Catholic Charities of Boston prepares to end its 103 years of finding homes for foster children and evolving families

The Boston Globe reports:

When abortion was legalized in 1973, Catholic Charities of Boston saw the number of babies put up for adoption plummet, and its caseload fell from about 500 to 50 children a year. The agency changed its focus to finding homes for older foster children.


In the following decade, when society grew more accepting of single parenthood, Catholic Charities became more tolerant as well and placed some needy children in families headed by one parent.

For more than 100 years, the sprawling social service agency adapted to many social shifts, determined to maintain its adoption program at the core of its spiritual mission. Since its founding in 1903, it has placed tens of thousands of children in homes, more than any other agency in the state.

But on Friday, the adoption agency will shut down, for the first time encountering a painful conflict between cultural change and Catholic doctrine that it could not resolve. Caught between the church's opposition to gays adopting children and state law that gives gays the legal right to become parents, the agency could not navigate a way forward.

``The overwhelming majority of the time we reconciled the differences between our roots in the Catholic Church and our mission to serve the larger society," said the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, president of Catholic Charities of Boston. ``But this time, it was irreconcilable."

It appears that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts can't tolerate a diversity of viewpoints on family life.Isn't it amazing that an institution that's done so much good has to be shut down.No wonder Boston is losing population.