Minors are told that being admonished that by doing or not doing certain things they can go to hell, or being brought to religious activities, are forms of “abuse.”
by Massimo Introvigne
In Japan, the Elementary and Secondary Education Bureau, Policy Bureau, and other organizations of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) distribute in elementary, middle, and high schools illustrated pamphlets about child abuse, inciting schoolchildren to be aware of and report it timely. There are similar pamphlets in several other countries, and prevention of child abuse is certainly a commendable aim.
However, the pamphlets distributed in Japan in 2024 refer to a peculiar notion of “child abuse” and include in it also typical manifestations of conservative religion. Some passages specifically, without mentioning any religious group by name, seems to target the Unification Church (now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification), the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Roman Catholic Church.
Their meaning is, in certain parts, obscure but becomes clearer when one compares them to the “Q&A on Handling Child Abuse and Similar Cases Related to Religious and Similar Beliefs” published at the end of 2022 by the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. In fact, these “Q&A” were sent to all boards of education in Japan and it is in accordance with them that schools began distributing the illustrated pamphlets on child abuse.
These “Q&A,” as a well-known journalist specialized in Japanese issues, Leo Lewis, noted in the “Financial Times,” were clearly designed to “break down” the Unification Church and prevent it from passing its faith to the next generations. However, whoever drafted them also took into account post-Abe-assassination attacks against the Jehovah’s Witness and conservative Christian groups. As Lewis concluded, “in its rush to enact something, Japan has skipped some extraordinarily nuanced theological questions and created potential trouble for a much larger circle of organizations and activities than it has bargained for.”
The pamphlets make the situation even worse. They explain to children that the “forced participation in religious activities” is a case of “abuse.” The adjective “forced,” however, is ambiguous. It evokes the “religious police” that in some Muslim countries goes around the streets on Friday and brings forcibly to the mosques citizens who don’t want to go there. This is certainly an abuse, because adult citizens have a right to freely dispose of their spare time. However, minors do not normally organize their time freely. It is generally regarded as appropriate that parents supervise it. If it was not so, some minors may be tempted to devote little time to studying and much more to having fun. Minors are normally brought to church by their parents. They may be more or less enthusiastic about it, but the parents’ action in these cases is not an “abuse.”
If the reference is to involving minors in missionary activities, this is something happening in most churches. The Vatican’s website, for example, presents the activities of IMAC, the International Movement of Apostolate of Children, a Vatican-approved umbrella organization that supervises the evangelistic activities of children, based on the principle that “children are already fully persons, capable of transforming the world around them.”
Children are also told in the pamphlets that they should be alert and report those who “show them materials that contain sexual expression that are not appropriate to your age.” A casual reader may believe this is about pornography or adult magazines, but a look at the controversies in the Japanese media on the Jehovah’s Witnesses and conservative Christian groups after the Abe assassination helps understanding that the reference is really to Biblical stories about adultery and other sexual sins and the corresponding illustrations in Christian publications. Obviously, not all Biblical accounts are appropriate for a five-year-old, while in 2024 no 17-year-old minor would be scandalized by them. It is also paradoxical that these comments are made in Japan, a country that has been repeatedly at the receiving end of criticism by the United Nations agency for the protection of children UNICEF for the large circulation and availability to minors in the country of comics and cartoons with inappropriate sexual content. Yet, religions and the Bible are singled out here.
Another reference in the pamphlets is to those who induce “children to talk about sexual experiences.” Again, one may imagine that the implied reference is to pedophiles inciting minors to tell salacious stories. But a look at the 2022 ministerial Q&A would show that in fact what is denounced is confession if minors confess sexual sins. Any Catholic priest with experience in hearing confessions of teenagers would agree that they “mostly” confess sins related to sex. It is difficult to imagine a 16-year-old confessing tax evasion or paying bribes to a public officer. The pamphlets thus directly attack the confession as practiced in the Catholic Church, where it starts at age seven, and in several other Christian churches. Confession of sexual sins even goes under the category of “sexual abuse.”
Without naming them, the reference in the pamphlets to inducing children to “avoid blood transfusions” when prescribed by doctors directly targets the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They believe blood transfusions are against the Bible and recommend alternative therapies, which are easily available in medically advanced countries, including Japan. They, together with conservative Christian groups, may also be targeted by the pamphlets when the latter tell minors that “restricting going to higher education” is another form of abuse or neglect. Conservative groups are often critical of certain trends in modern universities, although in the cases of the Jehovah’s Witnesses international scholarly studies have demonstrated that a sizeable percentage of them do go to college. The question is debatable, but again having different opinions on modern universities is not “child abuse or neglect.”
The most bizarre and alarming references in the pamphlets are those regarding as “abuse” telling children that if they “do or don’t do” certain things they “will go to hell.” This is a very common teaching in conservative Christian churches and in other religions as well. Although perhaps less fashionable now, Christians of my generation remember how parents, as well as priests and pastors at Catholic Catechism or Protestant Sunday School did tell children that those who commit serious sins go to hell.
If instilling the fear of hell is a form of “child abuse” perhaps Dante’s “Comedy,” with its graphic depictions of hell, should be forbidden to minors in Japan, and Japanese travel agents should not take families with minors to the famous Medieval Cemetery of Pisa or to countless European cathedrals whose frescos or paintings show how devils will torment the sinners in the afterlife (Buddhist depictions of Cold Hells are not less terrifying, by the way). Both the Vatican-endorsed Catholic catechism for children YOUCAT and countless teaching aids for conservative Protestant Sunday Schools do teach that hell exists, is “horrible to contemplate” (YOUCAT, no. 53), and that those who commit serious sins and do not repent may end up there.
The pamphlets stretch the notion of “abuse” in an almost caricatural way to assault the right of conservative Christian parents to transmit their religion to their children. Article 18 no. 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Japan has signed and ratified, states that “the States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.” Japan has signed and ratified the ICCPR. Distributing such pamphlets to schoolchildren is a blatant violation of Article 18 no. 4. It should not be allowed.