The Catholic Church has, to put is nicely, a checkered past in multiple countries when it comes to adoption. They participated in the Baby Scoop Era (a grand-scale social experiment if there ever was one, that they have apologised for in Australia), The Orphan Trains (another social experiment) with both experiments having mixed results for the children involved, let alone the mothers and fathers. Yet it seems that now they are using the “we can’t use children as a social experiment” card, which would be wonderful if they came to that conclusion solely for the child’s sake, and increased their efforts at family preservation. Sadly, that isn’t the case, it is only because they are against a specific group of individuals being parents.
Archbishop Gomez has an article here where he speaks to Gay or Lesbian adoption as a social experiment and how the children will bear the consequences…
“In every society in every age, marriage and family have always been about children. Because our children are our society’s future,” the Los Angeles archbishop wrote in his May 18 column for the archdiocesan newspaper The Tidings.
“Until just a generation ago, American institutions — schools, media, industry and government — all agreed. Our policies and values encouraged strong marriages and supported parents in their efforts to raise healthy, virtuous children,” he said, lamenting that this has changed.
Many modern debates, Archbishop Gomez observed, are “focused only on adults and their desires for relationships.”
The child-centered culture of the past has no been replaced with “a radical individualism that defines sexual freedom as the source of real happiness,” he said.
“We can’t govern our society on the basis of our self-centered wants. As adults and as citizens, we have a moral obligation to look beyond ourselves. To think about the common good of society. To think about future generations.”
In fact, it is children who will be the subjects of “social experiments” and will bear the consequences of new definitions for marriage, parents and family, Archbishop Gomez noted.
Notice how he states that it can’t be about the parents wanting to be parents and how that is wrong. Yet his colleague, Rev. Larry Snyder, President of Catholic Charities USA, just last month used that as one of his main rebuttal points to the Dan Rather Reports – Adopted or Abducted.
“We must not lose track of the tens of thousands of adoptive parents who will be forever grateful to birth parents for the sacrifices they make to ensure that their children’s lives will be filled with the love and opportunity they may otherwise not have received.”
Getting back to the first article by Archbishop Gomez further down he states:
But children have the right to grow up with a mother and a father and a right “to be born in a family founded on marriage,” he wrote, explaining that this helps them discover their true identity and dignity and allows them to “learn in love the meaning of truth, beauty and goodness.”
Yet adoptees don’t qualify for that same right of truth, and must not need to discover their true identity and dignity, because Catholic Charities actively fights legislation that would allow adult adoptees to receive their original birth certificate.
In my opinion, using of whatever convenient excuse you can come up with to justify your position (while also holding an opposite position), is just plain wrong.
The adopted ones blog 