If I may be allowed an Olympic metapor, had the press covered the Opening Ceremonies in the same fashion with which they covered the concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child; they would have lingered on the statement of Thomas Bach, who said: “Yes, it is possible — even as competitors — to live together under one roof in harmony, with tolerance and without any form of discrimination for whatever reason.” They would have done this at the expense of a stellar performance by the Russian performers and the engineering genius that created animatronic constellations of athletes floating through the air of the Sochi Stadium. To put it another way, the words of Mr. Bach, affirming “tolerance,” like those words of the Committee condemning “sexual abuse,” are hardly the main story.
Yesterday, I argued that the core of the Committee’s statement was by-and-large an incoherent criticism of Catholic moral teaching. That controversy does not concern me here. Rather, in the statements of the Committee which actually address the sexual abuse of children, there is an implicit fallacy. We will call it the “Corporate Fallacy.” It’s proponents, including the Committee on the Rights of the Child, believe, in the words of Dr. Robert Kennedy: “That the Catholic Church operates like an international company, with its headquarters and leadership in Rome and its subordinates scattered about the globe.”
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