UN Panel Tells the Vatican to Change Its Positions on Abortion, Contraception and Marriage

LifeNews reports:

The Vatican accused a UN committee of interfering with Church doctrine and violating religious freedom after it was asked to change its teaching on abortion and homosexuality.

The Church should change its teaching on abortion, according to a UN committee that monitors the rights of children. The Church should no longer automatically excommunicate those who perform or assist in the performance of an abortion, the UN experts said in observations published Wednesday following a year-long review of the Vatican’s child protection practices.

Church teaching on marriage and sexuality should also change according to the observations, because it prevents adolescents from accessing contraception. In addition the experts said Church teaching on homosexuality contributes to “social stigmatization and violence” against homosexual adolescents and children raised by same-sex couples.

The Vatican immediately issued a press release saying that UN experts cannot interfere with Catholic doctrine on human dignity or the Church’s exercise of religious freedom.

Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi, who represents the Vatican at the United Nations in Geneva, toldVatican Radio his first reaction to the observations was surprise.

The committee took a negative approach and was “very wrong”, he said with consternation, “the Church cannot simply give up its beliefs” because all Church teaching on human dignity is ultimately geared towards preserving the common good.

The committee’s observations “contradict the spirit and letter of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,” Tomasi added. The treaty preamble in fact states that children should be protected before and after birth.

The UN’s pronouncement comes as that organization hasn’t cleaned up its own awful child sex abuse scandals. And they are truly awful. Couple that with the fact that the Vatican is dealing with its terrible sex abuse scandals — belatedly — and the panel’s pronouncement reads like an aggressive assertion that anyone who opposes abortion or takes a non-left view generally is just a bad person. That is the mainline progressive view and tactic — cast opponents as not merely wrong, but evil and unworthy of being dealt with fairly or in good faith. The UN has gone full prog in its brazen assault on Catholic doctrine, an assault that also hits millions of Protestants as collateral damage. If you’re pro-life and/or don’t want the definition of marriage messed with, the United Nations targets you and demands that you change your ways.