Pledging to adhere to state legislation requiring equal treatment for same-sex couples in adoption and foster-care services, Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois is separating from the Diocese of Belleville. The agency will now be called Christian Social Services of Illinois.
“The Catholic Diocese of Belleville has announced that Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois (CSS), consistently one of the most highly rated providers of foster care and other social services in the State of Illinois, is separating from the Diocese of Belleville,” the diocese said in a statement. “It will no longer be connected to or sponsored by the Diocese.”
“Unable to remain faithful to the moral teaching of the Catholic Church while adhering to the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act, the 64-year-old social service agency chose to disassociate from the Diocese. It is hoped that this new entity will experience no interruption in its services and programs.
The name change does not go far enough. They are no longer Catholic or Christian and are simply secular. Though I guess there only actual concern was the retain the “C” of CSS. So maybe ‘Culture’ Social Services since they are tied only to the culture and not anything else. Really Judas Social Services would be a more apt descriptor. The only positive part of this is that they are not leaving the word Catholic in their organizations title as other organizations fraudulently do.
“This solution is what is best for the children by providing for their continuity of care and allowing for the retention of the caring, dedicated and professional staff employed by the agency,” said Gary Huelsmann, the agency’s executive director.
Just another item in the history of bad ideas that start with “we are doing it for the children.” Sadly it is always the child that loses with such help.
As then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in “Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons”
As experience has shown, the absence of sexual complementarity in these unions creates obstacles in the normal development of children who would be placed in the care of such persons. They would be deprived of the experience of either fatherhood or motherhood. Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development. This is gravely immoral and in open contradiction to the principle, recognized also in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, that the best interests of the child, as the weaker and more vulnerable party, are to be the paramount consideration in every case.
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And the bishop allowed this?!?
Co-opted Social Services.
Having once been the Director of Catholic Charities for my diocese, I have a few thoughts:
#1. More than likely, they were ever really “Catholic” in the first place
#2. Most Catholic Charities departments of any diocese are nominally Catholic.
#3 The trade organization called Catholic Charities USA is only nominally Catholic. I once asked at a CCUSA meeting whether one ought to be Catholic to be the Director of a diocesan Catholic Charties department. I was looked at like I was nuts.
#4 The bishop of this diocese ought to be ashamed of himself. Is he going to form another entity for charitable in his diocese and will this splinter organization be allowed to keep any of the capital items paid for by the Catholics of the diocese?
#5 When I went to work as director of my diocese’s office of Catholic Charities, I immediately asked all the staff what the “Catholic” in “Catholic Charities” meant. They were confused, bewildered and put off by my very question – some even questioning that I was even suggesting that one should expect that the “Catholic” part of Catholic Charities might mean that it was being done BY Catholics (perish the thought).
#6 If you think there are problems with CCHD, you ought to take a closer look at what diocesan “Catholic” Charities is all about. I did and I no longer work for my diocese!
I live in the Diocese of Belleville. I definitely will be writing to Bishop Braxton to express my concern over this. I wonder if it would be appropriate to ask for a refund of the money that we donated to CSS earlier this year? (By the way, I have had mostly a positive impression of Bishop Braxton since his arrival in this diocese, so I am hopeful that the story is not as bad as it appears to be.)
By the way, this story is currently on the front page of the diocese’s web site, so they apparently are not trying to hide this information:
http://www.diobelle.org/
The one very small silver lining here is that unjust government policies like the one in Illinois may serve to weed out many “Catholic in name only” organizations, and at least get them to stop claiming to be Catholic.
Finally. People are standing up to the Blackmailing Bully Bishops and refusing to make the people they are caring for pawns in the Vatican’s political power games.
^
Finally. People are fleeing from bishops who teach what the Church teaches and recognizing that the objective evil they gamely advocate as “care” has no place being supported by our Holy Mother the Church guided by Peter’s Successor and the bishops in communion with him.
Key difference: Judas expressed remorse over his betrayal.
Two points in the bishop’s defence:
1. the Bishop only has jurisdiction over organizations claiming to be Catholic. Once they forsake the catholic branding, the bishop cannot stop them from their acts.
2. If Catholic Social Services is the equivalent of Catholic Family Services in our diocese, then the bishop has limited authority over them because they are the group that supposedly has the power to keep the bishop honest on handling sex abuse complaints.
Catholic Family Services in our Diocese knows it is at odds with Church teachings on sexuality but has in its own words “chosen good psychiatry over Church teaching”. I’m glad I’m not a bishop.
“Judas expressed remorse over his betrayal” ???? He did?
Oops I should have said “regret” not “remorse”. Judas expressed regret and killed himself. Peter expressed remorse and received forgiveness from the Lord. CSS has done neither.