Thursday, 21 July 2005

Bethany flip-flops on Catholic ban, blames “misunderstanding”

According to today’s Clarion-Ledger, the local chapter of Bethany Christian Services has reversed its policy barring Catholics from adoptions.

Rather than anti-Catholic animus, the agency rather bizarrely pins the blame on its misunderstanding of Catholic Charities’ adoption policy:

McKey said the agency’s past policy of excluding Catholic parents was “unintentional on our part” as Bethany had assumed Catholic Charities gave preference to Catholic couples seeking to adopt.

I must have missed the passage in the Bible where it says it’s OK to discriminate, but only as long as you think other people are doing it too…

1 comment:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

Of course the Bible okays discrimination: not being yoked with unbelievers, kicking disruptive influences out of the church, discriminating against anyone you’re not married to when you’re looking for sex, etc. The question is what kinds it does and doesn’t condone, or is silent about. It’s pretty dang silent about placing strange kids in the custody of strangers.

If it were advertising itself as an adoption agency placing children in Christian homes, they’d have a case – since an agency adopting such a policy would do so with the eternal as well as the temporal welfare of kids in mind. Some evangelicals (not me) believe that Catholicism has enough baggage that it does not qualify as true Christianity – and the government is constitutionally barred from telling them that they’re wrong, an act that would impede their religious liberties.

But to single out one or a handful of religions is another matter. Why mention Catholics and not Buddhists, or Wiccans, or Scientologists? That would be unfair.

 
Comments are now closed on this post.