Church reviews role in gay adoptions

[kweerwolf]

Top Catholic officials in Massachusetts are convening a special committee to review whether certain policies, which allow its social services agencies to handle adoptions by same-sex couples, can continue, given the church's teachings that call such placements ''gravely immoral."

The committee will include the four bishops in Massachusetts -- representing the dioceses based in Boston, Worcester, Springfield, and Fall River -- and officials hope to reach conclusions within three months, said Edward Saunders Jr., executive director of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the public policy office for the bishops in the state. He said not all committee members have been named yet.

''We're pulling it together now," Saunders said yesterday about the committee, first reported in The Pilot, the newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.

Two weeks ago, the Globe reported that Catholic Charities, the social services arm of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, allowed 13 children to be adopted by gay or lesbian couples in the past two decades. The Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, president of Catholic Charities in Boston, had said his agency had to comply with state regulations that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/11/04/church_reviews_role_in_gay_adoptions/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+City%2FRegion+News