Praying at the United Nations: a touching tradition, with a most uncertain future.

By Marianna Orlandi, Ph.D. | September 21, 2016

holyfamilyint1

On September 13th, the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN and the Archdiocese of New York sponsored a prayer service, as they do each year, on the occasion of the opening of the General Assembly.

It was not the first time that Ban-Ki Moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, attended this traditional event. In fact, this was Ban-Ki Moon’s last year of attendance as Secretary General. What one may now wonder is how long his successors will continue to attend this traditional religious gathering.

The UN SG, together with the President of the next Session of the General Assembly, Peter Thomson, along with most of the UN diplomatic community sat together inside the Holy Family Church, praying for the success of their upcoming work, and for the lives of refugees and migrants. For somebody like me, who is somewhat new to the UN, to its ceremonies, and to its “procedures,” this was a quite unexpected and impressive experience.

It was remarkable because, as prolife and pro-family activists, we usually pray that these same people will one day listen to our cries, and that they will stop supporting agendas that do not protect the rights of the unborn and that threaten the family and all its members – children in primis. It is even more remarkable these days, when international pressure is mounting on Churches, on Faiths, on religious freedom and on protection of conscience. Abortion advocates, along with the supporters of the gender agenda, do not miss any chance to blame people of faith for their “bigotry”, for what they see as “obscurantism” and “intolerance”. When they do not silence the Church, they do their best at finding allies within it.

As C-Fam recently reported, three UN agencies are now pressuring the Catholic Church to change its teachings on contraception. As newspapers daily report, more and more voices, mostly in the west, blame people of faith for their “discrimination of women”, and for their hatred towards the homosexual community. The Obama administration just published a report on religious freedom (“Peace Coexistence”) that Catholic Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore did not hesitate to define as shocking. The Chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Julian Castro, in his personal statement openly affirmed that “The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia or any form of intolerance.”

Basically, progressive politicians are in favor of religious freedom … but only insofar as its tenets are in line with “state’s ideology”.

This is why, even though I was beautifully and deeply impressed by the recent prayer service, I am afraid that it might soon come a time when these same people will refuse to sit in Church.

As C-Fam staff experience daily, a large part of the UN diplomatic community is reluctant to see that the Church’s teaching on contraception is in fact the best way to preserve women’s dignity, to protect their bodies from exploitation, both conscious and unconscious. Similarly, secularists have a hard time admitting that, by protecting the life of the unborn, Christians (and non-Christians alike) are merely taking seriously that “right to life” that international law grants to to each and every human being.

Now, few government leaders or national statesmen consider their gender agendas from a grounded scientific perspective, and they do not see that Christians are trying to protect people and future generations from the harm these agendas will inflict.

While the defense of religious freedom is not one of our main focus areas, we recognize how essential it is. The moment this freedom is taken away, or limited, or “redefined” (either by international courts, or by UN agencies and “experts”) C-Fam might not be able to defend life or family anymore.

As Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski told the ambassadors gathered in Manhattan, “every human being, just because he or she is a human being, has a right to live in conditions of human life”.

It is C-Fam’s profound and true hope that these words will remain in the hearts of the members of delegations who heard them. It is C-Fam’s hope that this most basic principle will guide the upcoming works of the General Assembly, superseding the calls for unfettered sexual autonomy, and for an international right to abortion.

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter