Christian Adoption Agency Nixes Catholics

JACKSON, Miss. - A Christian adoption agency that receives money from Choose Life license plate fees said it does not place children with Roman Catholic couples because their religion conflicts with the agency's "Statement of Faith."

Bethany Christian Services stated the policy in a letter to a Jackson couple this month, and another Mississippi couple said they were rejected for the same reason last year.

"It has been our understanding that Catholicism does not agree with our Statement of Faith," Bethany director Karen Stewart wrote. "Our practice to not accept applications from Catholics was an effort to be good stewards of an adoptive applicant's time, money and emotional energy."

Sandy and Robert Steadman, who learned of Bethany's decision in a July 8 letter, said their priest told them the faith statement did not conflict with Catholic teaching.

Loria Williams of nearby Ridgeland said she and her husband, Wes, had a similar experience when they started to pursue an adoption in September 2004.

"I can't believe an agency that's nationwide would act like this," Loria Williams said. "There was an agency who was Christian based but wasn't willing to help people across the board."

The agency is based in Grand Rapids, Mich., and has offices in 30 states, including three in Mississippi. Its Web site does not refer to any specific branch of Christianity.

Stewart told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger that the board will review its policy, but she didn't specify which aspects will be addressed.

The Web site says all Bethany staff and adoptive applicants personally agree with the faith statement, which describes belief in the Christian Church and the Scripture.

"As the Savior, Jesus takes away the sins of the world," the statement says in part. "Jesus is the one in whom we are called to put our hope, our only hope for forgiveness of sin and for reconciliation with God and with one another."

Sandy Steadman said she was hurt and disappointed that Bethany received funds from the Choose Life car license plates. "I know of a lot of Catholics who get those tags," she said.

She added: "If it's OK to accept our money, it should be OK to open your home to us as a family."

Bethany is one of 24 adoption and pregnancy counseling centers in Mississippi that receives money from the sale of Choose Life tags, a special plate that motorists can obtain with an extra fee.

Of $244,000 generated by the sale of the tags in 2004, Bethany received $7,053, said Geraldine Gray, treasurer of Choose Life Mississippi, which distributes the money.

"It is troubling to me if they are discriminating based on only the Catholics," Gray said.

"Are you saying that if you have a theological disagreement with a fellow Orthodox in the next pew, and are absolutely certain that he has committed formal heresy, that you would personally boycott Communion until he was excommunicated?"

Your question begs the wrong answer. If I have wronged my brother, or if my bother has something against me (notice Christ is not even dealing here with the more difficult question of whether or not you have something against your brother), it is my responsibility to try to make amens, before coming to the altar (or if while at the altar and I realize it then to leave my gift and make amens first). By doing so, you are acting completely in communion with Gods will (not excommunicating yourself). Any serious doctrinal differences should be resolved without schism, however, if two believers cannot agree, they must turn to the church, in humility, for the wisdom guarenteed it by Christ through the Holy Spirit. It is very possible that both believers could be wrong and their judgement clouded by sin, thus not allowing the Holy Spirit to work through either of them (the danger of thinking each of us alone can interpret scripture).

As for your second statement...herein lies the systematic theology of the west. For the most part you may be correct, but don't forget the thief on the cross. Christ's mercy transcends all human reason. Even with all I quoted about the need to partake of the body and blood of Christ to have eternal life, it in no way negates the fact that only Christ can know one's heart and motives.

Although no one can not say infatically whether or not a person is saved or not, they can say whether or not they are following the teachings of Christ (Christ will judge whether or not they had good reason, although I'd not want to rest my eternal hope on not following Christ's teachings and yet expecting to be saved in the end). But those that "Profess to be Christian" and have abortions (even support those that do) are not in communion with the Church and do receive communion to their judgement and not to their eternal life (save Gods mercy).

I must say one other point on this matter of abortion. It is not wrong to believe in the freedom of choice, even if that choice was for one to have an abortion. Having been created in God's image means all humans have been granted three things 1) Freedom to Choose, 2) Rational Thought, and 3) the Capacity to Love. If you read Genesis 1:26-27 carefully you will see that God desired to create man in His image and after His likeness, yet the actual creation was only the image...the likeness comes by how we use what we were given in the image. I believe this is why this issue is deeply wrong on both sides of the abortion issue today. Since everyone was created in God's image, to tell someone that they do not have the right to choose goes against the most fundamental aspect of their existence. Even the devil has the right to choose, he just chooses to do evil. It is all about what choices we make. It is all about how we reason, and it is all about filling our capacity for love with actual love. Adam and Eve Choose to disobey God and their reasoning was wrong.

But, before you think I'm advocating the right to choose, sin must enter the equation (and why it goes to the core of fallicy of the Protestants and Rome). Because we are living in a world, born into sin, each of us makes clouded decisions with faulty reasoning and darkened love. This is why, in an Ecumenical sense the whole of God's creation makes judgements over the natural law. Even though we have the right to kill or murder as a matter of choice, it flies in face of all that is good and therefore we as civilized people limit choices in this sinful world. Therefore it is as much a right for any group of people to define abortion as murder and limit its right, even when it flies in face of the greatest gift given to mankind...that of freedom. It is why so many on the left cannot understand the issue, because 1) their hearts are so hardened in sin that they cannot not only see that it is murder, but they cannot even stop to reconcile with their brother, and 2) that someone or some group of people have the right to limit their personal freedoms since they believe their freedoms are limitless (which by design they were meant to be, but in the face of sin had to be limited).

We as Christians need to be honest about this and not so easily underestimate the created desire to be free and be able to choose as we were designed to do. We must reason from a stand of Freedom of Choice, limited in a sinful world, by the Ecumenical voice of all of God's creation. This is the check and balance used by the Orthodox Church to limit the sinful interpretation of any one person, and sometimes even many powerful people, by requiring the whole of the Church deside on doctrinal issues (even when one must be of a humble, Chirstlike, mind to abide by these decisions until we are all cleansed of our sins and can see through unclouded eyes).

As Christians, we believe in one God, one Christ, one Holy Spirit--why do we have to label each other? My point was that Catholics are Christian and we trace the beginning of our religion to Jesus telling Peter that He is building his church on his rock, Peter, and that the gate of Hell will not prevail against it. As for your assertion that Baptists and Anabaptists weren't part of the church, please see (http://www.turrisfortis.com/trail.html) which begins with: The term “Protestant” itself tells us volumes about the origin of this particular group of churches. They originated in protest, which means something had to pre-exist for them to protest against. That something is, of course, the Catholic Church. The most succinct definition of Protestant is simply “anti-Catholic.” The fact that these origins leave gaps of time 1500 years or longer between the founding of the church and the crucifixion of Christ doesn’t seem to bother anyone. According to the Handbook of Denominations in the United States, 10th edition, by Frank S. Mead and Samuel S. Hill, the Baptist denomination is, “a third generation Reformation development that appeared in England about 1610” that “wanted to take Protestantism ‘to its logical conclusion.’” Most Baptists I know...gladly own the Protestant label. In fact, they are proud of it, pointing to John Smyth as their founder. According to the Handbook of Denominations Smyth formed most of his ideas after being influenced by Mennonites in Amsterdam, who were teaching Anabaptist principles. Anabaptist is the name given to a left wing fringe of the Reformation that held to a literal interpretation of the Bible in social matters, a complete separation of church and state, and rejected infant baptism as unscriptural, requiring a “believer’s baptism” of all adults for membership in their churches. Since they required members of their sect that were baptized as children to be baptized again, they were called “Ana-baptists,” meaning re-baptizers. This origin is generally accepted by all respected religious and secular historians. But there are Baptists who deny that they are Protestants at all. No, the Baptist church did not grow out of the Reformation, they say. It was always there, lurking underground, suffering persecution, and only surfaced in the safer religious climate of post-Reformation Europe. But it has its origins much earlier, indeed with Christ Himself. Or so reads the history according to Dr. J. M. Carroll, author of the little booklet, “The Trail of Blood.” Though rejected by historians, many in the Baptist community today understand this anti-Catholic and largely fabricated historical account to be the story of how Christ established the Baptist church (beginning with John the Baptist) and how it remained the one true church loyal to Christ for the past 2000 years. Of course the desire to create such a history is understandable. The honest Christian inevitably desires to learn the actual teachings of Christ as handed on by the Apostles, and if that Apostolic Church still exists, to join in communion with it. For the Reformation churches, this claim simply cannot be made. Those that make it must disassociate themselves from the Reformation and seek out the “missing history” of their church that would tie it back to Christ. This is what “The Trail of Blood” claims to do for the Baptists. Then the author goes on to explain how this position is incorrect. The Huguenots were French Calvinist of the 16th or 17th centuries. Likewise, Albigensianism appeared in the 12th century. The Syriac Orthodox Church (the Aramaic church you mentioned)didn't split with the Roman Catholic Church until the Great Schism in the 11th century. Lastly, obviously, most early followers of Jesus were Jewish, as was Jesus himself and so whether we think of them as Messianic Jews or Hebrew Christians, the line was blurred in the early church. It is of note that all mainstream Jewish denominations and organizations hold that Messianic Jews are not practicing Judaism, but Protestant Christianity. Messianic Judaism is condemned as heretical and non-Jewish by Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Judaism. But, as I said originally, the whole point of my original comments was to state that Catholics most assuredly are Christian.

Now, this is just as true of Orthodoxy, which is the Hellenic Greek culture of the ancient East melded into Christian religion, and Catholicism, which is the Latin Roman culture of the ancient West melded into the same Christian religion.

Kudos on an excellent explanation! One addendum to the above statement, however.

Within the one Catholic Church there are in fact many churches which maintain their own traditions of theology, liturgy, spirituality, and government that are quite different from those usually associated with "Roman," or Latin (Western) Catholicism.

As most of us realize, the Church began in the East. Our Lord lived and died and resurrected in the Holy Land. The Church spread from Jerusalem throughout the known world. As the Church spread, it encountered different cultures and adapted, retaining from each culture what was consistent with the Gospel. In the city of Alexandria, the Church became very Egyptian; in Antioch it remained very Jewish; in Rome it took on an Italian appearance and in the Constantinople it took on the trappings of the Roman imperial court. All the churches which developed this way were Eastern, except Rome. Most Catholics in the United States have their roots in Western Europe where the Roman rite predominated. It has been said that the Eastern Catholic Churches are "the best kept secret in the Catholic Church."

Many people forget - or do not realize - that Christianity came from Judaism. As the church expanded beyond the realm of Judaism, it adapted itself to the people and cultures in which it took root. This cultural adaptation resulted in the 22 different rites of the Catholic Church today.

It is from Jewish roots that the church of Antioch sprung. In fact, the church of Antioch was founded by St. Peter and it was there that the terms "Christian" and "Catholic" were first used. The first Christians were Jews and entire communities came to accept Jesus as the Messiah. Evidence from archaeological studies of Maronite church buildings show that they had earlier been synagogues.

During the many disputes among Christians in the fourth century over the divinity and humanity of Christ, the arguments became heated in Antioch. Under the leadership of St. Maron, the head abbot, monks left the city for peace and quiet. Lay people and clergy -Maronites- followed the monks. Later during the Arab invasion of the Middle East the Maronites fled to the Cyprus and to the safety of the Lebanon mountains.

To this day, the Maronite Church retains its Jewish roots more than any other Catholic rite, as evidenced by its use of Aramaic/Syriac and by the prayers which remain faithful to Semantic and Old Testament forms.

The Maronite liturgy is one of the oldest in the Catholic Church. St. Peter and other Apostles brought the liturgy of the Last Super to Antioch where it developed in Greek and Syriac concurrently. The early Antioch liturgy is the basis of the Maronite liturgy.

A Roman rite Catholic may attend any Eastern Catholic Liturgy and fulfill his of her obligations at an Eastern Catholic Parish. A Roman rite Catholic may join any Eastern Catholic Parish and receive any sacrament from an Eastern Catholic priest, since all belong to the Catholic Church as a whole.

CATHOLIC RITES AND CHURCHES

Eastern Catholic Churches in the U.S.

The first wave of immigrants to the US came from Western Europe and brought their catholic (Roman) faith with them. It is only within the past 100 or so years that the next wave of immigrants came from the East. That is why Roman catholicism predominates in the West. That is now changing as more and more catholics are discovering the beauty of the ancient catholic liturgies. I am a Roman Catholic, practicing my faith at a Maronite Catholic Church.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.