Catholic World News News Feature
British Catholic agency will challenge new adoption rules June 09, 2008
Great Britain's ranking Catholic prelate has decided to challenge new regulations requiring adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples.
The Westminster Catholic Children's Society, supported by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, will defy new government non-discrimination rules, inviting a legal confrontation.
The Westminster agency decided to challenge the new rules after the Catholic dioceses of Southwark, Portsmouth, and Arundel chose a different reaction to the non-discrimination guidelines, announcing that they would no longer offer adoption services. The Catholic Children's Society, with which those dioceses were affiliated, will be reconstituted as the Cabrini Children’s Society, offering adoption services under the new rules, without a formal connection to the Catholic Church.
Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, who is the ex officio president of the Westminster Catholic Children's Society, said he was fully in accord with the decision to challenge the new government policies, which come into effect next year.
Trustees of the society plan to amend their bylaws to stipulate that the group offers adoption services to married couples. If it survives legal challenge, that change would allow the agency to work only with heterosexual couples for as long as same-sex unions are not legally recognized as marriages.
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