Saturday, November 29, 2008
BRITISH ADOPTION AGENCIES GO SECULAR RATHER THAN BE AUTHENTICALLY CATHOLIC
Across the pond the religious opt-out clause in the government's Sexual Orientation Regulations allow Catholic adoption agencies a loophole permitting them to practice the religion they claim to adhere to. Since they have been Catholic in Name Only, they have rejected authentic Catholicism and instead embraced secularism, permitting homosexual adoptions.
LifeSiteNews.com reports:
To date, five Catholic adoption agencies in England and Wales have opted for secularization, rather than conform their practices to Catholic teaching. One has chosen to cease adoption services and two others are undecided. The Catholic Herald reported today that Keith Cardinal O'Brien, the archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, resigned as the president of the St. Andrew's Children's Society, the largest Catholic adoption agency in Scotland, to allow it to sever its ties with the Catholic Church.
The inaction of the bishops over the threat against their adoption agencies will result in worse attacks on Catholic charitable institutions, Addison warned. Their willingness to fold up their adoption agencies, or to allow them to sever ties with the Church, is a bad sign for the future of religious charities in England.
“The bishops have caved in too easily,” he said. The crisis over the SORs, he warned, has been a preliminary to future attacks on Christian charities. The strategy has been to create a catch-22. “There is a desire on the part of secularists to get the Church out of charitable work. And then they say, ‘Well what good is the Church anyway?’ If the Church is involved in charity, it is accused of discrimination, but if it isn’t, it gets told it is useless.”
What the bishops should have done was vigorously fight the attack from the start. “They should have amended the constitutions of their agencies, waited to be challenged in court, and been willing to fight and see what happened.”
“As it is, they are giving in without a fight, which does nothing but encourage people to come in for the next challenge.” What will that be? Addison pointed to Catholic schools and hospitals and the increasing pressure for doctors to participate in passive euthanasia, abortion and contraception, as well as the threat from the homosexualist “rights” lobby in the schools under the guise of “homophobic bullying” campaigns.
