UN defends report calling on Church to renounce its moral teachings on homosexuality
ROME, February 10, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The UN committee that issued the report last week demanding that the Catholic Church change its teachings on abortion, homosexuality and extra-marital sex, has hit back against criticisms, saying that it was issued only after “objectively examining all relevant information.”
Kirsten Sandberg, chairman of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, said, “As stated in its concluding observations, the Committee welcomed the open and constructive dialogue it had with the delegation of the Holy See, which made positive commitments in numerous areas.”
“In particular, the Committee regards as positive the willingness expressed by the delegation to change attitudes and practices, and looks forward to the adoption of prompt and firm measures for the concrete implementation of its commitments,” Sandberg added.
The statement from the UN comes following a detailed response on February 7th from Fr. Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, who said the report was clearly “biased.”
“The Committee’s comments,” Lombardi said, “in several directions seem to go beyond its powers and to interfere in the very moral and doctrinal positions of the Catholic Church, giving indications involving moral evaluations of contraception, or abortion, or education in families, or the vision of human sexuality, in light of own ideological vision of sexuality itself.”
The Church welcomes “serious and well-founded” criticisms of its procedures, but he said that the Church had been “harmed by unjustly critical” media reportage. While he denied that there is a conflict between the UN and the Vatican, “like any large organization” it is “no wonder that in the vast world of the UN different visions shall encounter and even collide with each other.”
The Holy See, he said, “will take its further positions and will give account of them, and so on, without trying to escape from a genuine dialogue, from the established procedures, with openness to justified criticism – but the Holy See will do so with courage and determination, without timidity.”
Lombardi said that examination of the report showed that the Committee had “not taken adequate account of the responses, both written and oral, given by the representatives of the Holy See.”
“Those who have read and heard these answers do not find proportionate reflections of them in the document of the Committee, so as to suggest that it was practically already written, or at least already in large part blocked out before the hearing.”
“In particular,” he said, the report’s lack of understanding of the specific nature of the Holy See seems serious.”
He said that given that the Church’s positions “have been explained in detail” to the Committee “many times in the Holy See’s twenty years and more of adherence to the Convention,” both verbally and in written responses, “one is entitled to amazement.”
He asked whether the report is a result of “an inability to understand, or an unwillingness to understand?”
In demanding that the Church drop all opposition to homosexual behaviour, sex for unmarried teenagers – the entirety of its moral teaching on sexuality – the Committee has attempted to “interfere in the very moral and doctrinal positions of the Catholic Church,” he said.
“For this reason, in the official communique released Wednesday morning there was talk of ‘an attempt to interfere in the teaching of the Catholic Church on the dignity of the human person and in the exercise of religious freedom’.”
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva, had responded last week saying that the UN had failed both to understand the nature of Catholic teaching and to take into account recent history.
“The committee asked for acceptance of abortion and this is a contradiction with the principle of life that the convention itself should support recommending that children be protected before and after birth,” said Tomasi. “If a child is eliminated or killed,” he said, “we can no longer talk about rights for this person.”
