United States: Cardinal Cupich Supports Adoption by Same-Sex Couples

Source: FSSPX News

Cardinal Blase Cupich

Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, is definitely one of the most progressive and divisive figures in the American episcopate. He published an article on the Outreach website – a reference for LGBTQ Catholics according to their logo – in which he highlighted in a very positive way the possibility of same-sex couples adopting children.

In this article, the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago first explains that the clergy – in which he places himself – must not “presume” people, to think that they know better than the faithful. And he gives an example by a piece of advice provided by Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer to the American bishops.

The latter suggested that they try to better understand the motivations of those who exercise public office and who support legislation authorizing abortion, euthanasia, or other moral evils, before deciding on a policy of exclusion from communion.

This advice completely blurs the objective and subjective, personal and social planes. That a priest should be concerned about a member of the faithful engaged in politics and who would support proposals contrary to the morality of Jesus Christ in order to try to help him is one thing. But that a pastor must decide, in an objective and social manner, for the common good of the faithful, is another.

It is easy to guess how this advice is applied by Cardinal Cupich regarding members of the LGBT community. He explains how he listened to them at length and that he heard how they are ostracized – in their families or in church – and the refusals opposed to some of their steps: welcoming an “adopted” child into a Catholic school, for example.

But, he adds, “many of our LGBTQ Catholic sisters and brothers value community life. They are convinced… that they have something not only to receive, but also to give, that we must recognize and welcome. Many LGBTQ people also learn and experience what sacrificial love is when they take on the role of parents of children who would otherwise have no home.”

This last paragraph blithely mixes points of view that must absolutely be distinguished. But above all, it recognizes – something that was recently denounced in an article – that LGBT people must be admitted as such. Now, this is an unbearable point of view, because they represent, whether they like it or not, a tendency towards a serious sin, denounced by Christian morality.

Nowhere in the Church are thieves, rapists, abusers, criminals, alcoholics, and many other sinners recognized as such, but rather as repentant and wanting to avoid sin with the grace of God. Wanting to enter the Church with the LGBT identity, especially if it is a couple, is to claim a status for sin within the Church.

If we approach the case of adoption, not only is there evidence, established by God Himself, that affirms that Catholic marriage is between a man and a woman and that every child has the right to a father and a mother, but in the face of the confusion of minds, a document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith felt obliged to remember it in 2003.

The text specifies: "The integration of children into homosexual unions through adoption means subjecting them de facto to violence of various kinds, taking advantage of the weakness of the little ones to introduce them into environments that are not conducive to their full human development.”

"Such a practice would certainly be gravely immoral and in flagrant contradiction with the principle, also recognized by the United Nations International Convention on the Rights of the Child, according to which the superior interest to be protected in all cases is that of the infant, the weakest and most defenseless party.”

The InfoCatolica website recounts how “Catholic adoption agencies in the United States have faced several legal battles for refusing to process adoptions by same-sex couples.” On several occasions, the agencies and the laws that protect them have received support from the country’s bishops.

But, the site further notes, Cardinal Cupich is far from being an exception in his opposition to Catholic doctrine on homosexuality and child adoption. In May 2022, the official website of the Synod on Synodality published the testimony of three homosexual couples who had adopted children.