By Gudrun Schultz
SAN FRANCISCO, United States, March 14, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom will cancel his plans to attend Vatican ceremonies elevating Archbishop William Levada to Cardinal, after Bishop Levada reiterated Vatican opposition to GLBT adoptions last weekend.
The San Francisco Sentinal reported yesterday that mayor Newsom considered an email sent by Bishop Levada instructing the diocese not to permit adoptions by GLBT persons to be “patently offensive.”
He told the Sentinal the Vatican’s position was “corroding and divisive,” and suggested the Vatican needed to move beyond “stale and questionable documents” if it wanted the Church to evolve. Newsom is said to be a practicing Roman Catholic.
Archbishop Levada will be formally installed as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formally headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who became Pope Benedict XVI.
He sent the email to the archdiocese of San Francisco in response to questions about adoptions to same-sex couples through Catholic Charities of San Francisco, during his years as bishop of the diocese.
In the email he said “Catholic agencies should not place children for adoption in homosexual households.”
The Vatican issued a document in 2003 on same-sex unions that included instructions on gay adoptions. It said in part,“Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children.”
The archbishop said, “The reasons given in the (2003) document, as well as the potential scandal for the faithful should an archdiocesan agency act contrary to the clear teaching of the church’s magisterium, require that a Catholic bishop follow this clear guidance form the Holy See in his oversight of Catholic diocesan agencies.”
Boston Catholic Charities announced last week they would no longer be placing any children for adoption, since the organization cannot refuse to place children with gays or lesbians under state rules against same-sex “discrimination.”
Homosexual Adoption Ends 100 Years of Adoption Services by Boston Catholic Charities
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/mar/06031003.html