United Nations to Pope Francis: Change your doctrine.

ave you heard that, over the course of just two years, Pope Bene­dict XVI defrocked four hundred—that’s 400—priests who had been guilty of child sex­u­al abuse? The sto­ry is right here, in an arti­cle that cites doc­u­ments released by the Asso­ci­at­ed Press. Chances are you heard none of this back in 2011 and 2012, when it all took place. But accord­ing to the sto­ry in the Chris­t­ian Post:

In 2005 [That would have been Bene­dic­t’s very first year as pope.] the Vat­i­can began report­ing num­bers of defrocked priests and autho­rized Church tri­als against 21 accused cler­ics. Since 2005, the num­bers began to increase to between 300–400 cas­es a year in 2007 and 2008.

300–400 Church tri­als a year against accused priests? Did you know about any of that? Why, I thought that Bene­dict had just been shift­ing these priests around from parish to parish and try­ing to keep every­thing hush-hush.

In 2010, fol­low­ing a wave of media cov­er­age of sex abuse scan­dals in Europe, 527 cas­es were report­ed, though the Vat­i­can did not report how many priests had been defrocked. In 2011 and 2012, how­ev­er, 260 and 124 priests were defrocked respec­tive­ly.

The report, pre­pared by the Vat­i­can’—[Note this now.]—was put togeth­er as part of its tes­ti­mo­ny to the U.N. com­mit­tee on Thurs­day, report­ed the Asso­ci­at­ed Press and was released a day after the group harsh­ly cri­tiqued the Catholic Church’s han­dling of the glob­al sex abuse scan­dal.

Despite all that, the Unit­ed Nations has just issued a “dev­as­tat­ing” report that demands “imme­di­ate action.”

Oh? Such as?

Accord­ing to the UK Guardian (here), the Unit­ed Nations demands that the Vat­i­can “imme­di­ate­ly remove” all cler­gy who are known or sus­pect­ed child abusers.

Or sus­pect­ed? The mere point of a fin­ger is enough? With­out tri­al? With­out due process? Guilty until proven inno­cent? Or—to think of this!—without the chance to even try to defend your­self?

There is a word for this, and the word is total­i­tar­i­an­ism. The Unit­ed Nations is demand­ing that the Vat­i­can act as total­i­tar­i­ans toward priests who are mere­ly accused, and defrock them with­out even so much as a tri­al with­in their own Church—even though such tri­als led to four hun­dred priests being defrocked in the course of two years.

It seems, from the evi­dence report­ed in the Chris­t­ian Post, that the Vat­i­can act­ed in more than good faith by try­ing to sort out who was tru­ly guilty of abuse, con­duct­ing tri­als, and defrock­ing those proven guilty. That is how jus­tice is meant to work.

But no: Any priest who is mere­ly accused, hand him over to us. Now. Schnell! schnell!

If you have not fig­ured it out by now, the Unit­ed Nations report is not about jus­tice. It is about tak­ing down the Catholic Church and attack­ing the priest­hood itself. For if a priest mere­ly has to be accused, and the Unit­ed Nations demands that he be defrocked “imme­di­ate­ly,” then noth­ing is to stop the ene­mies of priests and the ene­mies of Catholi­cism from just going around point­ing fin­gers. No one is demand­ing that the charges be proven. It’s mere­ly “off with their habits and turn them in to us; we’ll han­dle every­thing from here.”

That will go well, I am sure. There will be show tri­als. The world will think jus­tice is final­ly being done, which the pope adamant­ly refused to do.

The UN’s scathing attack on the Vat­i­can over the abuse of minors will get all, or most, of the media cov­er­age. Buried in the report, how­ev­er, is this:

As part of its wide-rang­ing remit, the UN com­mit­tee also expressed con­cern about how the Holy See’s stance on con­tra­cep­tion, abor­tion[,] and homo­sex­u­al­i­ty was affect­ing minors.

One won­ders: Whence did the Unit­ed Nations get such a “remit,” that it may lec­ture the Catholic Church on its moral teach­ings? What does the one have to do with the oth­er?

But it is there­in that we see what their real agen­da is. The abuse of minors is a cov­er. The agen­da is to use those sad and evil sto­ries as an excuse to bul­ly the Catholic Church to change its teach­ings to be more in accord with the world’s own sin­ful desires. The agen­da is anti-Catholic from front to back and up to down.

The Church has been han­dling the sex­u­al abuse as it should. But the agen­da of the UN is to spread through the world the idea that the Catholic Church is an evil to be fought. Unless the Catholic Church per­mits the mur­der of the unborn, it is not doing enough to stop the harm done to chil­dren.

Unless the Catholic Church per­mits con­tra­cep­tion, it is not doing enough to ensure that chil­dren can live.

And unless the Catholic Church says that men can stick their organs in places they were not designed to go, it is not doing enough to pro­mote the dig­ni­ty of the human body.

But Pope Fran­cis is not going to change the Church’s teach­ing. He has no author­i­ty to do any such thing; the truth is what the truth is. We know that. But he still does require our prayers and our sac­ri­fices.

For when Pope Fran­cis does not change the Church’s teaching—when he defies the Unit­ed Nations—what hap­pens? Will they try to arrest him under inter­na­tion­al human rights laws? There has been talk of such things (for exam­ple, here, or here).

“Hey‑a, Pope Fran­cis, you don’t‑a play ball by being that lib­er­al we say you’re going to be, I hate to‑a think of what might‑a hap­pen, y’know? Huh?”

Hatred of the Catholic Church is in fash­ion again. It is in fash­ion because the Church stands against all that the mod­ern world does and believes. The Catholic Church calls us to repen­tance and to Christ. But the world is in love with its sin, and the world hates God, and so it hates the Church.

And hate, when it is out in the open, is ugly. We know. We have seen it before.

Pray for Pope Fran­cis.