To Tell or Not to Tell; U.N. Suggests Protection by Promiscuity

A very hot debate happened in February between the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Vatican and many people may be missing the significance of it. The U.N. committee recently oversaw the ratification a expanded Convention over the rights of children, which was signed by the Vatican state and many other countries. A Convention is a written legal agreement made by governments. The ratification of a Convention makes it law, a legal obligation of every country that signs it.

The "Convention on the Rights of the Child" is not new, being adopted by the assembly on the 20th of November, 1989 it is formally known as the CRC. What's new is a new Optional Protocol that the Vatican is being pressured to ratify. The new Protocol enables children and their representatives to submit complaints to the CRC about specific violations of their rights under this Convention. Violators can then be prosecuted to the full extent of International law.

To Tell or Not to Tell
The 'omerta' or 'Code of Silence' maintained by the Vatican is having an adverse affect on all religions who are operating in countries who are continually ratifying U.N. Conventions. What is said in a Catholic confessional, stays in the confessional. In the past, priests who secretly confessed their sins in this matter received the protection of the Church.

Oddly this is different from what James 5:16 says, "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." King James Bible. Open confession and expelling of wrongdoers was done to keep the early Christian congregations clean. The Greek word rendering, "to one another" can also be translated to mean "openly" or "make public".

Protection by Promiscuity
The omerta doctrine is promoting a more proactive stance to reshape religious ideologies on morality. "For example, the committee urged the Vatican to amend canon law to allow abortions on children in some circumstances, such as to protect the life of the young mother. It asked the Holy See to ensure that sex education, including access to information about contraception, is mandatory in Catholic schools. And it called on the Vatican to condemn discrimination against homosexual children or youngsters raised by gay couples." Source: www.nydailynews.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow">NY Daily News

This isn't just an attack on priest celibacy. The U.N. is continually updating Conventions to include acceptance of practices that are condemned by many other Christian denominations. Any organization promoting something different will soon come under legal action as hate crimes -- in effect outlawing their assembly in countries where the Conventions are ratified. One could argue that promoting sexual promiscuity would create more sexual predators. In any case, in places where adherence to their own moral codes are already in decline, those religious fundamentalists will eventually dissolve under legal pressure.

U.N. Gaining More Popularity Through Conventions
The CRC is now providing online forms for people who have been abused by a priest of their religious establishment. You can access these forms here: www.ohchr.org. As the new Optional Protocol is ratified over the next few months, all cases will be reviewed for immediate legal action; which would include sanctions, revocation of religious status, and jail time for the accused. Conventions like the CRC are gaining ground quickly and being ratified several times a year.

a reply to: CodeRed3D It is almost a oxymoron to see Vatican as a country for one but for them to vote or have a vote when it comes to children s rights seeing all of their populace is created else where .If Rome is not the harlot that rides the beast in revelation she is so unfortunate to look like it .Maybe this is where the beast turns on her ...

... The case currently under review by the U.N. torture panel has the potential to send the scandal into a whole new realm - The countdown begins?

[6pm GMT - May 21, 2014] St. Louis Post

WASHINGTON • A United Nations committee is set to publish its verdict Friday on the child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. It's hard to tell what the result is going be. But it's entirely possible that the committee will rule that the Vatican is guilty of violating international laws on torture for allowing Catholic priests to commit acts of pedophilia (and by covering up their crimes).

If the U.N. Committee Against Torture rules against the Holy See, church leaders will have only themselves to blame. Both the recently canonized John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, could have chosen to tackle the abuse allegations head-on. Instead they went to considerable effort to cover up cases of abuse, in some cases moving suspect priests away from their accusers to help them evade criminal responsibility.

[May 21, 2014] Snap Network

But it has now been 12 weeks since another United Nations panel released a lengthy report about the church's on-going clergy sexual violence and cover up crisis. That panel made 22 recommendations on how Vatican officials can better implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

As best we can tell, every Catholic official is ignoring every one of those recommendations. That is shameful.

We expect on Friday, when the U.N. Committee Against Torture issues its new report, that apologists for the Catholic hierarchy will question the panel's judgment, perhaps even its motives. We hope we are wrong.

But if that happens, we hope citizens and Catholics will look at these claims by church officials with great skepticism. The Catholic hierarchy has long tried to evade responsibility for and deflect attention from its long-standing and devastating wrongdoing by attacking those who expose clergy sexual violence and cover ups.

[The Countdown] Committee Against Torture - Schedule (pdf)

The Vatican should take effective measures to ensure that allegations received by its officials concerning violations of the Convention (against Torture) are communicated to the proper civil authorities to facilitate their investigation and prosecution of alleged perpetrators.
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The Holy See said the U.N. body did not expressly conclude that rape or sexual abuse constitutes torture, but appeared to make an implicit fundamental assumption that it was.

Such an assumption is neither supported by the text of the CAT nor has it been accepted to date by human rights authorities, it said.

The Daily News

The Vatican is under the assumption that sexual abuse doesn't amount to torture and therefore won't be accountable to report it under any additional protocols ratified by this ruling.

Rape and sex crimes can amount to torture or cruel treatment and the Vatican must prevent and punish such abuses, the U.N. Committee against Torture said. It had already found that sexual abuse amounted to torture in some 50 countries, officials said. "The Holy See says sexual abuse is not torture. Well, sexual abuse, including rape, can be torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment," Felice Gaer, a committee member, told Reuters Television. "We say whether it's cruel treatment or torture depends on the facts of the case."

Reuters

Unfortunately they are misdirected, unless they vacate their assets from the 50 countries who's law deems otherwise.

"Legal scholars will tell you that when the committee addresses a problem and makes a recommendation, it sees the state as not meeting the requirements of the convention," the panel's vice chairperson, Felice Gaer, told reporters. "It's absolutely clear what we're saying."

But the Vatican dismissed the 10-member panel's central conclusions as "fundamentally flawed" and insisted it didn't exercise direct control over its priests worldwide.

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Crucially, the committee rejected the Holy See's position that it should be legally liable for enforcing the treaty only within the tiny confines of Vatican City itself.

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The committee said the Vatican must ensure that the treaty isn't violated by its representatives anywhere worldwide.

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The panel said ratifying parties to the torture treaty, including the Vatican, "bear international responsibility for the acts and omissions of their officials and others acting in an official capacity or acting on behalf of the state."

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In reply Friday, the Vatican accused the panel of sloppy reasoning. It insisted the committee was wrong "to give the impression that all the priests serving around the world are indirectly, legally tied to the Vatican."

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"We're not saying that any sexual abuse is equivalent to a form of torture. We need to see the circumstances. The issue here is the responsibility of a state," said the committee's chairman, Claudio Grossman. "A responsibility of a state comes into play if there was no prevention or there was no investigation and punishment."

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The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child concluded in February that the Vatican systematically placed its own interests over those of victims by enabling priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children through a code of silence.

Associated Press

The Vatican has consistently expressed its views that it is only concerned about the financial support from its churches abroad. When it comes to matters of financial compensation, the churches and their employees aren't "legally tied to the Vatican".

What the committee is suggesting is to forget the "Omerta", or code of silence outside the confessional. They want all cases of sexual abuse turned in and to allow authorities to decide on the matter. It is obvious by the Vatican's response that they do not intend to comply.

The Vatican has been urged to produce a system or method similar to this (, link to a similar system setup by the UN Human Rights Committee) to allow sexual abuse cases to be reviewed "outside" the confessional. When that data collected from the Vatican is sequestered and compared to the Committee's data, there will be obvious signs that the Vatican is not in compliance with the new protocols issued by the council and soon to be ratified by member states.