The sexual-abuse scandal within the Catholic priesthood was never confined to the Archdiocese of Boston. The same is true of the latest controversy over the placement of adopted children in gay and lesbian homes. Indeed, it has already become national and even international in scope, reaching all the way to the Archdiocese of San Francisco on the opposite coast and across the Atlantic to Scotland.
But like the sexual-abuse scandal, this latest controversy has had its most notable manifestation in Boston. After the bishops of the four Massachusetts dioceses acceded to the directive issued by the Vatican's nuncio to the United States, Catholic Charities of Boston announced that it would no longer place children for adoption by gay or lesbian couples.
The full 42-member Catholic Charities board had previously voted unanimously to continue the practice --- a practice that affected only 13 of 720 adoptions handled by the agency since 1987, when the state's anti-discrimination rules went into effect. However, after the archbishop announced the decision to discontinue the practice, eight members of the Catholic Charities board (as of this writing) tendered their resignations in protest.
Since it was clear that significant financial support for all other Catholic Charities services would be jeopardized by the archdiocese's decision, the archbishop and the remaining members of the board decided, with great reluctance, that Catholic Charities of Boston would have to withdraw entirely from the adoption business. (Last year, Catholic Charities of Boston handled 41 adoptions, which made it one of the state's top five adoption agencies.)
Even the Boston Herald, the conservative counterpart to the Boston Globe, expressed reservations about the archdiocesan decision, and the state's four gubernatorial candidates, two from each major party, went on record against legislation proposed by Gov. Mitt Romney to exempt religious groups from the Commonwealth's anti-discrimination laws in the matter of adoptions.
Throughout this controversy, there have been constant --- but unspecific --- references to the Vatican's condemnation of such adoptions as "gravely immoral."
That judgment appears in a document issued by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) on July 31, 2003, entitled, "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons." Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was prefect of the Congregation at that time.
The pertinent section reads as follows: "As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons.... Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such 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. This is gravely immoral...." (n. 7, para. 3).
This column does not wish to place its head in the jaws of a very complicated and highly emotional issue, with only 750 words or so at its disposal. The issue's many complex moral, sociological, psychological and political aspects require far more space and attention --- and by those with far more expert knowledge on the subject than this writer has.
But the purpose of a column, including this one, is to stimulate thinking about current topics, to offer a few guidelines for ongoing discussion, and, at the same time, to express a personal viewpoint designed to encourage readers to fashion their own opinions and their reasons for them.
Unfortunately, there are still many Catholics who believe that such columns have no place in the diocesan press or in parish publications. For such Catholics, a diocesan paper is merely a house organ, the bishop's vehicle by which he communicates with his flock and insures that they will be exposed to no ideas, opinions or even news stories that might "disturb" their faith or lead them to question church teachings and policies.
This column does not presume to challenge the document issued by the CDF in 2003, nor the decision of the Archbishop of Boston and the remaining members of the Catholic Charities board to terminate their adoption services. But the column does presume to raise questions prompted by both.
Is there evidence that "violence" is, in fact, done to children placed in adoptive households of same-sex couples, as the CDF asserted? What of the 13 children already placed by Catholic Charities since 1987?
If a homosexual Catholic, including many gay priests and bishops, were to read and ponder the entire CDF document, could he or she continue to feel at home in the Catholic Church?
If such questions are not addressed, the adoption controversy can have no constructive outcome. Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.
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