Because the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has no police power, it relies on moral pressure to get states to adopt its child protection recommendations. That’s obviously what it hoped to accomplish with a Feb. 5 report on the Vatican and the child abuse scandals that have rocked Catholicism over the last decade, issuing a stinging indictment of what it called a culture of “impunity” for perpetrators.
There’s a strong possibility the fusillade from the UN panel may backfire, however, by blurring the cause of child protection with the culture wars over sexual mores.
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