Boston, USA - 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.
He had said those 13 adoptions -- a tiny fraction of the 720 handled by Catholic Charities in that period -- took place as part of an adoption contract with the state Department of Social Services to place older foster children and those with special needs. He said he wanted to continue his agency's work for DSS but would rather not be legally forced to go along with same-sex adoptions.
Others within the leadership of Catholic Charities in Boston, however, said they did not think the agency should back away from handling adoptions by same-sex couples, especially because none has proved harmful.
Peter Meade, board chairman of Catholic Charities, did not have any comment yesterday on the committee, saying he wanted to speak first to his entire board.
Not all dioceses in the state worked with gay couples. Officials at Catholic Charities of Worcester say they refer same-sex couples to other adoption agencies.
Saunders said the review committee will try to determine how to reconcile the Vatican pronouncements against adoptions by same-sex couples with the state's antidiscrimination laws. He said he has not ruled out the possibility that the committee would ask the state for a ''conscience clause," exempting the agencies from the requirement to consider same-sex couples on the grounds that it violates religious principles.