Weekend Roundup: Romney, Shays, Campbell and McGivney
March 13th, 2006 by Peter
FIC members should note a few items that appeared over the weekend. In another sign of the secularist assault on faith in New England, Catholic Charities in Boston has voted to discontinue its adoption services rather than be forced by law to place children with homosexual couples:
Calling it an issue of “religious liberty,” Governor Mitt Romney today said he plans to file legislation to permit religious institutions to perform adoptions without violating the tenets of their faith.
Today, the board of Catholic Charities voted to stop doing adoptions because of state law which requires that gays be given equal consideration for the placement of children. Because of the Church’s teaching, Catholic agencies may not provide adoptions to gay parents.
“This is a sad day for neglected and abandoned children. In this case, it’s a mistake for our laws to put the rights of adults over the needs of children. While I respect the board’s decision to stay true to their principles, I find the current state of the law deeply disturbing and a threat to religious freedom,” said Romney.
[Planned Parenthood state head Susan] Yolen said that although Planned Parenthood groups get federal money – the Connecticut branch expects to get about $1.5 million this year – the Shays trip had nothing to do with a bid for more dollars.
Sure it did. The trip keeps the dollars rolling in by keeping a powerful congressman on board as a mouthpiece for the agenda of the nation’s largest abortion provider:
When Shays returned from his Africa trip, he wrote in an op-ed piece in the Stamford Advocate that “although it plays a role, the U.S.-encouraged policy of abstinence does not do nearly enough to address the widespread needs of women’s reproductive health, or to slow the growth of HIV/AIDS.”
The Sunday Courant ran articles demonstrating the heights it can reach when it reports respectfully on the state’s religious conservatives and the depths that it too often sinks to when it treats us with disdain. Susan Campbell, an ex-fundamentalist who is still, after all these years, using her column to work out issues from her childhood, gives an example of the latter:
Certainly not even the most rabid member of Family Institute of Connecticut – or the local branch of Concerned Women for America – would call on violence as a means of solving the question of civil rights for homosexuals.
But because we dare to oppose the pro same-sex “marriage” agenda, Campbell says, any violence against homosexuals is still our fault. Ironically, the pro same-sex “marriage” activist Campbell quotes to support this fallacy once wrote on a website that acts of vandalism against pro-family churches were akin to “justice actions.” And, of course, there is still no mention in the Courant of the man who was convicted of making a death threat against Connecticut Catholic lobbyist Marie Hilliard because of Marie’s opposition to same-sex civil unions.
We should keep Susan Campbell in our prayers–not in the same spirit in which she says she prays for conservatives (see my Aug. 15 blog), but for real. Despite all her vitriol, Campbell comes across as–in Flannery O’Connor’s wonderful phrase–“Christ haunted,” and there is reason to hope that her theological journey will bring her to a destination that she did not expect.
Connecticut’s Catholic population is about 1.3 million, making it proportionately the fifth most-Catholic state. McGivney is largely a stranger even to many of them. But from a simple secular point of view, McGivney’s potential sainthood amounts to this: Connecticut would have produced the nation’s first male saint. His story would be the story of a local boy who made good – very, very good.
Joel Lang’s article is an example of what the Courant can accomplish when it puts aside the liberal agenda and does serious reporting on the things that matter most in the lives of its readers. May there be many more like it.
