Be Fair to the Poor and to Orphans

Under pressure from Massachusetts’ four Catholic bishops, Boston’s Catholic Charities announced today that it will eliminate its adoption program as of July 1 rather than comply with the state’s non-discrimination policy, which allows gay and lesbian families to adopt. The 42-member board had voted unanimously in December to continue considering gay households for adoptions. Eight members of Catholic Charities board have stepped down in protest of the bishop’s stance. Read the full story here.

Governor Romney, who backed the bishop’s request for an exemption from Massachusetts’ anti-discrimination law, had the following to say: “This is a sad day for neglected and abandoned children,” he declared in an address the Southern Republican Leadership Conference. “It’s a mistake for our laws to put the rights of adults over the needs of children. While I respect the board’s decision to stay true to their principles, I find the current state of the law deeply disturbing and a threat to religious freedom.” Romney is correct in one respect. It is a sad day for neglected and abandoned children. But he’s wrong to name the state’s anti-discrimination policy as the culprit. The real villain here, as usual, is bigotry.

The Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco is considering a similar move.

Martin Luther recognized half a millennium ago that the Roman Catholic Church doesn’t really read the Bible. That Massachusetts’ Catholic bishops would rather eliminate their adoption program than place children in stable loving homes with gay and lesbian families demonstrates with absolute clarity their ignorance of basic Biblical teachings.

Therefore, in the spirit of enlightenment, I would like to share with the Catholic bishops some key passages from the Bible that speak directly to their decision to discontinue their adoption program:

For the LORD your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe. He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
-Deuteronomy 10:17-19

Cursed is he who distorts the justice due an alien, orphan, and widow. And all the people shall say, “Amen.”
-Deuteronomy 27:19

Be fair to the poor and to orphans. Defend the helpless and everyone in need.
-Psalm 82:3

Learn to do good;
seek justice;
rebuke the ruthless;
defend the orphan;
plead for the widow.
-Isaiah 1:17

Their houses are full of deceit;
therefore they have become great and rich.
They are fat, they are sleek;
they also excel in deeds of wickedness;
they do not plead the cause of the orphan;
and they do not defend the rights of the poor.
-Jeremiah 5:28

Do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another.
-Zechariah 7:10

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
-James 1:27

The images are from a 16th-century series of woodcuts called Passions of Christ and Antichrist, which juxtaposed Christ’s meekness with papal wealth and arrogance. The artist was Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553).