Nearly a half century of foster care services provided by Catholic Charities in Illinois has come to an end as the dioceses fighting a civil union law requiring them to allow unmarried and same-sex couples to adopt decided to drop their lawsuit.
The Catholic News Agency (CNA) is reporting that the bishops in three Illinois dioceses announced yesterday that they have dropped their lawsuit against the state and will shut down their adoption and foster care programs, after a civil union law required them to provide their services to same-sex couples.
“The decision not to pursue further appeals was reached with great reluctance, but was necessitated by the fact that the State of Illinois has made it financially impossible for our agencies to continue to provide these services,” said Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Bishop Edward K. Braxton of Belleville, and Bishop R. Daniel Conlon of Joliet.
“Since we now need to close offices and lay off employees, further appeals would be moot,” the bishops said.
Catholic Charities branches from four dioceses filed a lawsuit in June shortly after passage of the 2011 Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act which established legal privileges for both same-sex and opposite sex couples in civil unions. Because Catholic Charities does not allow unmarried couples to adopt children, the state opted to end their state contracts, which effectively drove them out of business.
Peter Breen, an attorney with the Thomas More Society, which represented the charities in their lawsuit against the state, called the news “tragic.”
In a Nov. 14 statement, Breen said the situation “stands as a stark lesson to the rest of the nation that legislators promising ‘religious protection’ in same sex marriage and civil union laws may not be able to deliver on those promises.”
In their remarks, the bishops said “the losers will be the children, foster care families and adoptive parents who will no longer have the option of Catholic, faith-based services.”
They also lamented the loss of so many dedicated employees who served the Church so faithfully over the years. “We are grateful to them and reluctantly bid them farewell with our prayers and best wishes.”
Bishop Paprocki said that in spite of the loss of foster care and adoption services in his diocese, their Catholic Charities will continue to serve the poor in central Illinois in other ways.
“The silver lining of this decision is that our Catholic Charities going forward will be able to focus on being more Catholic and more charitable,” he said, “while less dependent on government funding and less encumbered by intrusive state policies.”
News of the decision to close down adoption services in three dioceses comes on the heels of an announcement by Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois that intends to separate from the Belleville diocese and will begin offering adoptions and foster-care services to same-sex couples.
Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Illinois Catholic Conference, summarized what he believes to be the underlying problem in remarks to CNA on Nov. 11.
What “you’re seeing at the state level in Illinois, what you’re seeing at the national level in Washington, D.C., is a consistent promulgation of policies and laws that are making it very difficult for faith-based agencies that believe that marriage is between one man and one woman,” Gilligan said.
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