Quite coincidentally I've bumped into the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals three times in the last two weeks. All three times have been in Dominican publications or on Dominican websites. I have to confess that I don't pay much attention to the U.N. And what little I knew of the U.N.'s development goals, I dismissed as little more than expensive utopian socialist engineering.
It wasn't until my O.P. brothers and sisters in the Peace and Justice biz started cooing about the MDG's that I did a little research and discovered that. . .surprise!. . .the MDG's contain several innocuous "goals" that when translated into Real-Life Language mean "guaranteeing free access to contraception and abortion on demand."
The really disturbing thing here is the number of Catholic universities and colleges that have signed on to the MDG's w/o much critical engagement with the context and long history of the MDG's. You have to do a little digging to discover that, for example, Goal #5--improving maternal health care--is really just a way of disguising universal abortion rights and free access to contraception. The meat of the goals is found in the implementation reports and by carefully reading the "Reservations" issued by signatory nations. Several predominately Catholic nations have signed onto the MDG's but have publicly stated that they will not interpret Goal #5 to include abortion or contraception.
This sounds like an excellent topic for Catholic bloggers to tackle! No doubt faithful Catholics need more info and better teaching on the Church's social justice ministry. . .but it doesn't seem to me that MDG's is the way to go.
It wasn't until my O.P. brothers and sisters in the Peace and Justice biz started cooing about the MDG's that I did a little research and discovered that. . .surprise!. . .the MDG's contain several innocuous "goals" that when translated into Real-Life Language mean "guaranteeing free access to contraception and abortion on demand."
The really disturbing thing here is the number of Catholic universities and colleges that have signed on to the MDG's w/o much critical engagement with the context and long history of the MDG's. You have to do a little digging to discover that, for example, Goal #5--improving maternal health care--is really just a way of disguising universal abortion rights and free access to contraception. The meat of the goals is found in the implementation reports and by carefully reading the "Reservations" issued by signatory nations. Several predominately Catholic nations have signed onto the MDG's but have publicly stated that they will not interpret Goal #5 to include abortion or contraception.
This sounds like an excellent topic for Catholic bloggers to tackle! No doubt faithful Catholics need more info and better teaching on the Church's social justice ministry. . .but it doesn't seem to me that MDG's is the way to go.
I have written about this before and the fact that the progressive camp is much more likely to link to the MDG's than to the Vatican's website. These sites are also much more likely to talk about sustainability - a shortcut word for population control- and an environment based spirituality.
ReplyDeleteSee Archbishop John Nienstedt's comments on the MDGs here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.zenit.org/article-15740?l=english
His full article can be found in the April 2006 Crisis Magazine
www.crisismagazine.com