Saturday 17 May 2008

So-Called Catholic Adoption Agencies

I've just come across this post on a nice blog I jumped into today - The blog owner writes,

"It appears that the new “Cabrini Children’s Society” (while maintaining “CCS”) is no longer the Catholic Children’s Society, and has ceased being “catholic” in any sense while still expecting the bishops to “continue promoting funding from the Catholic community”. The Catholic Faithful need to know that they’ve just lost £10 million (the society's assets), and been sold down the river of political expediency as it is now technically outside Church jurisdiction. We know what that means, then!
We are now living in a country where much that was good and wholesome has been sacrificed to the gods of 'progress' and 'equality'. The debacle, recently, over the status of Catholic children's agencies is just one attempt by the godless and secular state to destroy the family. This behaviour has to be intentional; no one could be so dumb as not to recognise that current government social policy is behind many of our nation's ills.
"

It seems to me that a lot of ordinary Catholics just don't have a clue as to what charities containing the name Catholic, really are, or have been doing with their money. If these organisations change their names, and no longer adhere to the teachings of the Catholic Church, then they should no longer expect Catholic financial support.

WhiteStoneNameSeeker comments on the post:-
I don't know what's happening. I just remember my deep disappointment when I heard [an Archbishop] glibly mentioning that Catholic adoption agencies already hand over children to single gay people for adoption as though that was okay somehow. I've seen adoption close up both as a professional and as someone who just sees families with adopted kids. Sometimes I think social services actively LOOK to put kids where they'll be the worst off and refuse to put them where they'll thrive. God have mercy!

My comment included the following, which will show why this subject is so dear to my heart -

When we were in our previous diocese (Clifton) my husband and I, wanting to become adopters, had some dealings with the Catholic Children's Society. We found out that they were not averse to placing children with unmarried couples, as to not do so would "seem discriminatory"! We contacted our (then) Bishop - he never replied. We mentioned it to our PP, who told us he'd "back us all the way" in our opposition to this policy, yet several years on, he was still putting out the collection box for them as the Crib offering. We went with the Local Authority to be approved as adopters, as we were not comfortable with going with an organisation that compromised the name Catholic. Our social worker, who was very unknowledgeable about Catholicism, went (without our knowledge, but later told us) to a Catholic Children's Society social worker, to ask what she thought about us - given that we'd been foolish enough at that stage to admit to going to daily Mass etc. The CCS social worker informed her that that was definitely "not normal". However, our social worker, eventually getting to know us, managed to see enough positive things in us to get us approved. We never had a child placed with us though, even though we moved and became re-approved by another Catholic Agency, where our lapsed Catholic social worker (who "wouldn't necessarily agree with all your Church teaches") did mention that we were a rare couple for the Agency to have on its books - ie a practising Catholic couple. (As I've mentioned in earlier posts,)We've withdrawn from the process now, six years on, but we do feel aggreived that these agencies are still taking funding from Catholics, when they are frequently not at all Catholic in their policies.

When will those in authority DO something?

3 comments:

Lucy said...

I've actually been thinking that maybe next time we would use a Catholic adoption agency - but hmmm, maybe not!

LizzieD said...

No, Mrs Pea, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it - although I don't want to tar them all with the same brush - it depends what region you are in. But I think it's probably worth doing some discrete research before you go with one. The other advice I'd give, is, if your children are still pre-school, and you intend to homeschool, DON'T tell the social workers about it, find out about all the local primaries, and pretend you're going to choose one. And definitely play down your Catholicism (I don't think that's too much of a compromise for the sake of the child you may be able to adopt). I suppose I come across as a bit cynical, but that's because I AM!!!!(we can still laugh about it too). I will pray for a new child for your family, God Bless.

Roses and Jessamine said...

The good news is here:
http://marymagdalen.blogspot.com/2008/06/god-bless-cormac.html