Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Thursday 8 May 2014

Do the Catholic Church and the UN REALLY Have the Same Goals?

Is Ban Ki-Moon correct? He say that "the United Nations and the Holy See have the same goals and the same ideas," when speaking of the Millennium Development Goals.

And certainly they share some, social justice is not just a goal, but a demand on the Christian.
And the 8 goals certainly start off right, I mean, who objects to education and clean drinking water? Who is in favor of infant mortality? Who likes malaria?
1. To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. To achieve universal primary education
3. To promote gender equality and empowering women
4. To reduce child mortality rates
5. To improve maternal health
6. To combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7. To ensure environmental sustainability
8. To develop a global partnership for development
(What exactly does "developing a global partnership for development" really mean? That we'll all work together? Kind of a meaningless goal. But I digress.)

The idea of gender equality, (especially now that we know that some people may think there are at least 31 flavors of gender beyond what us plain ol' cissexuls enjoy.:oP) and empowering women is troubling, however.*
Plenty of people, including many of those formulating position papers for various UN sub-organizations would say such empowerment necessarily includes access to programs for "sexual health" or "reproductive rights" which are barely coded phrases for birth control or abortion.
("Reproductive rights" refers to something other than the right to abort the unborn in 2014 with about the same frequency as "States' rights" referred to something other than the right to traffic in human beings in 1860.)

And a "right" to homosexual "marriage" is too broadly held a principle of many "first world" members of the UN, to conclude that the Church and the UN, (despite the latter's refusal so far to adopt the Yogyakarta Principles,) are truly in agreement there, especially in light of the UN panel that head the temerity to issue a report demanding doctrinal changes of the Church.
You there, stop teaching that a sin is sinful!

*Mary Ann Glendon's statement on the Beijing Platform for Action, and the notion "that sexual identity can be adapted indefinitely to suit new and different purposes," is instructive.

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