Catholic Charities to halt adoptions over issue involving gays

This from today's Boston Globe. Again the Catholic Church is turning it's back on needy children in order to advance themselves. My heart sank when I heard this today.

By Steve LeBlanc, Associated Press Writer March 10, 2006

BOSTON --The Boston Archdiocese's Catholic Charities said Friday it would stop providing adoption services because state law allows gays and lesbians to adopt children.

The social services arm of the Roman Catholic archdiocese has provided adoption services for the state for about two decades, but said it would discontinue once it completes its current state contract. It said that the state law allowing gays to adopt runs counter to church teachings on homosexuality.

"The world was very different when Charities began this ministry at the threshold of the 20th century," the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, president of Catholic Charities, and trustees chairman Jeffrey Kaneb said in a joint statement. "The world changed often and we adapted the ministry to meet changing times and needs. At all times we sought to place the welfare of children at the heart of our work.

"But now, we have encountered a dilemma we cannot resolve," they said.
Boston Archbishop Sean O'Malley, who had sought an exemption from the law, said the church was faced with a choice between its faith and the state law.

"Sadly, we have come to a moment when Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Boston must withdraw from the work of adoptions, in order to exercise the religious freedom that was the prompting for having begun adoptions many years ago," O'Malley said in a statement.

The state's four Catholic bishops had said earlier this month that the law threatens the church's religious freedom by forcing it to do something it considers immoral.
Gay rights groups criticized the decision.

"All of the homes were good and loving homes and now through the pressure of the bishops Catholic Charities is being forced to get out of the business," said Lee Swislow, executive director of Gay and Lesbian Advocates & Defenders. "There are no winners here. The children are the ones who suffer."

Eight members of Catholic Charities' board stepped down in protest of the bishops' stance. The 42-member board had voted unanimously in December to continue considering gay households for adoptions.

Catholic Charities has been involved in adoptions for about a century, but has had a contract with the state Department of Social Services to provide special needs adoption services to children with severe emotional and physical needs since 1977. The contract expires June 30.
In the past two decades, Catholic Charities has placed 720 children in adoptive homes, including 13 with same-sex couples. The bulk of adoptive children in Massachusetts are placed by DSS, rather than outside agencies such as Catholic Charities, the agency said.

Within an hour of Catholic Charities' announcement, Gov. Mitt Romney said he planned to file a bill that would allow religious organizations to seek an exemption from the state's anti-discrimination laws to provide adoption services

"This is a sad day for neglected and abandoned children," Romney, a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said in a statement issued while he was in Tennessee to address the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. "It's a mistake for our laws to put the rights of adults over the needs of children.

"While I respect the board's decision to stay true to their principles, I find the current state of the law deeply disturbing and a threat to religious freedom," he said.

Kerry Healey, Romney's lieutenant governor and a Republican candidate for governor, has said she wouldn't support any legislation to create an exemption.

House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi issued a statement Friday saying he regretted the decision, but supports the anti-discrimination law. He said he would review Romney's bill.

Tim Fitzgerald and his partner John Budron adopted two toddler-aged brothers in 1997 through DSS. Fitzgerald, who married Budron in 2004 after gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, called the decision by Catholic Charities "tragic."

"It's bad enough that they wouldn't do placement in gay families, but to stop the whole thing is just reprehensible," Fitzgerald said.

In 2003, the Vatican issued a statement on gay marriage that also instructed Catholic charitable agencies not to place adoptive children in gay households.

Massachusetts is the only state to legalize gay marriage, but Catholic service agencies in other states could face similar dilemmas as they seek to find adoptive homes.

Brian Cahill, executive director of Catholic Charities CYO in San Francisco said the agency placed five children out of a total of 136 with gay couples in the past five years. He said most of the children are older, with special needs.

"Our position has been that we operate in the best interest of these very vulnerable, very fragile children," Cahill said.

Former San Francisco Archbishop William J. Levada, now prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has acknowledged three teen-agers considered difficult to place were adopted by gay parents through local Catholic Charities during his tenure. He and O'Malley are the only Americans in a new group of cardinals to be installed this month.

"It has been, and remains, my position that Catholic agencies should not place children for adoption in homosexual households," Levada said in a statement in response to inquiries this week.

In Massachusetts, C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League, said the local church should have pressed the adoption issue.

"It's a very disappointing development and a defeat for religious freedom," he said. "They should have fought this in court."