So In the US Catholics Charities are forced to end foster care on "moral" grounds

Damian Mahadevan · May 28, 2011

So In the US Catholics Charities are forced to end foster care on "moral" grounds

Rather than allow unmarried people or same-sex couples to adopt or foster children, Catholic Charities of Rockford, Illinois announced Thursday that they would stop providing foster care services.

The move comes after months of drama in Springfield over an amendment to the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act, which goes into effect June 1. The law says that if an agency receives state money, it cannot discriminate against same-sex couples, and must treat people in civil unions as it would treat married couples.

When the law was passed, Catholic Charities and other religious and conservative groups pushed for an amendment that would allow faith-based organizations to "decline an adoption or foster family home application" to a couple in a civil union if "if acceptance of that application would constitute a violation of the organization's sincerely held religious beliefs." A Senate committee voted down the amendment in April, and a House committee did the same this week.

"The law of our land has always guaranteed its people freedom of religion," Penny Wiegert, the Rockford Diocese's director of communication said in a statement. "Denying this exemption to faith-based agencies leads one to believe that our lawmakers prefer laws that guarantee freedom from religion. We simply can not compromise the spirit that motivates us to deliver quality, professional services to families by letting our state define our religious teachings."

Catholic Charities of Rockford handles about 350 foster family and adoption cases, according to the Rockford Archdiocese. They work with 11 counties in northern Illinois and have a state budget of $7.5 million. Today, the Diocese announced that they would transition out of their current contracts and terminate 58 employees when they drop the program.

Anthony Martinez, executive director of the Civil Rights Agenda, said this is a "sad day" for the foster families and parents involved with Catholic Charities.

"This is a sad display of bigotry by Catholic Charities, and their bigotry will now be harming children in their care," Martinez said in a statement. "It is equally sad that they would invoke 'Freedom of Religion' as they make this announcement. That freedom is granted only when the religious agency is not funded by taxpayer dollars, and they are well aware of that."

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which has been following the case closely, will make sure the displaced children are taken care of, according to DCFS spokesman Kendall Marlowe.

"We are confident that we will be able to transition these cases to other private agencies," Marlowe said, adding that DCFS works with 45 other agencies that handle foster and adoption cases under contract.

DCFS handled about 1,000 former Catholic Charities cases in 2007 when the Archdiocese of Chicago lost its insurance and could no longer provide the services due to a $12 million lawsuit payment. The 2001 lawsuit alleged that Chicago's Catholic Charities had licensed foster parents who went on to abuse three children placed in their care.

So far, only the Rockford Archdiocese has announced the decision to stop its foster care program, but statewide Catholic Charities handles about 2,500 cases.

"The Catholic Church is not going to be OK with Catholic Charities processing applications from anyone in a civil union," the head of Peoria's Catholic Charities told Chicago Public Radio earlier this month.

If the Catholic Charities in Peoria, Joliet, Springfield and Belleville decide to drop their programs, DCFS will have a much larger caseload to pick up.

Fortunately, Marlowe said, Illinois has a "strong, private sector child welfare community" and--thanks to people like Jane Addams--has some of the oldest child welfare agencies in the country.

Martinez told HuffPost Chicago he was confident DCFS would "be able to quickly put those children into agencies that treat all citizens of Illinois equally."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/26/catholic-charities-in-roc_n_867755.html

Interesting no? Martinez seems to play the bigot card well. Either he doesnt understand Catholics\Christians or he is purposely inciting hatred towards the catholic church.

Corwin · May 28, 2011

It is rare for me to support any position taken by Catholics, but in this case they are 100% correct. It would be WRONG for them to break any major doctrines to appease a secular gov't (whether we agree or support those doctrines is irrelevant to this discussion). Any religion must have integrity towards its beliefs. I doubt you would see a Moslem organisation doing any differently either. Since they can no longer operate under the new law and remain within the tenets of their faith then they have no option but to close down. You make a law, you suffer the consequences; you can't have your cake and eat it!!

Lord_Brownie · May 28, 2011

I find it sad that the organizations that pioneered these types of social services are being severed from providing services. Unfortunately for the faith based programs, this is well thread constitutional grounds so they had little chance of winning once the law was passed.
LB

dteowner · May 28, 2011

I can't really think of any way to improve on Corwin's post, so I guess I'll have to go with a "what he said".

JemyM · May 28, 2011

I support Corwins post for perhaps a completely different reason.

There's two forms of religion. Those who stand up for their core principles, thus do not adapt and die out, and those who absorb the moral zeitgeist and end up as a cultural identity similar to nationalism rather than a belief.

I applaud those who stand up for their core principles and die in honor. Young people who are more and more used to communicate with people in different cultures learn that no matter they go they meet similar people, and the religion they grew up in is intuitively immoral, injust and wrong.

In the Swedish Humanist Organisation we get more new members everytime a religion does something like this, than the advertisement we do ourselves.

Moderate religion is just dishonest though.

JemyM · May 28, 2011

The reason dogmatic religion fails is that their ethics was built on poor experience and requires the individual to shut down their moral faculties.

Morality requires the human brain to use it's reason and empathy to answer the question "what does it mean to be a good person". One who do not ask this question and do not use these faculties is ammoral (they are neither moral nor immoral). One who follow dogma is no more moral than a computer, a robot or a well trained dog.

When living in a boxed in simplified environment, simple programs can help us to get through the day. It have no demand for us to adapt to the environment. But it is impossible to shut down these faculties completely which is why already the Pharisées figured out that killing ones own child is a bad idea (Mark 7:9-13/Matt 15:4-7) and people understood that following Leviticus by the letter and burning witches was a bad idea.

With the boom of the internet, media, television etc we are now bombarded with information on daily basis. Many of us have to deal with new situations on a daily basis, forcing us to adapt. This demands of us to use our reason and empathy and thus develop a morality.

It was certainly possible for someone in less complex environment to believe that homosexuality was the root of all evil, but today when homosexuals are all around us, friends, coworkers, celebrities, familymembers, and we can compare their cummulative "hurt" against society with things such as drugs and crime, it quickly becomes appearent that the dogma is neither reasonable nor emphatic. Since it is maladaptive it suddenly becomes neccessary by the moral consciousness to both reject the dogma and oppose subscriptions to it. For a religious community it is not only moral to reject it, it's neccessary for survival.

Because of this, dogmatic religion is dying in information-rich societies, where as moderate religion still have an evolutionary advantage that will probably last another generation or two. Sociology predicts religion will die out completely in some areas soon enough, a situation that is so deterministic that it is possible to simulate it in a computer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197

Damian Mahadevan · May 28, 2011

Good and bad are relative terms and is often grounded in culture. Cannibals dont see what they do as wrong, people who perform beastiality dont consider themselves to be doing something wrong. A lot of people believe recreational drug use isnt bad either.

And you have to consider that catholics dont think that homosexuals themselves are evil rather that the act is evil. A major difference.

JemyM · May 28, 2011

Damian Mahadevan said:
Good and bad are relative terms and is often grounded in culture. Cannibals dont see what they do as wrong, people who perform beastiality dont consider themselves to be doing something wrong. A lot of people believe recreational drug use isnt bad either.

No. The reason many have problems with establishing that objective morality exist is that they look at a single human. One cannot see the properties of water by examining one water molecule. Same with moral behavior. Adaptation is a neccessary component for morality and experience is the basic buildingblock for ethics. The only thing that is "releative" is what social environment an individual is placed in and the amount of experience that the individual have been exposed to.

"Culture" was a word invented within anthropology and it's now anthropology that questions the word. The "Western Society" doesn't have a coherent culture, but is a battlefield for ideas. concepts like freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, and a forum in which ideas compete in the democratic process, promote this conflict. In the open conflict of ideas only adapted ideas survives where as maladaptive ideas are extinguished.

Damian Mahadevan said:
And you have to consider that catholics dont think that homosexuals themselves are evil rather that the act is evil. A major difference.

One of the core principles within the western civilization is that one shall be free to pursuit ones happiness as long as it doesn't interfere with someone elses freedom. What's called "homosexual behavior" is the product of being a homosexual in pursuit of happiness. So what you say essentially is that it's ok to be homosexual as long as you do not try to be happy like everybody else.

The difference between homosexuality and homosexual acts is thus a mere wordgame. Such wordgames is sometimes essential to have a contradicting worldview but it doesn't help the Catholic Church to survive, it just assist the church to die faster within Europe/US.

Damian Mahadevan · May 28, 2011

JemyM said:
No. The reason many have problems with establishing that objective morality exist is that they look at a single human. One cannot see the properties of water by examining one water molecule. Same with moral behavior. Adaptation is a neccessary component for morality and experience is the basic buildingblock for ethics. The only thing that is "releative" is what social environment an individual is placed in and the amount of experience that the individual have been exposed to.

"Culture" was a word invented within anthropology and it's now anthropology that questions the word. The Western Society in particular is based on the open conflict of ideas, with freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, and a forum in which ideas compete in the democratic process. In the open conflict of ideas only adapted ideas survives where as maladaptive ideas are extinguished.

I disagree with this. Not much more i could say really other than to define what is good and what is evil.

One of the core principles within the western civilization is that one shall be free to pursuit ones happiness as long as it doesn't interfere with someone elses freedom. What's called "homosexual behavior" is the product of being a homosexual in pursuit of happiness. So what you say essentially is that it's ok to be homosexual as long as you do not try to be happy like everybody else.

The difference between homosexuality and homosexual acts is thus a mere wordgame. Such wordgames is sometimes essential to have a contradicting worldview but it doesn't help the Catholic Church to survive, it just assist the church to die faster within Europe/US.

No its not. You can be homosexual and still be happy without homosexual sex. You can be happy with no sex at all. But you have said in the past that people should try to have sex as often as possible so iguess we have to disagree here.

hishadow · May 28, 2011

JemyM said:
Moderate religion is just dishonest though.

Let's visit the Westminster Baptist Church thread again then?

JemyM · May 28, 2011

Damian Mahadevan said:
I disagree with this. Not much more i could say really other than to define what is good and what is evil.

Your failure to reply is still a failure. You should spend more time thinking and develop your morality, rather than behaving like a droid. The more you work on having a consistent worldview, the better you will become at making your point.

Damian Mahadevan said:
No its not. You can be homosexual and still be happy without homosexual sex. You can be happy with no sex at all. But you have said in the past that people should try to have sex as often as possible so iguess we have to disagree here.

You can give up things one by one and discuss how happy you can be without it, but unless you have a rational reason for doing so you are pretty much giving up happiness.

And psychologists agree that a healthy sexlife is beneficial to you where as the social problems directly caused by the Catholic perspective on sex is well documented.

darkling · May 28, 2011

This thread is blowing my mind.

1) Religious themed social programs need to be secularized, we're not living under some fucking god-king. Get over it.
2) They close up shop because they don't wan't to support gay families?!?!? And you support this?!?!?
3) Secular agencies said they'll have no problem with the case load, and they've apparently done it before when the church was handing over kids to abusers.
4) They weren't forced to do anything. They chose to close up shop. THEY decided it. Nobody made them do this- they chose their bigotry. They are not the good guys here.

This article is good. Less control amongst the people who believe in invisible space daddy is a good thing. As a gay individual, I find some of the statements in this thread utterly disgusting. And this Damian Mahadevan character appears weirdly obsessed with gay-themed issues. I wonder why.

Lucky Day · May 28, 2011

don't usually get involved in these threads

have to ditto Corwin and deets here. Secular authorities are overreaching and this has been a concern for church organizations for some time. Whether or not states say they can take the workload, faith based groups in general are much better at this sort of thing because they are subject to politics (as this whole thing is) and self-serving bureaucracy over the needs of the child.

Damian Mahadevan · May 28, 2011

JemyM said:
Your failure to reply is still a failure. You should spend more time thinking and develop your morality, rather than behaving like a droid. The more you work on having a consistent worldview, the better you will become at making your point.

You misunderstand me, i dont know where you are coming from hence why i am asking you to define what i good and what is evil. The things i mentioned before, i dont see how they are any less good in your comments.

You can give up things one by one and discuss how happy you can be without it, but unless you have a rational reason for doing so you are pretty much giving up happiness.

And psychologists agree that a healthy sexlife is beneficial to you where as the social problems directly caused by the Catholic perspective on sex is well documented.

I would argue that the social problems comes directly as a result of the media and the use of sex in the media. It is also well documented that sex in the media and pornography adversely affects people.

This thread is blowing my mind.

1) Religious themed social programs need to be secularized, we're not living under some fucking god-king. Get over it.

Agreed.

2) They close up shop because they don't wan't to support gay families?!?!? And you support this?!?!?

Its is nothing against the indviduals in those families, rather that what they do inside those families. The catholic church is against all sex that doesnt have a chance to procreate whether it be with same sex couples for heterosexual couples. Them sending their kids to a gay family is akin to sending their kids to a drug addicts family(i think catholics have teirs of sins dont they?).

3) Secular agencies said they'll have no problem with the case load, and they've apparently done it before when the church was handing over kids to abusers.

Yes.

4) They weren't forced to do anything. They chose to close up shop. THEY decided it. Nobody made them do this- they chose their bigotry. They are not the good guys here.

As mentioned before it is clearly against their doctrine. They had no choice. They arent the bad guys either. It is just the way it is.

This article is good. Less control amongst the people who believe in invisible space daddy is a good thing. As a gay individual, I find some of the statements in this thread utterly disgusting. And this Damian Mahadevan character appears weirdly obsessed with gay-themed issues. I wonder why.

Firstly i apologize if you are offended. Secondly there was a time where i wanted to be gay and that didnt work out and some of the forums i go to have more gay sensitive and anti religious posters and another forum that is pretty anti gay. This particular topic was on both, i posted it here for a more level headed discussion.

Jhari · May 28, 2011

Lucky Day said:
don't usually get involved in these threads

have to ditto Corwin and deets here. Secular authorities are overreaching and this has been a concern for church organizations for some time. Whether or not states say they can take the workload, faith based groups in general are much better at this sort of thing because they are subject to politics (as this whole thing is) and self-serving bureaucracy over the needs of the child.

My Evangelical friends insist that welfare is the purview of the Church, and not of government, and it's often difficult for me to understand how much of that assertion is political rather than religious. The Church (organized religion collectively), however, historically, has never been able to keep up with the demand for services, even when Government supplied minimal services. We have seen this in the early industrial days of UK, and later, in the early 1900's in the US. There was just never enough money to serve the needs.

Then we run into situations like this, where religious authorities, supplied with tax money collected by the government, refuse to provide service based on religious testing, and doing it in an entirely juvenile way. If we can't select whom we help, they say, we won't help anyone.

As inefficient as Government have shown itself to be, I'd rather suffer that rather than religious testing. This isn't about the foster parents anyway…it's about the kids, and although it is clear that the best situation for a kid is to have traditional parents (marriage of male and female), it seems to me that ANY loving family is better than no family at all. The Church can do what it continues to do and think more of themselves if they choose to do so. That's fine with me. I'd rather have the Government run the program if this is what's going to happen when the Church does it.

Corwin · May 29, 2011

Jharl, one quick point before I rush off to church

You obviously have a limited selection of evangelical friends. The majority of evangelicals would actually say that welfare is no longer the purpose of the church and that gov't usually is much better able to deal with it. YES, there is a place for church welfare programs (which were begun many,many years ago when there was no gov't welfare), but in general now, your average church is not equipped to provide this service as well as a good gov't. This may not be the Catholic view, but it is definitely the view of most evangelical churches!!

JemyM · May 29, 2011

Damian Mahadevan said:
You misunderstand me, i dont know where you are coming from hence why i am asking you to define what i good and what is evil. The things i mentioned before, i dont see how they are any less good in your comments.

I do not define things in good/evil, but there are things beneficial to human beings and things not so beneficial. Having the basic needs covered by a stable society is a good start as far as I concern;

1. Physical needs (food, safety etc)
2. Social needs (friends, family etc)
3. Autonomy (freedom and possibilities)
4. Fulfillment (to be able to acomplish things)

Negative things would be things that cause instability or tear down these points; harm, fear, distress, abuse, laws that doesn't aim to improve the above four…

Damian Mahadevan said:
I would argue that the social problems comes directly as a result of the media and the use of sex in the media. It is also well documented that sex in the media and pornography adversely affects people.

You can argue, and without evidence you will simply prove my point. Your upbringing have caused you to have a sexual neurosis, a distressful relationship with sex and sexuality that lead to angst and anxiousness.

The three things to look for when estabilishing if someone is not psychologically well is Distress, Dysfunction and Deviance. As I said, Catholics induce a stress/anxious/harm to something which is without harm. This behavior causes issues that can be tracked in social statistics (dysfunction) and for a population with a healthy relationship with sex, their state is odd (deviance).

Catholicism causes people to not be mentally and emotionally well, it try to establish laws that regulate in a way that doesn't create the stable and beneficial society above but actually opposes some of those basic human needs.

Catholicism is a force of evil in this world. I am glad more and more people see that it's not good and leave the whole thing.

JemyM · May 29, 2011

Corwin said:
Jharl, one quick point before I rush off to church You obviously have a limited selection of evangelical friends. The majority of evangelicals would actually say that welfare is no longer the purpose of the church and that gov't usually is much better able to deal with it. YES, there is a place for church welfare programs (which were begun many,many years ago when there was no gov't welfare), but in general now, your average church is not equipped to provide this service as well as a good gov't. This may not be the Catholic view, but it is definitely the view of most evangelical churches!!

Depends on which church.

Damian Mahadevan · May 29, 2011

JemyM said:
I do not define things in good/evil, but there are things beneficial to human beings and things not so beneficial. Having the basic needs covered by a stable society is a good start as far as I concern;

1. Physical needs (food, safety etc)
2. Social needs (friends, family etc)
3. Autonomy (freedom and possibilities)
4. Fulfillment (to be able to acomplish things)

Negative things would be things that cause instability or tear down these points; harm, fear, distress, abuse, laws that doesn't aim to improve the above four…

Then all 3 are consideered good then. Just to requote:

"Good and bad are relative terms and is often grounded in culture. Cannibals dont see what they do as wrong, people who perform beastiality dont consider themselves to be doing something wrong. A lot of people believe recreational drug use isnt bad either."

I guess that recreational drug use could be bad because of the risk that recreational drugs might have an serious adverse affect to some.

You can argue, and without evidence you will simply prove my point. Your upbringing have caused you to have a sexual neurosis, a distressful relationship with sex and sexuality that lead to angst and anxiousness.

The three things to look for when estabilishing if someone is not psychologically well is Distress, Dysfunction and Deviance. As I said, Catholics induce a stress/anxious/harm to something which is without harm. This behavior causes issues that can be tracked in social statistics (dysfunction) and for a population with a healthy relationship with sex, their state is odd (deviance).

Catholicism causes people to not be mentally and emotionally well, it try to establish laws that regulate in a way that doesn't create the stable and beneficial society above but actually opposes some of those basic human needs.

Catholicism is a force of evil in this world. I am glad more and more people see that it's not good and leave the whole thing.

I didnt think you would ask me for evidence, there are various studies and all link pornography and anti social behaviour, i thoguht it was just a given.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_effects_of_pornography

I dont have angst and anxiousness though, but i do have a sexual neurosis. I am a pretty mellow person. I just find it fun to debate.

JemyM · May 29, 2011

Damian Mahadevan said:
I guess that recreational drug use could be bad because of the risk that recreational drugs might have an serious adverse affect to some.

Each distinctive moral discussion, such as drugs, need to be adressed while having the stable and beneficial society in mind. If the potential for reduction of these needs is great, then the drug might have to be prohibited. If there are exceptions then the drug needs to be regulated. Like all moral concerns, such ethics need to be established and evolved through rationality, empathy and experience, not by trying to adapt ancient ethics which was formed by a group that was highly unaware of what we know today. Moral issues are never clearcut and never simple.

Damian Mahadevan said:
I didnt think you would ask me for evidence, there are various studies and all link pornography and anti social behaviour, i thoguht it was just a given.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_effects_of_pornography

This is one of several red herrings that may pop up in a debate with catholicism. A Red Herring is meant to lead the debate in a different direction, such as presenting an ethical issue which is unrelated to the topic. It can be compared with beginning to speak about abortion in a debate on whether it's right or wrong for Ugandians to exterminate their homosexuals.

You provided a link regarding "social effects of pornography". Pornography is an entirely different issue than the kind of sex regulation promoted by the Catholic Church such as hunting homosexuals, creating myths about "homosexual acts", disencouraging sex education, disencouraging the support of safe sex, lashing out on sex before marriage, lashing out on public (non-sexual) nudity or partial nudity and other forms of hysteria regarding anything sexual etc.

That said; "Pornography" is an extremely generic term, which is why the wikipedia article is useless. It could as well have been called "social effects of eating food". Without knowing the details about what "pornography" means we have no means of interpreting the studies. Also, there are two common mistakes in reading social statistics that you should be aware of;
1. Hen or the Egg problem. Do you become a rapist of consuming more porn, or do you consume more porn because you are a rapist. If the former was true, rape would be rampart today and very rare when porn wasn't common. This is not the case.
2. Ignoring the 3rd factor. Eating icecream (1) is statistically consistent with drowning (2). The reason is that both increase during summer (3).

The coolest part with statistics and sociology is that you can show deterministic data. You can also show that some social statistics stay the same, despite the addition of new social phenomenons. Many populations try to blame the newcomer for issues that been there long before the newcomer came into the landscape. The attempt to pin violence on videogames/movies/rock music/immigrants/pornography etc have always been caused by fallacious associations, the sociological data give a very different image about what's going on.

The entire fear of sex have it's roots in platonic philosophy and the idea that the body is an evil creation, which also makes any form of pleasure wrong. This was later absorbed in Christianity in which this was associated with satan or with sin.

This line of thought make people less likely to understand the body and how the body works. With the insights of psychology we today have a very rich understanding of drives, needs and human behavior in which Catholicism represent an outdated and distorted perspective that when promoted instead of actual science lead to social problems that can be avoided.

So In the US Catholics Charities are forced to end foster care on "moral" grounds

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