The Archbishop of Westminster and Primate of the Catholic Church in England, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, has asked the government, with a letter sent to the premier, Tony Blair and his government, to give Catholic adoption agencies exemption from the anti-discrimination law that is due to enter into force in April and that would oblige adoption agencies to include same-sex couples among those eligible to adopt children. The same appeal has been made by Archbishop Mario Conti, Vice President of the Scottish Bishops’ Conference, who seconded the cardinal’s view. According to Murphy O’Connor, “to oblige our agencies in law to consider adoption applications from homosexual couples as potential adoptive parents would require them to act against the principles of Catholic teaching”. It would therefore be an “unreasonable, unnecessary and unjust discrimination” that would oblige these agencies to act against their own conscience. As explained in the cardinal’s letter, if the law were to be accepted, the Church would be obliged to close down these Catholic adoption agencies, and that would be “an unnecessary tragedy”. Therefore the cardinal urges the authorities to permit these agencies to continue to perform their work for the common good. “There is nothing to lose – concludes Murphy O’Connor – and children waiting for an adoptive family have much to gain, by our continuing successful collaboration”. What most concerns the Scottish bishops, according to Archbishop Conti’s letter, is that during the drafting of the new law, the government had given assurances that every effort would be made to protect the position of Catholic agencies. So the law would seem to be a betrayal of this pledge.
