For today, I have promised some concluding thoughts on the matter of the United Nations versus the Catholic Church. To those who would scold me for framing the situation in such adversarial terms, I would remind them that it was the UN acting through the Committee on the Rights of the Child that set itself up against the Church. It is not the Church who has sought this fight.
For that matter, I can’t offer thoughts of conclusion because this is just the beginning of an altercation, not the end of one. The UN, being the Church’s junior, came into the world with the best of intentions; to prevent a third world war. The clear idea at the inception of the United Nations was simply that it is better for the people of the world to work with, rather than against, each other.
This also applies to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. It has at its foundation, a simple idea; the human child has dignity. What is striking about the UN and this Committee is that the Church does not disagree in principle with either of their founding ideas.
Why then the split? Why is it that the United Nations is becoming, some would say already has become, an authoritarian superpower of a most intolerant sort. Why is it used not for the mutual cooperation of nations, but for the exporting of post-modern Western ideals to the farthest reaches of the third world? Why do condoms and birth control arise as being the universal cure to poverty, AIDS and maternal mortality, while other solutions are hardly considered? Why does the Committee on the Rights of the Child have almost no concern for actual children but rather for a fictional creature that bears all the physical traits of a child but has sufficient judgment to handle the exciting yet dangerous world of sex? Why do they ignore on the intrinsic relationship of a child to her parents while focusing on the extrinsic relationship of a child to her rights? Can a child be born and placed out on the street, not to be held and loved and instructed, but instead to be assured that she has rights which the world must meet?
The issue, which will continue to play itself out over the coming days, weeks and months, is one of foundations. The Committee and the UN are founded on nice, concise and clear ideas. The Church is founded a great mystery. The world brought about by the UN is becoming increasingly fractured and confrontational and deadly. The world brought about by the Church, both in historical Christendom and in those small pockets of serenity where the faith is still kept, is a world of order and beauty and peace. To begin with great order and clarity leads to darkness and mystery. To begin with mystery leads to order and beauty. This then is the lesson of the UN versus the Catholic Church. One begins with a small clear truth and ends in impassable darkness. The other begins in unapproachable light which reveals the truth about everything else in the created universe. These are the actors in this struggle, and this struggle will need participants who see it for what it truly is.
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