State severs foster-care ties with Catholic Charities
Chicago Tribune
July 11, 2011
By Manya Brachear
The state of Illinois has declined to renew its foster care and adoption contracts with Catholic Charities across Illinois, possibly ending a historic public and private partnership initiated by the Roman Catholic Church a half century ago and potentially severing the relationship between 2,500 foster children and their caseworkers.
Lawyers for three of the Catholic Charities agencies will seek an injunction from a Sangamon County judge on Tuesday.
In a letter sent last week to Catholic Charities in the dioceses of Peoria, Joliet, Springfield and Belleville, the Department of Children and Family Services told all four agencies that the state could not accept its signed contracts for the 2012 fiscal year because “your agency has made it clear that it does not intend to comply with the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act.”
(snip)
Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Rockford voluntarily ended its publicly funded foster care and adoption services last month. Youth Service Bureau of Illinois Valley, an Ottawa agency, expanded and took over all of Catholic Charities' cases, staff and real estate.
"We have a strong community of private sector, not-for-profit child welfare agencies who stand ready to take these cases," Marlowe said.
Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Chicago ended its foster care services in 2007 after losing its insurance coverage. Cases and caseworkers scattered to a number of different agencies.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Poster Comment:
I personally wish the Church would stay away from the government dole -- including taking state money for education, adoption, fostering, homeless shelters, hospitalization, etc. No good end can come from being mixed up with a perverted, homofascist government.
Also, this shows how committed the employees are to Catholic (and all authentic Christian) teaching...particularly on the subject of homosexuality. If the employees went with the foster care contracts and did not stay with the Catholic Charities...you can see how committed they were to the gospel. An abject lesson that I hope the bishops learned from this.
Having said all of the above, I am profoundly relieved that the remaining Illinois bishops did not cave to this. 1 posted on Monday, July 11, 2011 12:50:03 by markomalley
