{"id":4080,"date":"2006-03-15T11:00:10","date_gmt":"2006-03-15T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/simply-put.html"},"modified":"2006-03-15T11:00:10","modified_gmt":"2006-03-15T11:00:10","slug":"simply-put","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/simply-put.html","title":{"rendered":"Simply put"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boston College Law School dean: state has put CC out of the adoption business:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

It seems surprising that the state would want to put the Catholic Church out of the adoption business. Corporal works of mercy are no less important to the life of the Church than its sacramental ministry. Forbidding the Church to perform them is a serious blow to its religious liberty. Why would the government do that?<\/p>\n

One reason is that the Church refused to go along with the effort, enshrined in these regulations and blessed in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, to give gay families the same legal rights as straight families.<\/p>\n

But Catholic Charities did not obstruct that effort; it only declined to assist it. Is our commitment to equality so strong that we are willing to put Catholic Charities out of business because it won’t promote an agenda that it views as morally wrong?<\/p>\n

The issue is not whether the Church or the state has the better of the debate over gay families. When freedom is at stake, the issue is never whether the claimant is right. Freedom of the press protects publication of pornography, blasphemy, and personal attacks. Freedom of religion is above all else a protection for ways of life that society views with skepticism or distaste.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boston College Law School dean: state has put CC out of the adoption business: It seems surprising that the state would want to put the Catholic Church out of the adoption business. Corporal works of mercy are no less important to the life of the Church than its sacramental ministry. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}