I Feel the Need to Protect Her

Another post from Jenn, Susan's daughter. Susan passed away from malignant melanoma in April of 2014. She met her biological sisters 8 months before that. 

A few things happened today, Saturday, April 30th. First, I received a letter from my church, Sacred Heart in Camden, about the House of Charity and our parish's goal of raising $51,273. I contemplated what to do. I love that church. They have been good to me and my children. I want to do our fair share to support it. But I don't know about the larger Catholic Church. I just don't know. I put the letter aside to think about it. The rest of the day was spent with my kids. Grace, my oldest, had a

Mom and Genevieve, circa 2008. "I feel the need to protect her."

soccer game in Medford, against the Medford Strikers, Carli Lloyd's old team. Though she didn't win, her team played great, and she had a few nice attempts on goal. Watching her play always, always makes me ache for my mom, who loved watching Grace play and reminded me that what I was supposed to say after a game was exactly that: "I love watching you play" and nothing more (i.e. no criticism or post-game analysis). Can you see this, mom? I sometimes think on the sidelines, watching Grace go.  I hope she can. After the game we raced home to see Grace's younger sister, Genevieve, perform in Peter Pan. She was a pirate. Watching her, so happy, dance and sing on stage, I of course thought of my mom as well, and how she would have been there. "I don't know why but I just feel a need to protect Genevieve, more than the others," my mom told me once. She would have loved to see her so happy, so in her element.

After the second showing of the play tonight, Genevieve went with a friend to the Friendly's after party, since I had to put her younger brother to bed and her dad was away. It was while I was waiting for her to get home that I happened to open the Catholic Star Herald from yesterday. This paper goes to all the dioceses in New Jersey. First I read a nice story about the Center for Environmental Transformation in Camden. Dimitrius Eliza, the 17-year-old Senior Farmer featured, is a member of my church and a phenomenal young man. I loved reading about him. Then I turned the page. This is what I saw:

There are so many reasons that both of these articles upset me, and that they should be upsetting to any sentient human being. My reaction upon reading them was to dig out the folder with all my mom's adoption correspondence. I found her letter to the Children's Home Society in Trenton from March 11, 2003. They had just refused to forward a letter she had written to her birth mother (who had been contacted by the agency by phone and apparently indicated in a "hostile" way that she wished for no contact with my mom). I will not include the whole letter here but rather just the postscript:

P.S. You refuse to forward a single letter of reconciliation to my birthmother, who has now rejected me twice and hurt me so badly, because the action could be deemed "legal harassment"? When I have not requested a face-to-face meeting and when there was no written contract guaranteeing her anonymity in the first place? Frankly, I don't believe you could be more insensitive to my feelings and my need to heal; you are simply conducting business as usual and hoping I'll crawl back under a rock. 

What are you afraid of? That this woman, elderly and probably of modest means, will sue because she receives a single letter - and a kind letter at that - about an issue she'd rather not think about? I imagine the likelihood of my taking some legal action is quite a bit higher, since I am totally committed to my rights as a human being, I am economically secure, and I am about as angry as a person can possibly be. 

Please note that in 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld two landmark decisions in Tennessee and Oregon, saying that the right of the adopted child to know her origins prevailed over the right of the birth parents' confidentiality. The legal tide is changing, thank God, even as your bureaucracy strives to maintain a safe and noncommittal position on the shore, all the while maintaining that you have compassion for the feelings of the adoptee. You can't have it both ways, and you have made it quite clear in your refusal to make any exceptions or compromises in my case that adoptees' feelings are always considered last, if at all. 

The tone of the Catholic Star Herald's articles (don't they know that in other countries the Catholic Church has apologized for its role in adoption?) has insured that I will not be giving to The House of Charity this year. It is not an easy decision for me. For as much as I am more conflicted than ever about how (if at all) I can continue to be involved in this church, I am not conflicted about my belief in God, nor my belief that God is good. Somehow, some way, my mom is with this God. Ironically, it was finding my mother's sisters, one of the greatest miracles of my life, and certainly of hers, that helped cement this belief for me. I simply felt it to be true with all of my being, even in one of the most difficult times of my life. It is because of this belief that I remain committed to keeping my faith at the center of all that I do. It is because of this that I remain committed to working for good. Whether or not I can do that as a member of the Catholic Church is something I am trying to figure out. While I work on that, I'll keep writing, and I'll keep sharing my mom's words as often as I can because ... well, just as she said about Genevieve all those years ago, I feel the need to protect her. Her and all the adoptees who are not protected at all. May God keep them close. 

Click HERE (scan of physical paper) or HERE (link to website with articles -- scroll down to second and third stories) to see the two stories in The Catholic Star Herald (4.29.2016). I plan to write more about what's so upsetting about these stories, so for those commenting, please know I will incorporate your comments. Thank you.

An Elegant Catholic Voice for Adoptee Rights

The Vatican's recent rebuke of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the largest group of Catholic nuns in the U.S., for failing to speak out more forcefully on social issues like contraception, abortion, and the ordination of women, was disappointing, to say the least.  So is the Catholic bishops' decision to ignore the adoption views of so many of its front-line social workers.  Some thoughtful people have left the Church because of the hierarchy's stubborn refusal to allow new facts to inform its social policy deliberations.  Others have elected to stay and fight.

Among the defectors are former nun Mary C. Johnson and well-known author Anna Quindlen.  Johnson explains, "I left (missionary service) in part because I couldn't believe that God preferred blind obedience to intelligent, creative ministry and growth."  Quindlen in a recent NPR interview explains that at a certain point, she could no longer ignore the child molestation scandals, the church's reaction, and the bishops' "constant obsession with gynecology." ...  "Every time I sit in the pew," she thought, "I ratify this behavior, and I'm not going to ratify it anymore."

Electing to stay within the Church and speak out for social justice -- particularly for adoptees -- is the Rev. Thomas F. Brosnan, an adoptee himself and a priest at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Bayside, NY.  Brosnan's eloquent views on adoption are evident in two of his keynote addresses:  "Strengthening Families," which he delivered in 1996 in San Antonio, Texas, to the National Maternity and Adoption Conference of Catholic Charities USA, and "Dualism in Adoption," a speech he delivered at St. John's University in 2000.

In "Strengthening Families," Brosnan tells what it meant to him personally to discover members of his original family and then talks about the psychological barriers that secrecy creates, even in the most loving of adoptive families.  He shows the depths of his feelings when he writes, "I pray for the demise of the closed adoption system."

He goes on to describe the healing power of truth.  "Acknowledging truth about loss," he explains, "means first of all to give up the lies of what actually happened."  We need to accept events as they really occurred, he says, and not make up explanations such as "you were chosen," that we think might soften the blow.

Brosnan also debunks the myth of birth mother confidentiality, writing: "Why was the name given to me at birth by my birth mother printed on the very adoption papers given to my adoptive parents, if indeed the state wished to assure my birth mother of confidentiality?  Why?  Because confidentiality for the birth mother was not really ever intended.  It is a myth."  ( My adoption papers also list my birth name, as do the adoption papers for my adopted brother.)

Those who attended the 1996 Catholic Charities conference noted that Father Brosnan left the podium to "thunderous and prolonged applause."  It would seem that many within the Catholic Charities fold are conscientious objectors, of a sort.  They probably do not agree with the continuing efforts of the US Catholic Conference of Bishops to block the very adoption reforms that would eliminate the sealed records and the secrecy and lies that corrupt the current system.

In his "Dualism in Adoption" address, Brosnan explains the danger in the type of either-or thinking that often informs the opinions of those who oppose adoption reform.  "The desire to settle for an either/or answer in a complicated world is the essence of dualistic thinking," he writes.

Opponents to adoptee rights bills frequently display this kind of thinking.  In their mind, adoption is the simple answer to complicated problems.  Either you are for adoption, or you are against it.  Either you are a "good adoptee," who accepts that you are less than equal under the law and are grateful just for having been born and taken in, or you are a "bad adoptee," who seeks the truth for yourself and others and would like the laws to reflect best adoption practice.

At its core, adoptee rights is a classic civil rights struggle.  As Brosnan notes, adoptees are "the only citizens who have no right to know the names with which they were born and the names of the parents who gave them birth."   It is unfair and unconstitutional to isolate a portion of the population and deny them the rights that all other citizens enjoy.  Adoption may be complicated, but the right course of action is not.  Adopted adults are people too, and they should have the same right to their birth certificates that every other American has.

God bless the Rev. Thomas F. Brosnan for his honest and wise words.  God bless the members of Catholic Charities who recognize his wisdom.  We can only hope that the Conference of Catholic Bishops will someday see the wisdom there as well.


To read more, see:

Strengthening Families

Adoption & Faith: Dualism in Adoption