Saturday, May 17, 2008

But is it Catholic?



Philip has a piece on the Catholic Children's Society.

Does anyone know quite what the situation?

3 comments:

Roses and Jessamine said...

From the Catholic Herald of 2/5/08:

The Catholic Children's Society (Nottingham), founded the Congregation of the Sisters of St Joseph of Peace 60 years ago, will become a secular institution by October, after formally severing ties with the Church in order to stay open, continue to provide services and to stave off redundancies.

Bishop McMahon also said that he and the agency trustees felt they were being forced by the laws into releasing a charity that was.

"We have been coerced into this, I am not happy about it at all," he said. "The regulations have coerced the children's society into going against the Church's teaching and we don't wish to do that."

A year after Britain allowed gay couples to adopt a Vatican directive of 2003, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict XVI - said it was morally wrong for gay couples to adopt children.

But last year the Government refused to exempt about a dozen British Catholic adoption agencies from regulations introduced under the 2006 Equality Act. Instead, the Catholic agencies were granted until the end of 2008 to comply with the regulations.

The Catholic Care adoption agency of Leeds, which placed 20 children a year with new families, became the first to close its doors last July after deciding it could not comply with the law and remain a Catholic institution.

The Northampton and Nottingham agencies, which placed a combined 30 children a year with new families, announced within two weeks of each other that they would break with the Church.

With just seven months remaining, time is running out for the other Catholic adoption agencies that are still considering ways of remaining open in spite of the regulations."

For the full article see:
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000268.shtml

Bernadette said...

What I don't understand is, why not test the SORs rules by remaining open and wait for the first gay couple to sue. NO-one dies, the case gets tried, The Church either wins or loses, and there`s a chance that the law gets changed. Or is that being hopelessly naive ? I'd have said there are good grounds for a judicial review of that law, which discrimiantes against the Church's right to operate within it`s 2000 year old tradition of teaching. Why not test it ? It doesn`t seem like much of a fight-back to me, and is effectively rolling over to further secular legislation. Presumably once one has fallen, the others will now quietly follow by October.

I thought that when God's laws and Man's laws collide, we get to choose which side to line up on. There is a clear choice here, but you wouldn`t think so.

Anonymous said...

There is more on the future of the A & B Catholic Children's Society on today's Daily Mail site.

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