Episcopal ignorance. (News in Brief: Brazil).

Brasilia--Once again, an episcopal conference, this one in Brazil, has blocked pro-life work through ignorance, said Brazilian pro-life leader Father Luiz Carlos Lodi: "In many countries the CEDAW protocol has been approved, but Brazil will go down in history as the first and only one in which such a protocol was approved with the support of the Catholic bishops' conference" (N.C.R. Sept 7/02).

In late April, the Brazilian Senate said it was going to discuss approval of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Approval would give a committee, which monitors nations' compliance with the protocol, the authority to hear complaints about legislation and policies which contravene the UN treaty. This committee has consistently reflected a radical feminist ideology contemptuous of family, motherhood, and religion.

On April 27, seventy-two Brazilian bishops, including two cardinals, sent a letter to the Senate requesting delay of the discussions and rejection of the protocol. They said that CEDAW was imposing "an ideological perspective at odds with Brazilian laws and cultural values." The letter had such an impact that CEDAW promoters immediately convened a public hearing for May 21, inviting a roster of feminist and pro-abortion speakers as well as a representative of the bishops' conference.

Archbishop Penna, head of the Bishops' Commission of Life and Family, surprised Father Lodi by giving a neutral discourse very imprecise in its content. When an aggressive feminist began to criticize point by point the letter signed by the 72 bishops, Penna interrupted her and said that the document she was criticising was not the official position of the bishops' conference, which was expressed instead in the statement he had read. On the day the Senate voted on the protocol, Bishop Fihlo accompanied Father Lodi to lobby senators to vote against the protocol; but when one of the senators requested consideration of the April 27 letter, another senator got up and read out the May 21 remarks of Archbishop Penna that claimed the April 27 letter was a mistake. The Senate subsequently ratified the protocol.

Later the archbishop told the Portuguese edition of Vatican Radio that his position was taken "after consulting some 10 advisers who were gathered in Brasilia for that purpose." He also claimed that the CEDAW protocol had nothing to do with matters of abortion or life: "It is just a protocol, with a committee, which is responsible for receiving accusations referring to violations of women's rights."

In a letter to the archbishop, Jorge Scala, an Argentinian attorney who is regional coordinator of the Latin American Council for Life and Family, listed all the interventions around the world that the CEDAW monitoring committee has made that demonstrate clearly an anti-life agenda. "This committee, without any legal knowledge and with a clear ideological bias, will be monitoring and forcing changes to Brazil's constitution and laws, unfortunately with the support of the Brazilian bishops' conference," he wrote, "The damage has been done already."