digested plant material from the recently removed stomach to scrub off the copious amounts of blood that now covered their hands and forearms. This was followed by a final “cleaning” with dry grass for good measure.
            While I was fascinated by the microbe-laden stomach contents being used as hand scrubber – presumably transferring an extraordinary diversity of microbes from the Impala gut to the hands of the Hadza – I was not prepared for what they did next. Once they had cleaned out – by hand – the contents of the stomach (“cleaned” is a generous word), they carved pieces of the stomach into bite-sized chunks and consumed it sushi-style. By which I mean they didn’t cook it or attempt to kill or eliminate the microbes from the gut of the Impala in anyway. And if this unprecedented transfer of microbes from the skin, blood, and stomach of another mammal wasn’t enough, they then turned their attention to the colon of the Impala.
            After removing the poo pellets (which we collect samples of as well), they tossed the tubular colon onto a hastily built fire. However, it only sat on the fire for a minute at best and clearly not long enough to terminate the menagerie of invisible microbes clinging to the inside wall of the colon. They proceeded to cut the colon into chunks and to eat more or less raw. For myself, I kindly turned down offers to taste either the raw stomach or the partially cooked colon – but did eat some tasty Impala ribs I thoroughly turned on a stick over the fire to a microbial-free state of well done.

            Sorry, but you were complaining about the use of the word “washing”?
            Source.
            There was a moderately interesting article in Nature earlier this year about the diversity of this people’s gut biota – it may have been discussed here, under the idea of the co-evolution of humans and their gut biota – and this piece of culinary information was used in an editorial accompanying the paper.
            Time for lunch? Impala intestines and grass, anyone?

  9. The foetus/baby case mentioned by cslamo above proved that their hypocrisy knows no bounds!

    We’re still waiting for the Catholic Church to explain the mass graves of babies found near former “homes” for unmarried mothers too.

    There’s so much for them to explain about their role in evil regimes in Africa it looks more like policy than rogue operatives. They’re always quick to claim the heroes, but they largely seem to be acting independently, not as part of the Church.

    The millions who have suffered and died because they were told not to use condoms in the AIDS/HIV epidemic is another black mark.

    If the Catholic Church really cared about the children being sexually abused by its employees, it would report them to the authorities as a matter of policy, not move them to another parish to start again once they get discovered.

    There’s also the hundreds of thousands of children who are emotionally abused in Catholic schools by such things as threats of hell – I’m sure former pupils of such schools can weigh in on this one. I remember friends telling me they were terrified of the nuns at their schools because of their viciousness too – they were apparently pretty free with the corporal punishment and seemed to rather enjoy it.

    Let’s not forget the help given to prominent NAZIs to escape justice either.

    The Crusades were originally the Church’s way of stopping rogue knights from roaming the French countryside killing women and children, but still colour the attitude of the Muslim world to the West.

    The list could go on virtually ad infinitum.

  10. Apparently the Vatican forgot about the vow of obedience that all priests take (including those who have been elevated to bishops and cardinals). They could handle it internally, but they seem suddenly to have respect for secular laws.

    1. I should note that I don’t mean “handle internally” the way that the RCC has been using it. I mean that the Vatcan should tell the bishops to do the right thing.

      1. I mean that the Vatcan should tell the bishops to do the right thing.

        They do. The right thing is to protect Mother Church above all else.
        Whether they’re actually achieving that is a separate question.

        1. I remember hearing a radio show about that a while back. IIRC, it was with a former priest (?) who said that they had to protect the Church first & foremost & this is why all the abuse was kept quiet as it would harm the Church.

          Ironically, it was their “keeping quiet” that has harmed the Church more than anything else recently.

          1. As I said – are they harming tomorrow’s church by protecting yesterday’s? Not that I care about tomorrow’s church.

  11. I’m hoping to read the Vatican’s official response in full, but I can’t find it online yet. Specifically, I’m wondering why it thinks the UN committee is “offer[ing] a controversial new approach to ‘jurisdiction'” by pushing the Church to be more diligent in protecting kids in different countries. International law has long recognized the ability of states–and here I would include any sovereign entities empowered to make treaties, such as the Vatican City State and Holy See–to regulate their operations abroad. Indeed, in certain respects, international law couldn’t function without the notion of extraterritorial responsibility. The Geneva Conventions, for instance, would be next to useless if the armed forces of one state were free to disregard their obligations merely because they found themselves in the territory of another.

    To be sure, each Catholic church is subject to local law, but there’s no reason it can’t also be legally answerable to the Powers That Be back in Rome. Jurisdiction isn’t an either/or proposition.

    1. Ah, here it is. Pretty disappointing.

      The jurisdiction rhetoric is a response to this statement from the UNCRC’s February report: “The Committee therefore reminds the Holy See that in ratifying the Convention, it made a commitment to implement it not only within the territory of Vatican City State, but also, as the supreme power of the Catholic Church, worldwide through individuals and institutions under its authority.”

      The Holy See claims this “amounts to a sort of ‘universal legal jurisdiction’ over” the countries in which it operates. That would be absurd and outrageous, but of course that’s not what the UNCRC was proposing. Rather, it was giving voice to the fairly mundane doctrine of respondeat superior–the buck stops with the boss.

      I have to go take an allergy pill now; my hayfever kicks in big time around straw men this pungent.

  13. Yes, weaselly is the right word (sub, in other words).

    On another note, most of the catholics I know in Western Europe (I grew up as a little protestant in a nominally catholic country) are de-facto atheist, they are baptised, baptise their children ‘because of the grandparents’, but in their daily lives religion plays no role at all. When questioned closely, they regard the Church’s edicts and dogmas as mostly incorrect and have only a vague notion of things like a soul or the Trinity. (like:’Do you really believe we have a soul?’ “well, not really, more like a metaphor of our better self”, etc.). And on the virgin birth or Mary adoration they are scathing (again, only when questioned closely). They have little respect -to put it mildly- for the different popes.

    Here in South Africa they (Catholics) are more adamant that they believe, but more often than not they generally are completely unaware of the Churches teachings, they haven’t a clue to put it more truthfully.
    (e.g.) My partner considers self to be a Catholic, but of the 16 religious services attended during the past 4 years, only one was actually a Catholic service, most of them were kind of neo-babtist, easter-com or other obscure protestant sect. I’m kind of weary to point this out, of course. Would not like to break the peace. My partner is aware I’m a total non-believer, but I should not interfere in that turf. And most other SA’n `catholics’ I know are as ‘uncatholic’ as my parter.
    Yes, ‘Catholic’ is a flag that covers many different manure heaps.
    I consider Catholicism as a spent force (I may be mistaken there, of course), no need to flog a dead horse, me seems. I fear these fundamentalist protestant sects much more, and most of all I fear Islam, be it radical or simply ‘conservative’. It is alive and thriving, methinks.

  15. All pomp and no substance.
    pomp:
    n.
    1 Dignified or magnificent display; splendor: the solemn pomp of a military funeral.

    2 Vain or ostentatious display.

    3 Put a tail on it and call it a weasel.

    2 & 3 seem about right.

  17. Let’s see. They can’t seem to hold any sway over their priesthood, but seem to be able to maintain an iron grip on their anti-abortion/birth control stand in hospitals and institutions around the globe.

    1. I wasn’t particularly aware that Henry 8 cared much about the Vatican’s powers abroad. What he was increasingly adamant about was that they didn’t have power at home, in conflict with his power at home. What the Vatican told the French or Italians, the Danish or Dutch didn’t concern him significantly.
      which is why he installed his own pope in Canturbury, kow-towing to Henry himself, over the existing Catholic hierarchy in Britain. Oh, and changed the name over the door.

  19. so we have the RCC claiming that it has no jurisdiction over its parishes, etc. And thus it shows that no one owes it money, or allegiance.

    somehow I don’t think that they thought this through.

    2. so we have the RCC claiming that it has no jurisdiction over its parishes, etc. And thus it shows that no one owes it money, or allegiance.
      somehow I don’t think that they thought this through.

      Reminds me of a court case a few years back concerning theft of rainwater.
      The argument of (I think) Thames Water was that they had the water delivery monopoly for an area, and that a householder who collected rainwater from his roof and used it to water his garden, during a “hosepipe ban” due to a drought ; and given that, the householder was guilty of (1) stealing TW’s water which had fallen on his roof, and (2) illegally depriving TW of it’s due sales through the water meter.
      The judge hearing the case did his summing up before delivering judgement, in terms of “TW’s water, which fell from the sky onto the householder’s property, and did not cause any damage by leaking through the roof (for which the water’s owner would have been liable), and did not cause any flooding of his garden (for which the water’s owner would have been liable) …”
      TW’s barrister saw the trap being laid, and hastily withdrew their case before precedent was set against them.

  21. Would not excommunication “violate the concept of non-interference in the internal affairs of states”?

    1. Why? All excommunication means is that the person excommunicated is denied ever to receive communion. Which is purely a church matter, not a state matter. Unless you know of a state which actually performs transubstantiation over crackers and whine?

  22. We once again have a misunderstanding. What kind of misunderstanding? A grave one, naturally. I detest that word, perhaps to the point of being irrational. Maybe it’s the connotation in the way the Church uses it, which implies potential damnation if whatever grave problem they see isn’t rectified.

  23. Oh my gosh someone made a “fundamentally flawed” interpretation of canon gobbledygook. Quick, someone make some even funnier hats or something.

  24. After publicly grilling the Holy See Dalai Lama in a daylong hearing, the committee concluded that the Vatican Buddhism maintained a “code of silence” that enabled priests Monks to sexually abuse tens of thousands millions of children worldwide over decades millennia with impunity.

    Fixed!

    Read more here: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/adele-tomlin/dalai-lama_b_3851112.html

    It’s time people stopped ignoring the institutionalised and systematic rape of minor wards of monasteries all over the world.

    Nobody believed that the Vatican could be so bad for so long… People choose to believe that Buddhism is above the same. It’s not.

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