NEW YORK — As a high-profile lobbying organization, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute has had several knocks on its door from concerned Catholics at the United Nations.

Faithful Catholics who work there have come into the offices of the organization also known as C-Fam complaining about the anti-life policies of the international body and the conflicts of conscience they may face as employees there.

“A woman was in my office weeping because of the oppressive atmosphere against the faith,” said Austin Ruse, president of C-Fam, a Catholic lobbying group with its office across the street from U.N. headquarters in New York City.

“People who work there have reached out to us to complain that they can't be Christian or Catholic at the U.N.,” he added. “There's no formal oppression against the faith, and it depends where in the huge bureaucracy you work. But it's fair to say that it's nearly impossible for someone who works in the upper echelons of bureaucracy to outwardly express opinions faithful to the Church.”

Register interviews with a handful of Catholics who work at the United Nations and its agencies indicate that while Catholics are reluctant to openly express faith-based views in the workplace, the United Nations is not hostile in general to Catholicism or any other religion.

In fact, a group meets weekly at noon in a conference room to pray the Rosary, and another Catholic group holds a weekly Bible study and prayer session led by a priest. Mass is offered occasionally in the U.N. complex.

In addition, Holy Family Church, where Pope Paul VI visited on his trip to the United Nations in 1965, is assigned the pastoral care of Catholics working there.

Each fall the church holds an ecumenical prayer service that attracted top officials, including Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

This year the prayer service highlighted the U.N.'s 60th anniversary. The anniversary is Oct. 24.

Yet being Catholic at the United Nations is one thing. Advancing Catholic ideals at a high level is another.

The international body is directly involved in anti-life policies, promoting widespread use of condoms and other artificial contraceptive methods in developing countries, especially through the U.N. Population Fund, and using “reproductive health services” as a code word for advancing abortion in its documents or providing it as part of its third world relief efforts.

Ruse claimed that those who plan U.N. meetings on hot-button social issues seek to screen out pro-life non-governmental organizations such as C-Fam.

The Register reported recently that pro-life non-governmental organizations were shut out of the preparatory talks for the Millennium Summit +5, which was held at the United Nations in September.

Faithful Catholics at the United Nations wonder if by their work they are cooperating too closely with these moral evils.

An indication of the atmosphere there is the fact that none of the U.N. workers interviewed for this article wanted his name or title used in association with his comments for fear of retribution.

One Catholic woman who is involved in office administration said she turned down a promotion that would have required her to work on gender issues that included a radical feminist agenda.

Yet, she added, in her many years at the United Nations, she is not aware that anyone has been held back because of his Catholic faith.

“A lot depends on where you work,” she told the Register. “If you talk about your personal beliefs and go to Mass or [pray] the Rosary, no one will say anything. But there may be a problem if you express Catholic moral teaching at a policy meeting.”

A Catholic woman who works at a U.N. agency said that her job does not involve planning or policy, “so I go about my work and try to concentrate on all the good things we do.”

But she hears Catholics who are closer to the levers of power express concerns over anti-life policies.

UNICEF

Yet not all Catholics associated with the United Nations see conflicts of conscience. Marty Rendon who works for UNICEF in Washington, D.C., said that if the children's aid agency adopted a pro-abortion policy, he would quit.

“Principle is more important than a paycheck,” said Rendon, vice president for public policy and advocacy for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, a fund-raising and lobbying group that is officially independent of the U.N. infrastructure.

A study released last year by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute presented evidence that UNICEF had drifted from its original mission of child health and nutrition through vaccinations and clean water, and became actively involved in a radical agenda under former director Carol Bellamy.

The study pointed out that in 1996, a year after Bellamy took office, the Vatican suspended its annual donation to UNICEF, citing evidence of the organization's involvement in abortion and pushing contraceptives on teens. The study also cited numerous documents in which UNICEF appears to endorse abortion or has sent funds to a group that markets the RU-486 abortion pill.

Rendon read the study and told the Register that it caused some reflection and high-level discussions at UNICEF. Yet he is satisfied that UNICEF does not promote abortion, he said.

“The U.N. system is very large, pluralistic and international,” he said. “We always have to ask what the policy is, and it's certainly not to promote abortion.”

Questions of Cooperation

In the area of contraception, Rendon said that UNICEF supports methods that are in keeping with an area's cultural beliefs, which could include Church-approved natural family planning.

There may be better days ahead at UNICEF with Ann Veneman, former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in the present Bush administration, taking over from Bellamy as executive director. In remarks to UNICEF's executive board, Veneman indicated a return to the basics of providing for children's health.

Father George Rutler, pastor of Our Saviour Church, located a few blocks from the United Nations, said that a number of U.N. workers and diplomats from different countries attend Mass there. Occasionally they ask his guidance on matters of morals and conscience.

“The issues of cooperation are the same at the U.N. as they would be at any place of employment,” he told the Register. “It is possible for a Catholic to work at the U.N. as long as there is no formal or immediate material cooperation in a moral evil. But I would say if a person's job requires formal or immediate material cooperation and there's no way that person can avoid the complicity or reform the system, then he or she must resign.”

The online New Catholic Encyclopedia defines formal cooperation as being associated with a wrongdoer “in the performance of a bad deed in so far as it is bad, that is, to share in the perverse frame of mind of that other.” Some forms of material cooperation are allowable and even unavoidable in a complex society, and determining the level of material cooperation is often difficult, the encyclopedia states. But if the moral wrongdoing would not be committed without the act of material cooperation in question, it is considered unallowably proximate or immediate.

Stephen Vincent is based in Wallingford, Connecticut.