Adoption group to address no-Catholics policy in Miss.
Independent state offices criticized for excluding Catholics while accepting state funds
The national board of Bethany Christian Services met Tuesday at its Grand Rapids, Mich., headquarters and is expected to release a statement today about its Mississippi offices' practice of excluding Catholics as adoptive parents, spokesman John VanValkenburg said.
A Christian adoption agency that receives money from the sale of the state's Choose Life speciality car tags, Bethany Christian Services in Mississippi has come under criticism about its practice of excluding Catholic couples as applicants. The group stated the policy in a letter to a Jackson couple this month, and a Ridgeland couple said they were rejected for the same reason last year."
It has been our understanding that Catholicism does not agree with our statement of faith," Bethany state director Karen Stewart wrote. "Our practice to not accept applications from Catholics was an effort to be good stewards of an adoptive applicant's time, money and emotional energy."
The private adoption agency is one of 24 adoption and pregnancy counseling centers in the state that receives money from the sale of the specialty car tags, which advocate against abortion.
And written of other groups that recieve these same government funds:
New Beginnings received $6,357 in 2004 from Choose Life Mississippi. The group works with any Christian couple who agrees to its statement of faith requiring adopting families be "practicing Christians.""If that family say they adhere to our statement of faith, then we would honor that," New Beginnings director Thomas Velie said.
He said several Catholic couples have adopted children through New Beginnings during his three years as director. Velie said he hasn't had any non-Christian families apply for an adoption. But if such a couple requested his group's services, he would take the request to his board or refer the couple to an agency that could meet their needs.
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2005507200391
This is the problem with 'faith-based' government funding. It is, by nature, discrimitory.
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