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UN Committee Statement Requesting Changes in Catholic Moral Teaching is an Egregious Attack on Religious Freedom
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 6, 2014 - CONTACT: Adam Cassandra 540-622-5230
FRONT ROYAL, Virginia - The "Concluding Observations" on the report of the Holy See released Wednesday by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child are a flagrant and egregious attack on the religious freedom of the Catholic Church, her right and obligation to uphold the dignity of the human person and her estimated 1.2 billion members around the world, according to Human Life International President Father Shenan Boquet.
"The audacity of the people who wrote this report is simply amazing in dictating to the Catholic Church what her moral teachings should be in order to advance false and dangerous notions of 'tolerance' and 'rights' so often pushed by those with an anti-life, anti-family agenda," said Fr. Boquet. "While these are only the thoughts of a few members of one UN committee, we should take seriously any document coming from the United Nations telling a billion people worldwide that their deeply held moral beliefs are inappropriate and need to change."
"They are using the priest abuse issue to delegitimize the moral teachings of the Church and attack her freedom and right to exercise those beliefs around the world," he said.
The UN committee's comments make several requests of the Holy See to amend Canon Law, the law of the Catholic Church, including Canon 1398 calling for latae sententiae excommunication for those who procure an abortion. The report also criticizes the Church's moral teachings on abortion, contraception and homosexuality.
The UN committee also requests that the Holy See identify in Canon Law "circumstances under which access to abortion services can be permitted," an impossible task considering the Church's teaching on the dignity and sacredness of human life from conception until natural death.
"In addition to their attack on the Church's religious freedom, it's quite alarming that a UN committee that exists to protect 'the rights of the child' would make a statement so supportive of killing children through abortion, really a criminal act against humanity, that it actually asks one of the world's major religions to change its moral teaching in order to make it happen," Fr. Boquet said.
The report also makes an unjust and unsubstantiated charge that the Church's teachings on homosexual behavior "contribute to the social stigmatization of and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adolescents and children raised by same sex couples."
"This is a very serious charge, made very casually and without evidence," said Fr. Boquet. "It is the type of calumny usually only seen in the most extreme ideological attacks directed at the Catholic Church, which is why it is so disappointing for an official agency of the United Nations to legitimize this slander by including it in an official document. Indeed, could one not also accuse the United Nations of encouraging violence against Catholics on exactly the same grounds, especially since the accuser does not need to provide evidence of actual incitement to violence in making the charge?"
"The Catholic Church and Catholics around the world deserve a correction of the deeply and thoroughly flawed Concluding Observations document which attacks the freedom of Catholics to express our faith without persecution," said Fr. Boquet. "This type of language inciting hatred and violence towards Catholics cannot be allowed to stand."
About HLI: Human Life International: For the Glory of God and defense of Life, Faith and Family. Founded in 1981, HLI is the world's largest international pro-life and pro-family organization, with affiliates and associates in over 80 countries on six continents. www.hli.org
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