Single Parent Families
Although normal family life consists of a father and a mother together with their children, the growing number of single parent families which exist due to death, divorce and desertion are to be supported and honored.
Attention is to be given to the special spiritual, social and economic needs of single parent families.
Provision is especially necessary for the presence of loving adults of the gender of the missing parent in the family’s life and activities.
And special care and support is needed for the single parent to persevere in a life of sexual chastity and holiness.
Adoption
The adoption of children without families to care for them by married couples and single people capable of providing them with spiritual and material care is to be supported and honored.
The blessed action of providing foster care to needy children is also to be supported and praised.
Adoption, not abortion, is the answer to unwilled pregnancy. Unmarried mothers are to be encouraged and supported in bringing their conceived babies to term and offering them for adoption.
Not for any reason, however, and certainly not for making money, are children to be conceived in order to be given up for adoption.
Adoption procedures involving large sums of money, profit motivation and coercion of families and mothers to give up their children is to be soundly rejected and condemned.