San Francisco, Calif., Oct 4, 2008 / 23:18 pm
The cultural battle over the identity of the family is taking another turn in California as the Archdiocese of San Francisco's Catholic Charities plans to cut its relationship with an adoption agency that works to place children with homosexuals.
Jill Jacobs, the executive director of Family Builders by Adoption, told Our Sunday Visitor that, “the funding from Catholic Charities is ending this [budget] year." The funding, which has been in place for two years, involved Catholic Charities CYO providing close to $250,000 each year for two staff members at Family Builders by Adoption.
The situation which led to Catholic Charities being involved with Family Builders by Adoption is one that is complicated.
Catholic Charities San Francisco made the decision in July of 2006 to close its adoption services after receiving clarification from the Vatican that Catholic organizations should not take part in the adoption of children to homosexual couples. The archdiocese was then attacked by San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, who threatened to pull public funding from Catholic Charities and questioned its status as a non-profit.
However, rather than removing itself completely from the adoption business, as its counterpart in Boston did a few months earlier, Catholic Charities San Francisco struck an agreement in which it would pay workers who worked for California Kids Connection, a web-referral service for the pro-homosexual-adoption company Family Builders by Adoption.
In February of 2007, Archbishop George Niederauer offered his thoughts on the arrangement to San Francisco’s radio station KCBS. He said that he respected the opinion of “those within the Church…who feel that even that is too much of an involvement, but I believe we have examined what we’re doing and vetted it very carefully, and what we’re really doing is putting potential adoptive parents in touch with adoption agencies that can help them.”
“The most important person in the adoption is the child,” Niederauer insisted. “Important as it is for couples to be able to adopt a child if they want to, it’s most important of all that the child have a home.” Archbishop Niederauer also noted that the Church’s teaching is that the child should have a mother and a father.
Although the reason for the severing of ties with Family Builders by Adoption was not made explicit by the archdiocese, it could be due to the adoption agency’s success at placing children with homosexual couples.
Just this year, Mayor Newsom’s office issued a report in which it said the agency was meeting its goal of promoting homosexual adoptions. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that 88 percent of the 16 children placed with non-relatives were adopted by homosexuals.
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