UK Catholic Church Agency to Cease
Adoption Work As Government Forces Homosexual Adoption
By Hilary
White
LEEDS, UK, July 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Catholic Care, a leading British
Catholic adoption agency announced this week that it will cease operations in
light of the recently imposed requirement that they must allow children to be
adopted by homosexual partners. Catholic Care is the first of the religious
social agencies to announce that it can no longer operate under the Sexual
Orientation Regulations (SOR's) that proponents claimed would put an end to
"discrimination" in the UK.
According to the Daily Mail, the agency, in operation for a century, announced
that a vote of its trustees decided to end its services that had placed about
20 children a year into new families.
The decision from Catholic Care came a week after the Catholic bishop of
Lancaster, Patrick O'Donoghue wrote a letter to Catholic Caring Services, an
adoption charity in his diocese, saying that the needs of the child must come
before the desire for parenthood.
The Daily Mail quotes him saying, "I favour rejection, thus withdrawal
from adoption and fostering from December 2008 if all else fails."
"We know that what is best for children is to live with married couples.
Dilution of that harms children… Children who stay with married parents do by
far the best, whilst those with same-sex couples often fare badly, and
certainly never as well as a child with a married couple."
In April, when the Labour government passed the SOR's, Catholics, Protestants,
Jews, Muslims and other religious and ethics groups were united in condemning
the move, calling it a means of imposing state-sanctioned secularist doctrine
on religious groups orchestrated by the gay lobby.
In the weeks leading up to the passage of the secondary legislation, the media
was in an uproar over the possibility that adoption agencies run by the
Catholic Church might or might not be granted an exception to the law on
religious conscience grounds.
Cormac Cardinal Murphy O'Connor, the head of the Catholic Church in England and
Wales warned that the Church would be forced to end its involvement in adopting
children rather than comply with what he saw as a law that suppressed religious
freedom. A similar decision was taken earlier by Boston Catholic Charities that
ended its adoption services in March 2006 when the state of Massachusetts tried
to force them to adopt children to homosexual partners.
In the end, Tony Blair, who was said to have been waffling on the issue,
decreed that the Church, or any other group, would not be granted any
exemptions but that an "adjustment period" would be granted for such
bodies to come to terms with the new order.
Homosexual partners have been eligible to adopt children in Britain since 2002
and most non-religious agencies allow it. But the SOR's took the issue to the
next phase in forcing religious agencies to allow it against their stated
religious principles. Catholic Care served both Catholic and non-Catholic
couples.
In comments to the BBC in the spring, Murphy O'Connor said the SOR's were part
of a movement to force Christians out of public life in Britain. "Here the
Catholic Church and its adoption services are wishing to act according to its
principles and conscience and the government is saying: 'No, we won't allow you
to ... you have no space, you have no place in the public life of this
country.'"
After 120 Years of Service UK Catholic
Adoption Agency Forced to Close Doors Over Forced Gay Adoptions
By Thaddeus
M. Baklinski
MANCHESTER,
England, June 6, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Children's Rescue
Service, in the Diocese of Salford, has become the first Catholic adoption
agency in the country to stop finding new homes for children because of the
Government's new homosexual equality laws.
The agency,
in continual operation since 1886, was closely linked with the diocese and
supported in its work by funds collected in the local parishes.
The
Equality Act, which comes into effect on New Year's Day, forbids discrimination
in the provision of goods and services on the basis of sexual orientation. The
law was forced through Parliament last year despite past Prime Minister Tony
Blair's recommendation that Catholic adoption agencies be exempted from the
rules.
Kathy Batt,
the CCRS's director, said they will close their doors rather than abandon the
religious principles of the Catholic Church and their own guiding principle of
the good of the child.
"The
decision has been taken with regret by the trustees who have been fully
informed all the way along," she said.
"We
did not want to separate from the diocese as other agencies have, though that
is no criticism of them."
The agency
will now merge with other local Catholic welfare organizations to provide
foster homes for children, homeless shelters, and support for parents of
adopted children, but will no longer recruit, assess or approve couples who
want to adopt children.
Jim Dobbin,
a Catholic Labour MP in Manchester, said in a Telegraph newspaper report:
"It is a tragedy. There is a shortage of people willing to adopt generally
in the country and there is something very wrong when some of the better and
more efficient agencies feel they have to close because they can't conform to
what the Government is demanding."
"I
don't think there was any need for this legislation at all. It was forced
through and was all done to avoid discrimination but all it has done is to
introduce discrimination against agencies that operate according to the
principles of a religious faith."
"The
Government will rue the day when it pursued this line of action. It smacks of a
secular attack on the Catholic Church."
More
British Catholic Adoption Agencies to Close Doors instead of Bowing to Sexual
Orientation Regulations
By Hilary White
NOTTINGHAM, April 23, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - When the Labour
government's Sexual Orientation Regulations were passed last year, the
leadership of the Catholic Church in England and Wales warned that the new law
would spell the end of Catholic involvement in social service, particularly
adoption. Now the first of the UK's Catholic adoption agencies affected are
announcing they will close their doors for good rather than betray religious
principles and their guiding principle of the good of the child.
Bishop Malcolm McMahon said his diocese of Nottingham would be cutting
ties with the their adoption agency, the Catholic Children's Society, because
of the law that forces them to consider homosexual partners as equally
qualified to adopt as people in natural heterosexual relationships.
"We have been coerced into this, I am not happy about it at
all," the bishop told Catholic News Service April 18. "The
regulations have coerced the children's society into going against the church's
teaching, and we don't wish to do that."
The Nottingham agency, together with that of the Northampton Catholic
diocese, will become a secular institution "with a Christian
character" by merging with the adoption agency of the Anglican Diocese of
Southwell and Nottingham in October. The parish churches of the diocese will no
longer solicit funds to support the agency.
The Nottingham agency was founded in 1948 by the Congregation of the
Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and placed 25 children a year with adoptive
families.
Contrary to common accusations that Catholics are trying to unjustly
discriminate against homosexuals, the Catholic Church holds that its motivation
is rather the desire to protect the best interests of children. The Church
teaches, according to recent documents from the former Joseph Cardinal
Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, that allowing a child to be adopted by
homosexual partners "would actually mean doing violence to these
children" by placing them into a situation where their full social and
spiritual development would be threatened.
Homosexual partners have had the legal right to adopt children in
Britain since 2002. The new law, however, removes the right of Catholic and
other Christian agencies to decline to consider homosexuals for adoption.
The move by the Nottingham diocese follows similar decisions made
elsewhere in Britain. In the summer of 2007, shortly after the legislation was
passed, the Leeds-based Catholic Care, which placed 20 children a year with
adoptive families, voted to pull out of adoption services. Bishop Patrick
O'Donohue of Lancaster announced at the same time that the Catholic Caring
Services, an adoption agency working in Lancashire and Cumbria, will likely
close rather than bow to the regulations.
When the legislation passed in 2007, Cormac Cardinal Murphy O'Connor,
the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, attempted to find a
compromise in which Catholic adoption agencies would be exempt. Tony Blair,
later to be received into the Catholic Church by the same Cardinal, refused to
consider an exemption. Instead Blair offered his own version of a compromise:
Catholic agencies had a year to adjust to adopting children to gay partners or
close. That deadline comes at the end of this month.
The conflict comes at the same time that local branches of government
continue to discriminate against Christians who volunteer to take in foster
children. In November 2007, Vincent and Pauline Matherick, a Christian couple
who had fostered children for years, were told by their Somerset council that
they would no longer be allowed to continue because of their religious
objections to homosexuality. They were later reinstated but only after a media
furor and notices to the council by a Christian lawyers' group.
In February this year, it was reported that a Christian couple in Derby,
Eunice and Owen Johns, is suing the local council after their application to
foster children was refused because of their religious objections to
homosexuality. In addition, the Labour-controlled council adoption panel was
said to be "upset" that the couple insisted that children in their
care would be required to accompany the family to church on Sundays.
In September 2007, an independent investigation revealed that a local
council's fear of being labelled homophobic had allowed a total of 19 boys to
be placed with a pair of homosexual child molesters. Despite growing
reservations by staff and complaints from the mother of two of the boys, the
Wakefield council placed the children into the care of Ian Wathey and Craig
Faunch who were convicted in May 2006 of molesting and filming eight-year-old
twins and two 14 year-old boys.
Tuesday 22
April 2008
LONDON
(CNS) - An English Catholic diocese will cut its ties with an adoption agency
because the diocese cannot accept the government's new laws on homosexual
rights.
Mandated Homosexual Adoptions Forces
Catholic Church to Quit Adoption Agencies in England Cardinal
says its adoption agencies 'cannot remain Catholic and conform to the Sexual
Orientation Regulations" By Jenna
Murphy
"We have been coerced into this, I am not happy about it at all," the
bishop told Catholic News Service April 18. "The regulations have coerced
the children's society into going against the church's teaching, and we don't
wish to do that."
A Vatican directive issued in 2003 said it was morally wrong to place children
in the care of same-sex couples.
Bishop McMahon said that the agency will try "to salvage what it does
best" by merging with another adoption society.
The Nottingham agency, which finds new homes for 25 children a year, will
become the third of 13 Catholic adoption agencies in the U.K. to either close
or become a secular agency since laws were passed. Last July, Catholic Care in
the Diocese of Leeds stopped a service that found new families for 20 children
a year.
The Nottingham agency will follow the route of the Catholic agency in the
Diocese of Northampton and become a secular institution with a Christian
character by merging with the adoption agency of the Anglican Diocese of
Southwell and Nottingham in October.
The new agency will not be formally linked to the churches and will be able to
place children in the care of gay couples. There will be no more parish-based
appeals for help with operating costs.
The bishop first announced that the trustees had decided to cut ties with the
agency in a letter to the priests of his diocese in early April. He told them
that Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor of Westminster, president of the Catholic
Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, had "attempted to bring about a
political solution which would have exempted these Catholic charities from the
act."
But, he added, "it rapidly became apparent to the trustees and myself that
it would not be possible to comply with the legislation, follow Catholic
teaching and continue to support effectively those families who have generously
adopted children in the past."
"There is great sadness about this decision," he added.
The Nottingham agency was founded in 1948 by the Congregation of the Sisters of
St. Joseph of Peace. It finds couples and individuals willing to adopt and
prepares them to meet the criteria for adoption. The couples are then matched
with children put up for adoption by social workers.
The government pushed through laws designed to encourage greater use of
adoption in 2002, and as part of the reforms gay couples were legally allowed
to adopt for the first time.
The gay rights laws, introduced under the 2006 Equality Act, later stipulated
that adoption agencies that rejected same-sex couples could be breaking the
law.
The Catholic agencies have been given until the end of this year to comply with
the regulations.
Other Catholic adoption agencies -- which together find new families for nearly
250 children a year -- are still considering ways of remaining open in spite of
the regulations.
WESTMINSTER, May 26, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Under the leadership of Cormac
Cardinal Murphy O'Connor, the Catholic Church in England has recently
disaffiliated itself from three of the country's largest adoption agencies. The
Church stated that its adoption agencies 'cannot remain Catholic and conform to
the Sexual Orientation Regulations."
In an effort to put an end to discrimination against same-sex couples, the
British Government released an official statement in 2007 declaring that all
adoption agencies must allow same-sex couples to adopt children with equal
consideration, regardless of the sexual orientation of the adopting couple. At
the time of the statement, Tony Blair and his cabinet gave a 21-month
"delay" as a "sensible compromise" to allow Churches to
adjust their respective protocols to become more 'tolerant' of same-sex couple
adoption.
This past week, the Church in England cut ties with the Surrey-based Catholic
Children's Society; one of the country's largest adoption agencies, with
operations covering much of the south-eastern region of the country. As well,
the dioceses of Northampton and the diocese of Nottingham have ended their
involvement in all adoption agencies in their respective locales. There remain
ten other adoption agencies in Britain and Wales whose decisions are due to be
released in the coming weeks as the 21-month period comes to a close.
When Blair, who has since inexplicably become a Catholic, first announced the
new attempt at opening the doors for adoption to both homosexual and
heterosexual couples, many MPs were aware that this move towards 'political
correctness' posed several implications.
At the time of the statement's release, as well as throughout this past year,
Cormac Cardinal Murphy O' Connor made several attempts to compromise with the
government on this point, hoping for some kind of exemption for the Catholic
adoption agencies, but was met without sympathy.
"Here the Catholic Church and its adoption services are wishing to
act according to its principles and conscience and the government is saying:
'No, we won't allow you to ... you have no space, you have no place in the
public life of this country,'" said Cardinal Murphy O'Connor in an
interview with the BBC last winter.
As has often been said, the government's promotion of homosexual
"rights" will inevitably lead to discrimination towards people of
faith. Catholic adoption agencies are known for providing care for the
hardest cases, particularly disabled children, and forcing them out of adoption
services will be a great blow to these children. Moreover, with the
closure of these Catholic-run adoption agencies, there will be more incoming
children elsewhere than accommodations permit.
In a 2005 interview with Fides (Agenzia Fides, Vatican news), the late Cardinal
Alfonso López Trujillo, former President of the Pontifical Council for the
Family, was adamant on the need to hold fast to the family unit "in its
traditional sense" to ensure healthy children and a healthy society.
"[Adoption by homosexual couples] would destroy the child's future, it
would be an act of moral violence against the child. The United Nations
Convention dated 1998 says that the greatest principle is the good of the
child, the rights of the child. This is a central principle in the
constitutions of the many countries which signed the Convention," said
Cardinal Trujillo.
The Cardinal went on to speak about the sacred right of each child to belong to
a "real family" where the child is loved and enabled "to grow
and to develop harmoniously". Cardinal Trujillo then noted that when he
presented these points to the United Nations Convention of The Hague in 1996,
he was met with unanimous accord.
"Now I am criticized for my work which is something the Church has always
preached to the whole world. It has been preached by John Paul II, the
then-Cardinal today our beloved Pope Ratzinger, the Bishops Conferences. It is
not a personal opinion it is my duty because my mission is to promote and
protect the family", said Cardinal Trujillo.
In a Vatican document released in 2005 entitled "Considerations
Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual
Persons," then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, "Allowing children to
be adopted by persons living in (homosexual) unions would actually mean doing
violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency
would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their
full human development."
The Church is not only being forced to abandon its own adoption charities in
England, but She has also been subject to much "moral cornering" in
several states in the US. Massachusetts, Mississippi, Utah, and Florida are experiencing
similar government 'strong-arm' tactics, causing the Church to scramble in
implementing adoption restrictions that ensure healthy family lives for the
adopted children.