Catholic Charities of Buffalo Ends Adoption, Foster Services to Avoid Placing Kids With Gay Couples

Christian Post ^ | 08/25/2018 | Samuel Smith

[SeekAndFind]

Catholic Charities of Buffalo will no longer provide foster care and adoption services to new clients because a New York state law would force it to violate Catholic teachings on homosexuality and marriage.

The organization, which serves people of need across Western New York, announced Thursday that it has become the latest Catholic Charities branch to halt adoption and foster services because of conflicts with state and local LGBT discrimination protections.

The entity will continue to serve its existing foster families but will not accept new applications until its contract with Erie County Department of Social Services expires in March 2019.

The move comes weeks after a same-sex couple submitted an application with Catholic Charities to become adoptive or foster parents, according to a news release. The charity doesn't place children with same-sex couples because it follows Catholic teachings that dictate that marriage is between only one man and one woman.

However, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is prohibited under the state's Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act.

"It is with deep sadness we acknowledge that the legacy of the high quality, exceptional services which our staff provides to children and families through foster care and adoption will be lost," Catholic Charities CEO Dennis C. Walczyk said in a statement.

Walczyk said that charity is working with the New York Office of Children and Family Services and the Erie County Department of Social Services to ensure a "smooth transition" for foster care children and parents affiliated with Catholic Charities as well as those who have applied to be foster or adoptive parents.

[Alberta's Child]

And I believe it’s still a totally private charity. Do they rely on ANY taxpayer funding?

[Alberta's Child]

Who said anything about getting a license? This country was founded and built by men who knew how to deal with @ssholes who told them they couldn’t exist without a license.

[Alberta's Child]

EXACTLY. Catholic Charities lost all of its credibility as a religious organization in the 1920s when it decided that lobbying government would become part of its core mission. It’s basically been a communist organization ever since.

[Doche2X2]

Catholic Charities, apart from this, does not have a good track record IMO

On the contrary, according to Charity Navigator, Catholic Charities has an overall 90.91 and a 97 on accountability and transparency.

[Alberta's Child]

Catholic Charities has always been VERY accountable and transparent ... as a Marxist organization that effectively functions as an arm of the Democrat Party in the U.S.

[dfwgator]

Might be nice if they had that same discrimination towards priests.

[metmom]

The spokesperson is Polish (duh) as, no doubt, many other people in that chapter.

The Poles have been in the forefront of standing firm for their faith, as witnessed in Europe.

I guess the same is true here.

Go Poland!!!!

[dfwgator]

The Church needs another Polish Pope.

[metmom]

The you tube videos I’ve seen include a heavy Catholic presence both in the crowd and on stage.

After seeing the way Poland has taken a stand in the face of the pressure from the EU about the muslim issue, that would be the best thing for you guys.

[dfwgator]

Also, there are some African Cardinals I wouldn’t mind, they actual tend to be the most conservative of Cardinals. Especially Cardinal Arinze, of Nigeria.

[Behind the Blue Wall]

Maybe because yes I think a religious adoption agency should have the right to place children as they see fit. But my point is that at least for me, right now, the Catholic Church stands for turning a blind eye towards the molestation of children on a mass scale, maybe even actively facilitating it. So when people look at them taking this principled stance that a gay couple can’t properly care for a child, but then they’re responsible for who knows how many children being sexually molested. I dunno, not a good look in my view.

[Controlling Legal Authority]

I can’t speak specifically about Catholic charities of New York, but in my area Catholic charities organizations were having extreme difficulty in making adoption placements independent of the state. I suspect many of them are dependent upon state foster care contracts In order to subsidize the few non foster adoption placements they do.

[Ouchthatonehurt]

“On the contrary, according to Charity Navigator, Catholic Charities has an overall 90.91 and a 97 on accountability and transparency.”

I was referring to these sorts of things:

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/george-weigel-on-catholic-charities-partnering-with-pro-abortion-groups

https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/american-life-league-chastises-catholic-charities-usa-affiliation

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/catholic-charities-menace-to-society/

https://all.org/catholic-charities-under-federal-investigation-for-helping-teenager-get-abortion/

[Mrs. Don-o]

I think I understand your point, and it's a valid one; but you should reconsider the part about "Catholic Church stands for turning a blind eye..." etc.

The Catholic Church as a whole does not do anything of the sort. Without denying the record of evil, disgusting abuse, it should be clear that the "record" does not tell the whole story, or the main story, of the Catholic Church.

Sexual exploits of any sort are the violation of, and not the expression of, a Catholic ethic. The solution here is to stop this homosexual youth-abusing minority, stop the horrible violation of Catholic faith and morals, and become more thoroughly and authentically Catholic.

So if these Catholic adoption agencies refuse to violate Catholic principles, they are not part of the problem. They are part of the solution.

---

One more point concerning the "Church as a whole."

In the horrendous Penna. AG's report which went back to the 1940's --- and these are allegations, not charges, trials, and convictions --- do you know how many were implicated in the past 10 years?

Two.

That's right, two.

And those two had already been turned over to the police by their dioceses.

Now, I don't know what the charges on those two were, but if it was the worst of the worst --- if they sodomized minors--- I think they should be shot.

That's what a just sentence would be. But do you know what the record was for the whole U.S. Catholic Church nationwide, over the past two years? I'll tell you. Over the past two years, .005 percent of the U.S. Catholic clergy have had a credible accusation made against them.

Abuse experts credit the training programs and screening procedures instituted by the bishops, saying they should be continued.

This is a very good reason to refrain from characterizing the "whole Catholic Church" as guilty of these crimes.

[Behind the Blue Wall]

I’m not going to profess deep expertise in this area, but I’ve read that Canon law has defined child molestation as not being a crime, but just a “moral failure” that can and should be addressed outside of the criminal justice system, within the Church via “treatment”. If you’re interested, I think the paper at this link gets into some of the details of this:

https://www.catholicsforrenewal.org/Documents%202016/CanonLawOnChildAbuseThruTheAges.pdf

[AlaskaErik]

WOW! A catholic organization standing by its principles. How rare is that nowdays!

About as rare as a priest who doesn't lust after little boys.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I'm by no means an expert either, but I do know that different aspects of this offense (sin vs. sickness vs. crime) have gotten varying emphasis over the decades and the centuries.

C.C., a friend who is a retired ethicist from the University of Leeds (U.K.) told me this in a recent e-mail:

"Child-molestation, though recognised as wrong, and no doubt very wrong, was not until recently thought of as harmful in many cases. In any case the enormous emphasis at the present day on the harm done is often empirically unjustified, and in any case does not well explain the way we --- very reasonably --- object.

In particular, any kind of touching whatever without proper consent - babies for example being unable to consent - is evidently not in itself harmful. Sexual (or quasi-sexual) touching can run a spectrum between a kiss planted on a baby's bum, and forcible sodomy: what is a "difference in kind" and what is a "difference in degree" is not terribly well-defined. People say "Well, anybody would know the difference" when that is not true. That's why today people speak of "boundary issues" which can vary between families, between generations, between classes and between cultures.

But can "consent" be the boundary? Care of a child very often requires acting without consent.

The well-nigh universal thought in our time that those molested are unjustly treated if the molesters are not publicly shamed and punished represents a (surprisingly illiberal) error about justice. "

I'm not saying I am following C.C. in all of this, but these are issues we're hardly able to discuss. Just as a simple example: when I was little, probably kindergarten age and younger,I used to play in the bathtub with my brother Jim, who's 2 years older than me. My mother snapped our pictures from time to time. Is that indecent? Does it matter which parts were covered with soap bubbles? Some would say yes, and some no.

I am not writing this to minimize genuine abuse. I am just pointing out that some things thought innocent, or at most harmless and minimally objectionable, 70 years ago, sets off alarms today. A grown man interested in this kind of contact was at one time thought odd, even creepy; at other times, a molester.

Lewis Carroll and Alice ("in Wonderland") Liddell

[xkaydet65]

As a hospital and an agency for children it does have state contracts. For how long will depend on Mario’s brat and the Motherhouse at The College of Mount St. Vincent.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Who said anything about getting a license? "

I agree with you there. And not just the U.S. either. It's interesting to read fiction by British dramatists like Charles Dickens or even Oscar Wilde (100 - 150 years ago) and see minor plot structures where an infant loses his original parents and gets adopted by somebody else with no minute intrusive state regulation.

In some ways good, but its has its own problems.

When my boys were little, I read them the Bantry Bay series of books by Hilda van Stockum (d. 1906) and was rather amazed by the insouciance shown toward a little boy who (for awhile) making his own way in the world with little "policing" or "Child Protective Services" type interference.)

Wow.

It was a different world.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Clergy who lust after little boys are very, very rare. As rare in the Catholic Church as anywhere.

Of the abusive priest cases compiled by the John Jay Report than 5% fit the diagnosis of pedophilia. What has become salient in the Catholic Church is not sexual contact with pre-pubertal children, but (in some places) a homosexual subculture becoming (at some times) a homosexual culture meaning homosexuals going for (post-puberty) young men.

I don't say this to minimmize the offense. It's fr more the sin-sickness-crime of gay clergy rather than pedos per se.

That's what's come out around the horrid McCarrick "case." It's predominantly the seduction or importuning or sexual exploitation of young males who are sexually mature, sometimes street-legal and sometimes not.