Amnesty International has cited the Vatican in a new report on human
rights violations, alleging that it “did not sufficiently comply” with
laws “relating to the protection of children.”
The Catholic League says
the charge represents ideological axe-grinding, from an organization
that has lost Church support.
“This is ideology at work, not objective research,” said Catholic
League President Bill Donohue. “Coming up empty with cases of abuse that
occurred last year, (Amnesty) decided to adopt a 'look-back' strategy,
one that is exclusively applied to the Catholic Church.”
Amnesty's 2011 Annual Report charges the Holy See with human rights
violations for “child sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy
over the past decades,” and what it describes as “the enduring failure
of the Catholic Church to address these crimes properly.”
Donohue said it was “preposterous” for Amnesty to “hold the Vatican
responsible for the behavior of priests all over the world,” a
responsibility that belongs to local bishops according to Catholic
teaching.
He also observed that the “vast majority” of abuse cases “occurred
between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, having nothing to do with any
alleged culpability on the part of the Holy See in 2010.”
“The Annual Report on the other 156 nations details human rights
violations that occurred in 2010,” Donohue observed, noting that the
report “lists not a single instance of a human rights violation that
took place anywhere in the world in 2010 under the auspices of the Holy
See.”
Yet Amnesty “still managed to condemn its human rights record,” the Catholic League president reflected. “So what's going on?”
Amnesty's motivation may derive partly from its own loss of Catholic
support in recent years.
The organization, founded by a Catholic
convert, was once favored in many quarters of the Church for its
opposition to torture and the death penalty.
But the group has lost significant support from Catholics, and drawn
criticisms from bishops, for its 2007 decision to support universal
access to abortion as a “human right.”
The group has also begun
advocating strongly for same-sex “marriage.”
In 2007, the president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and
Peace, Cardinal Renato Martino, said Amnesty had “betrayed its mission”
of promoting human rights by endorsing abortion.