In a speech at the Family Research Council last week, FRC senior fellow Pat Fagan compared a UN report criticizing the Vatican over its handling of sexual abuse cases to Kristallnacht, the spate of violence in which Nazi stormtroopers attacked Jews and destroyed their property while German police turned a blind eye.
Fagan, the director of FRC’s MARRI institute, made the remarks at a panel discussion criticizing last month’s report from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Fagan acknowledged that the comparison of the children’s rights committee to Nazi forces and the UN to complicit German authorities was “a bit of an overplay,” but decided to go for it anyway.
“This is just an analogy and I don’t want to take it directly,” he said, “but the first really egregious act that was very public and against the good of people and against the good of the Jews was Kristallnacht in Germany.
“And that was very significant because the police permitted it. And that was the beginning of the end, when those who were there to enforce the law failed to do so and did not protect the citizen from these bullies – more than bullies, murderers.”
“Now, this is not Kristallnacht” he continued, “but it is the breaking of a pretty big window. They didn’t go around smashing all the windows, it’s just that if you think of the Vatican as a shop on Main Street, well, they didn’t break all the windows on Main Street but they went up to the shop and they smashed through the big plate glass window.”
“Now, this is good,” he added, “because it is now made very clear what is going on” at the UN.
