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From Under The Rubble
February 13, 2014
Get US Out!
by Christopher Manion
fitzgerald griffin foundation
FRONT ROYAL, VA — Remember that bumper sticker?
How about the billboard — "Get the U.S. out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of the U.S.!"
It makes more sense every day.
Years ago, Bill Buckley suggested on the Tonight Show that some countries shouldn't join the U.N. members "until they stop eating each other."
Ten years later, President Nixon named Buckley a delegate to some U.N. committee. "The U.N. was not very newsworthy, and not very important," U.S. Ambassador John Scali told him — and proved it by reminding him that Eleanor Roosevelt had once occupied the same seat.
Eric Hoffer once observed that "every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."
Well, the U.N. is different.
It was founded as a racket — under the careful supervision of Alger Hiss, U.S. State Department senior official and convicted Communist spy.
Ever since, the unaccountable U.N. system has fairly guarantees abuse.
I recall, several years back, when a General Secretary of the U.N. retired.
The U.N. Committee [on the Rights of the Child] ...released a formal document demanding that the Catholic Church place itself under the legal and administrative authority of the U.N.
According to the NYPD, His Excellency stole every rug, statue, painting, and fixture from his opulent taxpayer-funded residence when he left town, diplomatic immunity in hand.
The police had to put chains through the holes left in the hand-carved entrance doors — where the ornate brass handles had been — and padlock them.
Business as usual for our international civil servants.
They're above the rest of us. They don't pay taxes. They just grind axes.
This time around, their target is the Catholic Church.
Since Francis became pope, the multilateral leftist apparat has resented his popularity, as well as his Catholicism.
Well, nothing like an bevy of unelected bureaucrats to cut you down to size.
So last month, still expensive, corrupt, and unimportant, the U.N. decided try something newsworthy.
It attacked the Catholic Church.Move Over, Big Brother
Apparently the U.N. has spawned a group of well-paid hacks in Switzerland called the "Committee on the Rights of the Child."
On January 14, various news outlets reported that Monsignor Silvano Tomasi, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva, and Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's former chief sex-crimes prosecutor, were "grilled" by this committee of designated haters regarding the Church's clerical sex-abuse and cover-up scandals.
It boggles the mind that the two prelates even dignified this prating rabble with their presence. Their brother bishops in the U.S. have successfully avoided testifying in open court for decades.
More to the point, unlike many of those American bishops, Tomasi and Scicluna hadn't done anything wrong.
Nonetheless, the Committee lambasted the two for several hours for crimes they didn't commit.
The Committee then released a formal document demanding that the Catholic Church place itself under the legal and administrative authority of the U.N.
The Holy See must "change attitudes and practices," (No. 3), "take all necessary measures" to meet the Committee's demands (No. 10), submit to the U.N.'s interpretation of international law (No. 12) and amend the Holy See's "internal laws and regulations" accordingly (No. 14).
Since the Church is a worldwide organization, all of its institutions, right down to local parishes, are to conform to the Committee's demands (No. 8). That also goes for parents (Nos. 31, 32[c]), who are evidently the most likely people to "abuse and neglect" their children (No. 41).
[According to the U.N. Committee], the Church must change its teachings about abortion, homosexuality, and contraception...and must celebrate the Committee's view that children must be free to enjoy their "adolescent sexuality."
Since the Church is a worldwide organization, all of its institutions, right down to local parishes, are to conform to the Committee's demands (No. 8). That also goes for parents (Nos. 31, 32[c]), who are evidently the most likely people to "abuse and neglect" their children (No. 41).
The Church must also change its teachings about abortion (No. 55), homosexuality (Nos. 25, 26), and contraception (No. 56). The Holy See must celebrate the Committee's view that children must be free to enjoy their "adolescent sexuality" (No. 57[a]).
Finally, the Church must inform clerics, parents, teachers, employees — and don't forget the children! — that the Church has abdicated its moral teaching in favor of the latest edicts from the U.N.'s Supercrats (Nos. 20-23).
And then, Catholics worldwide must be "trained" to conform (Nos. 23, 24, 40).
Re-education camps, anyone?
The Height of Hypocrisy
The U.N. is the sworn enemy of children.
The U.N.'s Population Fund (UNFPA) is the largest distributor of contraceptives and abortifacients in the world.
Poor Catholic countries are a special target.
For years the agency has supported China's grisly one-child policy, which forces tens of millions of abortions and sterilizations every year on unwilling Chinese women.
Chinese officials admit that some 400 million children Chinese children are missing because of the country's forced-abortion policy.
Like his first Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, [President Obama] has made free, universal, taxpayer-fund abortion on demand America's number one foreign policy goal. The Catholic Church is the chief obstacle to that goal.
In 2009, President Obama renewed U.S. taxpayer funding of UNFPA. He has refused ever since to divulge the total amount of U.S. support of the vast U.N. Blob (in FY 2010, the figure was $7.7 billion; it was rising 17% a year).
Yet, at the National Prayer Breakfast on February 6, Obama invoked Scripture to proclaim that "the killing of the innocent is never fulfilling God's will; in fact, it's the ultimate betrayal of God's will."
Has Obama been hacked?
No, he was just blowing holy smoke. Watch what he does, not what he says.
Like his first Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, he has made free, universal, taxpayer-fund abortion on demand America's number one foreign policy goal.
The Catholic Church is the chief obstacle to that goal, which is why the Obama Administration attacks it domestically and the U.N. attacks it internationally.
The Menace of "Treaty Law"
Given the spectacle in Geneva, Americans should rejoice that the United States is not a party to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Holy See signed it, and we see where that got them.
Under our Constitution's Supremacy Clause, treaties are the law of the land.
Under current circumstances, with Obama brazenly declaring his intention to bypass Congress, he could easily use the Convention to justify Obamacare's attack on the Catholic Church as constitutional.
In spite of left-wing propaganda supporting the treaty, the Geneva fiasco proves that its pro-family, pro-life critics are correct.
For years, efforts to reform the U.N. have failed. At this point, U.S. membership merely lends credibility to a corrupt, failed institution.
And the Holy See's participation confers on the U.N. a priceless Catholic imprimatur.
It's time to bring back those bumper stickers.
Get US Out!
From Under the Rubble archives
From Under the Rubble is copyright © 2014 by Christopher Manion. All rights reserved.
Christopher Manion is Director of the Campaign for Humanae Vitae™, a project of the Bellarmine Forum. He served as a staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years. He has taught in the departments of politics, religion, and international relations at Boston University, the Catholic University of America, and Christendom College. This column is sponsored by the Bellarmine Forum.
See a complete biographical sketch.
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