ARTICLES

It Was Really Ironic

SF Catholic Charities to Play Matchmaker in Homosexual Adoptions

BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER

In August, Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco announced he had come up with a solution for a problem that bedeviled not only his archdiocese but the bishops of Massachusetts as well. Catholic Charities, both in Massachusetts and San Francisco, had been engaged in adoptions. Both said they were confronted by state laws that forbid adoption agencies to discriminate against prospective homosexual parents in placing children for adoption. But while Massachusetts dioceses in their state suspended all adoptions through Catholic Charities, San Francisco claimed that it had found a way to continue in adoption work that accords with civil law and respects Church teaching that placing children in homosexual homes violates the moral law.

Last December, the nationwide pro-homosexual Advocate revealed that Catholic Charities in both the archdioceses of Boston and San Francisco had placed several children with homosexual parents in adoptions. In March, the Boston Globe asked San Francisco archdiocesan spokesman Maurice Healy whether the archdiocese planned to continue placing children with homosexual parents and whether Archbishop William Levada had allowed such adoptions when he was in San Francisco. After Healy contacted him, Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, replied that San Francisco's Catholic Charities/Catholic Youth Organization had indeed placed children with homosexuals, but that such placements violated Church teaching.

Subsequent to Levada's response to Healy, Archbishop Niederauer assembled a group of consultants to craft a plan whereby Catholic Charities could continue in the adoption business in accord with law and Church teaching. (One of these consultants, according to the August 27 San Francisco Chronicle, was San Francisco supervisor Bevan Duffy, whom the Chronicle described as "a gay Jew ... who is having a child in October with a lesbian friend.") In August, the archdiocese announced its plan, which Archbishop Niederauer described to priests of the archdiocese in an August 2 letter.

The plan for how San Francisco Catholic Charities will continue in adoption work allegedly without violating Church teaching includes two parts. According to Niederauer's August 2 letter, the details regarding Catholic Charities' new policies regarding adoption are as follows.

Catholic Charities/Catholic Youth Organization will not longer "be involved in individual home studies, specific family/child matches, adoptive placements or finalizations," wrote the archbishop. Catholic Charities, however, will not abandon all work in adoption placement but will involve itself with the California Kids Connection, "a collaborative effort in conjunction with the Family Builders By Adoption, a non-profit based in Oakland, and the State Department of Social Services, to develop and use Internet technologies to stimulate interest in adoption throughout the state." This Niederauer called the "first initiative."

How will Catholic Charities be involved in the California Kids Connection? It will provide staff "who will be the first contact for prospective parents after they view the California Kids Connection site." The staff answer calls from prospective parents, determine how far they are in the adoption process, provide information on the adoption process as well as information and referrals to local adoption agencies or "appropriate county workers," and then make follow-up calls to agencies to make sure "connections were made with inquirers."

In other words, Catholic Charities will play the matchmaker, bringing prospective parents together with the agencies that can make them adoptive parents. But what if the "prospective parents" are homosexual? Would Catholic Charities refuse to play the matchmaker? Apparently not. Neither Archbishop Niederauer's letter nor any communication from Catholic Charities or the archdiocese have said there will be any exclusion of homosexual couples on the part of Catholic Charities. (Attempts to interview Archbishop Niederauer for this story went unanswered.) The group with which Catholic Charities will work, Family Builders By Adoption, says on its website (www.familybuilders.org), "we welcome traditional families, single parent families, gay and lesbian families, transracial and multiracial families, and all other families in the nine Bay Area counties in which we are licensed to provide services to prospective adoptive parents." Jill Jacobs, Family Builders' executive director, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "when Catholic Charities first approached us, I was very hesitant. My organization has a long history of serving the gay, lesbian and transgender community. It was really ironic -- I had to make sure that our integrity and values were not compromised."

As it turns out, Jacobs had nothing to fear. According to an August 3 Boston Globe article, the head of San Francisco Catholic Charities, Brian Cahill, said his agency under the new plan would not turn away homosexual couples: "San Francisco's Catholic Charities will assign three staff members to work with California Kids Connection, a nonprofit statewide organization that compiles an Internet database of children available for adoption and assists with adoption referrals. The staff will help all prospective parents, including gays and lesbians, Cahill said. If that work ultimately leads to a match between a gay parent and a foster child, that is fine, he said. 'God loves them all,' he said."

The Globe continued, "Cahill said his understanding of Vatican teachings is that a Catholic agency cannot be "directly involved in the placement" of a child in a gay household." (Calls I made to Cahill were not returned.)

Catholic Charities, says the archbishop's letter, will provide as well an "adoption preparation coordinator" who will " be responsible for increasing the visibility of children and youth throughout the state who are waiting to be adopted." This is "not related to direct adoption work" but "will increase the number of children on the California Kids Connection website."

While no one would probably object to the work of the adoption preparation coordinator as outlined by Archbishop Niederauer, in the months following the announcement of what is now Catholic Charities' role in adoption, many have objected to the proposal of Catholic Charities' cooperation with the California Kids Connection, particularly because it appears Catholic Charities will as willingly refer homosexual couples as married couples to county agencies and adoption agencies, such as the homosexual-friendly Family Builders By Adoption. Not only that, but Catholic Charities will make sure "connections were made with inquirers." In other words, Catholic Charities will do all it can to facilitate adoptions, even if the prospective parents are homosexual.

But this supposedly proposes no problem with Catholic teaching. Archbishop Niederauer's letter assures that the new cooperation is "compatible with both Catholic moral teaching and the requirements of civil law." It will certainly be in line with civil law; for, though it appears (according to sources I've spoken with) that civil law would not require a truly private entity to place children with homosexual parents, Catholic Charities has delivered its adoption services through the state, according to the August 10 Bay Area Reporter. It is thus subject to state non-discrimination laws. (I tried to verify this legal fact with Attorney General Bill Lockyer' s office; but the representative who promised to give me an answer in "a couple days" did not return my subsequent phone calls.)

But is the Catholic Charities' solution compatible with Catholic teaching?

Yes, said Father Gerald Coleman, writing in the August 25 Catholic San Francisco, the newspaper of the San Francisco archdiocese. In his "Adoptions and the Archdiocese of San Francisco," Coleman cited the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's 2003 document, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, which said, "allowing children to be adopted by persons in a homosexual union exposes them to erroneous ideas about sexuality and obstructs their full human development, and by the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children by depriving them of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood." Father Coleman voiced his agreement with this teaching, writing, "individuals who enter homosexual unions cannot reasonably be expected to provide children with sound moral teaching that upholds and examples these [moral] values. This is why Catholic adoption agencies cannot place children in such households."

Catholic Charities' new program, continued Coleman, "encompasses Church teaching by withdrawing from all direct adoptions, while promoting a different way of helping children find a suitable home." This is not formal cooperation with evil, which one is never allowed, said Coleman. "One is never permitted to assent to the evil intention of another, or advise, encourage or counsel persons principally responsible for doing an evil." The Catholic Charities program, since it avoids direct adoptions to homosexual households, is not formal cooperation. It is material cooperation, said Coleman.

And material cooperation is sometimes allowed, said Coleman, as long as it meets three conditions: "the cooperation must be as remote as possible from the evil;" "the good achieved must outweigh the evil;" and "the possibility of scandal must be avoided, e.g., leading people to think that the cooperator is in fact approving of the evil."

Assuming that Coleman's analysis of material cooperation in evil is complete, does the case of Catholic Charities accord with it? If Catholic Charities were merely offering information on how to go about adopting a child to any and all callers, then their cooperation in the evil of homosexuals adopting children would seem to be remote from the evil. But, under the new plan, Catholic Charities employees will work with an agency, Family Builders By Adoption, that, by its own admission, caters to homosexual parents. Catholic Charities will not only provide information to prospective homosexual parents but will do everything it can to make sure these parents get the adoption services they desire. In other words, Catholic Charities will do everything possible to assure that children will be placed in situations which the Holy See has said are dangerous to the good of their souls. (After all, a matchmaker is more than a remote material participant in bringing two people together, even if he does not officiate at the marriage.)

Undoubtedly, the good of married couples adopting children will result from Catholic Charities' new plan -- but is it outweighed by the evil of a Catholic organization facilitating situations which the Church has said obstruct the full human development of some children? And what of the "possibility of scandal ... leading people to think that the cooperator is in fact approving of the evil," which Coleman cites? Would not Cahill's words to the Boston Globe indicate that he, as director of Catholic Charities, is indeed approving of the evil of homosexual adoption?

Why did Archbishop Niederauer approve this plan? Some have suggested pressure from the powerful homosexual forces in the Bay city. Last March, the San Francisco board of supervisors approved a resolution calling Cardinal William Levada's intervention an "insult to all San Franciscans" and urged Niederauer to defy Levada's directive. Too, San Francisco Catholic Charities appears to harbor supporters of homosexual adoption -- its director Brian Cahill, apparently, and Glenn Motola, appointed by Cahill director of Catholic Charities' HIV division, whom the December 3, 2004 San Francisco Chronicle called "an openly gay father." The March 26, 2006 San Francisco Chronicle called Motola "an openly gay adoptive parent. Back in December," the Chronicle continued, "before the flare-up over same-sex adoptions, Motola told the gay Advocate magazine that he and his partner had adopted their daughter four years ago, though they went through a different agency [than Catholic Charities] to avoid a conflict of interest. Motola didn't return calls seeking comment, but he did tell the Advocate, 'I have never felt disrespected in this agency for who I am and how I live my life.'"

Then there is Clinton Reilly, president of Catholic Charities board of directors, who, according to an August 11 Catholic News Agency report, is a San Francisco businessman and philanthropist who has raised a good deal of money for the San Francisco archdiocese. Reilly ran a campaign management firm that worked with Representative Nancy Pelosi and Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. This year, according to Catholic News Agency, Reilly advised his wife, Janet Reilly, in her campaign for state assembly. Janet Reilly received the endorsement of the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Club. In a San Francisco Young Democrats questionnaire this year, Janet Reilly said, "I support equal rights for all Californians and support gay marriage. I will actively work to lead the way for these legal rights, and I will use my leadership role to help defeat anti-gay marriage proposals. I am proud to live in San Francisco where Gavin Newsom stood up for this critical human rights issue and I would be proud to help lead this fight on a state level."

Perhaps Archbishop Niederauer would have faced mass resignations from Catholic Charities, and maybe the demise of the organization, if he hadn't gone along with the new plan. At the very least Catholic Charities would have had to withdraw from all adoption work. But would this have proven a crippling of adoption efforts in the Bay Area and the state? After all, according to the Bay Area Reporter, Brian Cahill said that over the last five years Catholic Charities has placed only about 125 children -- 25 a year -- with families (according to the August 27 Chronicle, that number is 136.) And couldn't Family Builders find from other sources the $250,000 which, according to the Reporter, Catholic Charities will budget through them to aid in adoption work?

Is Catholic Charities' continued work in adoption worth the moral confusion that its "material cooperation" in evil has caused?

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