By Hilary White
LONDON, December 3, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The southern English diocese of Southwark has announced that it will continue to fund the secular social service agency formerly attached to the Catholic Church, even though the charity had opted to comply with the Sexual Orientation Regulations and consider homosexual partners as prospective adoptive parents. At the same time, a British expert in religious discrimination law has said that Catholics who have, for religious reasons, donated to those Catholic adoption agencies who have secularised, would be in a fair position to sue the agencies.
In its September “Ad Clerum” newsletter to priests, the diocese said that it would continue to fund “what was the Catholic Children’s Society (CCS) … now the Cabrini Children’s Society” even though it is “no longer officially a Catholic society.”
In the statement, the diocese quoted the explanation of the Society that future collections from parishes “will be placed in a fund for use only in such services as community projects, schools counselling, residential care and catechetical programmes for people with learning disabilities.”
Until last year, the Southwark archdiocese took up an annual collection for the CCS. It also gave them the Lenten Alms and the donations called Crib offerings and the CCS was one of two charities nominated for “rescript Mass stipends.” It is not known if all these funds will continue to be made available to CCS.
A source inside the diocese of Southwark, who asked not to be named, said however, that the proposal by the diocese to earmark funds for projects not related to adoption was a fallacy.
The diocese said the information would be published in the directory, but that it should be noted that “collections from parishes will not be used for adoption work at all but rather for services which are in no way affected by, or related to, the recent sexual equality legislation.”
“Of course, the ‘separate fund’ idea is no reassurance at all,” the source said. “As far as I am aware, we do not have any other collections for non-Catholic charities.” He told LifeSiteNews.com that it is standard practice for many organisations with both charitable and political activist arms do this to protect their charitable status. “But they all know that the money given to the charity section frees up funds from the political arm. That’s how it works.”
In June this year, the Catholic Children’s Society of the three southern dioceses of Southwark, Arundel and Brighton, and Portsmouth told LifeSiteNews.com that it did not consider itself a religious body. “We are a social care agency, not a ministry of the Catholic Church,” a spokesman said.
Nevertheless, the Society, that was founded by the Catholic Church in 1887, is registered with the British government’s Charity Commission as a religious body. This means, said Neil Addison, a Catholic barrister and expert in religious discrimination law, that Catholics who have donated to them, or any of the others who have opted to secularise, are in a good legal position to sue them for misappropriating assets donated in good faith for religious purposes.
Addison said, “I don’t think an agency has the legal right to abandon its religious nature. People have given money with the legal assumption that it is a Catholic, religious agency.”
“They’re misusing charitable funds that have been given to them on the assumption that it will be used in accordance with Catholic teaching,” he added.
The Catholic agencies and their bishops claimed that the SORs were forcing them either to consider homosexuals as potential adoptive parents, or close their doors. Cormac Cardinal Murphy O’Connor, the archbishop of Westminster, very publicly appealed to the government for an exemption from the SORs for Catholic adoption agencies claiming that the Church was suffering anti-religious persecution. But then-Prime Minister Tony Blair instead offered a “compromise” in which Catholic agencies were given two years to find a way to either comply with the SORs or close their doors, a time period that is now nearly elapsed. To date, five of the country’s Catholic adoption agencies have opted for secularisation, citing fears of “crippling lawsuits.”
But Addison, who has been consulting with the agencies and the bishops over the last year, told LifeSiteNews.com that there was no need for any such fear. Under Regulation 18 of the SORs, he said, “as is common in all forms of discrimination law, charities are allowed to deal with particular sexual orientations. Religious charities can deal with particular religions, etcetera. If they’re charities, and it’s expressly laid down in their constitutions, charities can relate to specific groups.”
Addison said he has repeatedly told the agencies, and their bishops, that Regulation 18 provides for religious charities who do not want to adopt children to homosexuals to be protected from prosecution, but only if they are acting strictly within the confines of their religious tenets. The British Catholic adoption agencies that have secularised, he said, have done so voluntarily because they have no desire to act as agencies of the Roman Catholic Church.
The statement of the diocese of Southwark again makes the claim that their adoption agency had no choice but to secularise, saying it “is a situation created by the refusal of the government to grant an exemption to Catholic children’s societies from the sexual equality legislation.”
It is well known, however, that it has been the policy of many of the British Catholic agencies for years to consider unmarried “common-law” couples for adoption, contrary to Church teaching. In 2007, at the height of the controversy, Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of Birmingham, let slip in an interview with the BBC that his agencies were happy to place children with single homosexuals, just not couples.
“What the Adoption agencies need to do, is to make it clear in their constitutions that they cannot act contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church,” Addison told LifeSiteNews.com. But it is his conclusion, after a year of trying to help them, that the Catholic adoption agencies simply do not have the will to remain Catholic. “Quite frankly,” he said, “a lot of these agencies have been Catholic only in name for a long time.”
The statement of the diocese of Southwark said, “By resigning from the presidency and trusteeship of the [Catholic Children’s] Society, the bishops of the three dioceses have given a very clear signal that they do not accept this aspect of government legislation on sexual equality.”
But Addison disagreed, saying that having simply “caved” and allowed their adoption agencies to secularise without a fight, the bishops have signalled the secularist world that Catholic charities, and ultimately the Catholic Church, are easy targets. The bishops and their agencies, he said, have shown “no willingness to try”.
“Even had the agencies, and their bishops, allowed themselves to be challenged legally, and had lost, they could have at least have secularised with honour. I think the way they’ve just given in is dishonourable.”
To date, the only member of the UK’s Catholic hierarchy who has insisted that his adoption agencies retain their Catholic character and take advantage of Regulation 18 has been Patrick O’Donohue, the bishop of the northern diocese of Lancaster, who has threatened his own charitable agency with eviction if it does not hold fast to Catholic principles.
To contact the Southwark diocese:
Archbishop’s House
150 St George’s Road
London
SE1 6HX
Fax: 020 7928 7833
Phone: 020 7928 0687
Monsignor William Saunders,
Secretary to Archbishop Kevin McDonald,
[email protected]
To contact the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:
Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11, 00193 Roma, Italy
Phone: 06.69.88.33.57; 06.69.88.34.13
Fax: 06.69.88.34.09
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
UK Catholic Adoption Agencies Voluntarily Refuse Religious Opt-Out Clause for Homosexual Adoption
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/nov/08112804.html
Birmingham Archbishop: “Oh by the way,” Britain’s Catholic Adoption Agencies Already Adopt to Gay Singles
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jan/07012906.html
Bishop: Catholic Adoption Agencies Could Be Evicted for Defying Church Teaching on Homosexual Adoption
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/oct/08100709.html