Denver, Colo., May 18, 2018 / 05:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- It was a quiet Thanksgiving for Kerry.
She and her husband had just retired from the military, and they were home in Colorado Springs with Kerry’s mother-in-law, whom they were taking care of at the time. But the house, with two extra, empty bedrooms upstairs, felt just a little too quiet.
Kerry had no children of her own, but it was around that time that she felt God calling her to foster parenting.
“I just saw this article in the paper for a foster agency and it really spoke to me and I said ‘Ok God this is what you want me to do? Because I’m a little bit old for this.’ But…I felt I was just really made to do this and God said, you can do this!”
It’s something that many Catholic foster parents have in common – the feeling that God called them to open their homes and hearts to foster parenting.
Kerry and her husband began fostering through a local Christian agency called Hope and Home, and after meeting the licensing requirements, embarked on a six-year foster care journey, in which they fostered a total of 10 kids, adopted two, and provided respite care for several other “kiddos,” as Kerry affectionately calls them.
“Foster care is a learning experience, and is probably the hardest yet most rewarding thing I’ve ever done,” Kerry told CNA.
For foster care awareness month, CNA spoke with four Catholic foster parents about their stories, and the faith that inspired them along the way. Only first names have been used to protect the children who have been or are still in their care.
“The greatest of our foster-heartbreaks has become my life’s work” – Kerry, Colorado Springs
Kerry’s family learned a lot, the hard way, from their first foster care placement, a two-year-old named Alex.
“It was hard, as Alex had suffered abuse and neglect and was terrified of all things to do with bedtimes,” Kerry said. “We spent the first week sitting outside the door of his bedroom, because he was terrified to have us in there and yet terrified to be alone.”
About seven months after Alex had been placed in their care, he was returned back to his biological father. Kerry strongly objected to that plan, telling their caseworker that she believed the father was not ready to take his son back.
Kerry’s objections were overruled, and Alex went home with his biological dad. Nine months later, Kerry learned that Alex had died of severe head trauma while in the care of his dad’s girlfriend. It was because of Alex that she began to research and advocate for the prevention of child abuse.
“The greatest of our foster-heartbreaks has become my life’s work,” Kerry said. “I am part of our county’s Not One More Child Coalition, the secretary for our local Safe Kids Colorado chapter, and the Chair of the Child Abuse Prevention Committee for our local chapter of the Exchange Club,” she said.
“We are also working to establish a child abuse prevention nonprofit called Kyndra’s Hope – named for another local foster girl who actually entered foster care in hospice, as she was not expected to live due to the severe physical abuse by her biological parents. Thanks to the prayers of her adopted mom, Kyndra is now a lively 10-year-old who, despite her disabilities, has beaten the odds.”
Kerry has adopted two of the 10 of her foster children, and provided respite care for numerous others.
Kerry said she felt relief and belonging in her local Catholic parish, because several other families have adopted children and blended families, “so to just go and sit and be a normal family with all the other people there was just really wonderful some days,” she said.
One of the main patron saints she leaned on as a foster parent was St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.
“I was always praying to him for myself and for my kiddos who were really lost, just to help us all find ourselves,” she said.
“What do my pro-life duties entail?” – Scott; Lincoln, Nebraska
Scott and his wife were newlywed “classic, orthodox Catholics” living in Lincoln, Nebraska. While they had no known medical issues, they tried for six years to get pregnant, but it just wasn’t happening.
After mourning the loss possible biological children, the couple began to talk about adoption. While the idea of foster care surfaced at the time, “It scared us a little bit,” Scott told CNA.
They knew that many of the children they would encounter would come from difficult situations, and as first-time parents, they weren’t sure they would be able to handle that.
They adopted a son, Anthony, but they still felt the desire for more children. When they considered a second adoption, they were encouraged to look more seriously into foster care.
They took the foster parent preparation class, but still felt some hesitation, and so they “kicked the can down the road” a little longer. But something happened at their city’s annual Walk for Life that stayed with Scott.
“We go to the Walk for Life every year, and there’s a lady there every year, she had this sign and it basically said ‘Foster, adopt or shut up.’ That was what she was saying as a counter-protest to a pro-life group,” Scott recalled.
“It’s something that stuck with me because I thought you know, what do my pro-life duties entail?”
Soon after, he and his wife felt called by God to open up their home to foster children. They told the agency, thinking they would wait another year or two before getting a placement.
Ten days later, a little two-year-old named Jonathan came to stay with them. Even though he was young, the family has had to work with him on some deep-seated anger issues and speech delay problems.
“This is really pro-life,” Scott said of foster care and adoption.
“This birth mom chose life, but she can’t raise this child, and so my wife and I are going to take the ball and we’re going to do the hard work and we’re going to get through this.”
“I really feel like God called us to this, and called us to this little boy,” he added. “You can’t ignore the call – or you shouldn’t – it’s similar to a vocational call in my opinion.”
Something else that struck Scott throughout the process was how much foster parenting is promoted in Evangelical churches, including those sponsoring their family’s agency- and how infrequently he heard it mentioned in Catholic ones.
“I would say that [Evangelicals] do a fabulous job in their churches as far as promoting foster care and getting lots of families to participate,” Scott said. “And we’ve got the one true faith, so I want our families and couples to learn about this and possibly participate in it,” he added.
“I know it’s not for everybody, but there’s lots of different things other than taking a child that you can do,” he said, such as mentoring a child or offering support to other foster parents.
“We’ve always had a special spot in our heart for kids in foster care” – Jami; Omaha, Nebraska
Jami’s family, like Scott’s family, experienced a time of infertility before deciding to look into foster care or adoption as a way to grow their family.
But they were also drawn to it in other ways. Before they were married, Jami and her husband had volunteered at a summer camp that united foster care kids with siblings living in other foster homes.
“We volunteered for that as camp counselors, so we’ve always had a special spot in our heart for kids in foster care, so we wanted to try it out for that reason also,” Jami told CNA.
Jami had also grown up in Omaha, Nebraska, the home of Boystown, a temporary home for troubled boys and youth founded in 1917 by Servant of God Father Edward Flanagan.
“I have a special relationship with him, even when I was younger, I used to think he was so cool,” Jami said. “And all through us fostering, I would pray to him and through him because he knows, he helped these kids in trauma.”
Jami and her husband took an infant, Bennett, into their home. His older sister was placed in a different foster home while they waited to see if the children could be reunited with their mother.
It was an “emotional rollercoaster,” Jami said, because she knew she needed to bond with Bennett, while she also had to be prepared to let him go at any moment.
“I would pray through Fr. Flanagan and tell him just ‘please.’ I trust God and his choice in whether this kid goes home or not, because that was also really hard – I was feeling guilty for wanting to keep the baby, because it’s not yours. We’re there to help the parents,” she said.
“So I really believe that (Fr. Flanagan) was holding this whole situation, he just took care of it,” she said.
“The most challenging thing is letting yourself go, letting yourself bond with the child and not trying to protect your own heart,” Jami said, “and then coping with the emotional roller coaster because that can put a lot of stress on yourself, your husband, the whole family.”
“But the most rewarding part is helping these families, helping the parents have the time they need to overcome whatever challenges they’re facing,” she said. “And getting to bond with the (child) is such a gift because literally if you don’t give it who will? And that is such a gift to give a child.”
“This is hardcore Gospel living” – Michaela; St. Louis, Missouri
Michaela’s foster parent journey differs from many others. She and her husband already had children – four of them, all in grade school or younger – when she felt God was calling her to consider adoption.
When the topic of adoption was brought up during her bible study, “my heart just started burning for adoption, the Spirit was moving within me, but I knew that was not something I could just impose on my family or my marriage,” Michaela, who lives in St. Louis, Missouri, told CNA.
She decided to keep the inspiration quiet, and told God that if this is something he really wanted from her family, then her husband would have to voice the same desires first.
So she never mentioned it to her husband. But one day, some time later, he came to breakfast and said out of the blue: “I think we’re being called to adoption.”
As their research into adoption began, they realized that they didn’t feel called to infant or international adoption – two of the most common routes. They realized that God was actually calling them to foster care.
“It was exactly the desire of our heart, it was where God was calling,” Michaela said.
The prerequisites for foster care include classes that prepare foster parents for worst-case scenarios – children who come from broken, traumatic situations who will exhibit difficult behaviors.
But to Michaela’s surprise, “They come and they’re just the most innocent children, this pure innocence comes from a broken life, they don’t resemble the brokenness that they come from.”
Michaela’s family is relatively new to fostering – they started just six months ago – and already they’ve had four children between the ages of one and seven placed with their family.
One of the most rewarding things about foster parenting has been the lessons her biological children are learning from the experience, Michaela said.
“These aspects of the Gospel we cannot teach our children – I cannot teach you how to lay down your life for someone else. But I can show you with this,” Michaela said.
“This is Gospel, this is hardcore Gospel living.”
The hardest part about foster parenting can be letting go – the goal of foster parenting is not to keep the children, but to provide them a temporary home while their biological family can get back on their feet, Michaela said.
Michaela said that’s a concern about foster parenting that she often hears: “What if I get too attached? Isn’t it too hard?”
“These children deserve to be attached to, so they deserve us to love them so that it hurts us when they leave,” she said.
For this reason, she asks case workers to let herself and her children accompany the foster child to their next home – whether that’s with their parents or with another foster or adoptive family.
“It’s super hard for us, but it’s really good for the kids to see us cry, to know that they are loved that much, that someone would cry over them,” she said.
Michaela said she found great support as a foster parent through the Catholic Church and also through other Christian denominations.
“Our own church totally opened their arms to us, and brings over clothes and car seats and was just hugely supportive and welcoming when new kids come to church,” she said.
“Other churches have provided meals – there’s just such a community within the church, within foster care. They’re all telling us they’re praying for us – so it’s the bigger body of Christ within the foster community,” she said.
Michaela encouraged couples who are considering becoming foster parents to trust God and lean on their faith, even when it may seem like a difficult or impossible task.
“When he calls us to those scary, unknown places he provides, he just shows up in ways that we could have never planned for or imagined,” she said. “He does, he makes a way.”
Adoption and foster care programs for Catholic families can be found through local Catholic Charities or Catholic Social Service branches.
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Bravo.
Response (or lack thereof) should be interesting.
The adage is “don’t ask for permission, but later for forgiveness.” But, an apology only, or what else?
Besides, the IOC might harmonize polarities—a recent theological trick—by suggesting that the float was “non-liturgical, spontaneous, and therefore not scandalizing” (why not bless the float, two-by-two, under Fiducia Supplicans?). The sin is not only anti-religious blasphemy, but also an underlying STUPIDITY. Or, maybe the French novelist Georges Bernanos is even more perceptive:
“The modern world will shortly no longer possess sufficient spiritual reserves to commit genuine evil. Already . . . we can witness a lethal slackening of men’s conscience that is attacking not only their moral life, but also their very heart and mind, altering and decomposing even their imagination . . . The menacing crisis is one of INFANTILISM.” (Interview with Samedi-Soir, Nov. 8, 1947, cited in Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence” [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1996], 457, caps added).
For an historical take on blasphemy/stupidity/infantilism on the Seine, yours truly humbly suggests my own letter to the IOC (July 30), found in the thread to an earlier CWR article: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/07/27/how-the-olympic-committee-violated-its-own-charter/ From a back-bleachers layman! Very synodal, that.
So, in addition to a minimal apology, how about restitution from the IOC for violating its own charter? Maybe an IOC resignation, plus housecleaning of float organizer Thomas Joystick or whatever.
It does not matter so much that we mere humans are offended but that God was mocked. Those who committed these blasphemies should be called to repent, lest they be cast into Hell. The IOC sins grievously against the first of the commandments, and they will be held to account before God, if not by men. Now I applaud the small cadre of bishops for their letter, but it could have been stronger. And yet, the letter is much louder than our pontiff’s voice, which remains silent in the face of this international blasphemy. Perhaps he is ambivalent and is still in a hangover from his Pachamama blessing, or perhaps he is embarrassed, as he had just endorsed the Olympics for its peacefulness. Perhaps there are prelates inside the Vatican whispering in our pontiff’s ear, who, like Sr Jeanne Grammick, are looking for an angle of endorsement “I applaud the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for their financial assistance to those in need. I support them because of all their good works.” That quote is from last year. Maybe someone is waiting for the IOC to make a donation (of sorts) to the Vatican, and then all will be OK.
“It is hard to understand how the faith of 2 billion people can be so casually and intentionally blasphemed” say the prelates.
WRONG – It is NOT hard AT ALL to understand. Can we at least agree on that much?
Thomas Jolly and Anne Descamps – you could at least have the decency to admit what is obvious to anyone with half a brain – you INTENTIONALLY meant to offend billions of Christians.
For what seems to be the umpteenth time – has the pope had anything to say about this? 8 days after the fact that doesn’t seem like too much to ask for.
Or does it?
Addendum – Apology?
Don’t hold your breath.
How telling that the saying of the centuries old Latin Mass is apparently more offensive to Bergoglio than this evil mockery of Christ in His holiest of Sacraments.
Acceptable to Bergoglio:
Abominable Paris blasphemy.
Rupnik abuses, both sexual and artistic.
Martin and others encouraging sinful acts.
Not acceptable to Bergoglio:
The celebration of traditional form of the Mass in which Christ Jesus Himself is praised and adored.
What does that tell us?
I wonder. If this same group had submitted an application to mockingly act out verses from the Koran, would it have been approved? Of course, we know the answer. Only Christians are fair game.
Athanasius, may I suggest that Christians are fair game for freemasons in France ever since the genocidal Freemasonic coupe d’état described as a “Revolution” sought to eliminate them?
Even if a raunchy parody of Muslims had been approved it would probably be the last time. There would be consequences far greater than polite letters from clergy.
Exactly my thought. I can imagine a similarly extremely offensive “parody” and what the reactions would be ..
The Good News amidst the bad – that many would have obtained the Portiuncula indulgence today – https://spiritdaily.org/blog/news/how-can-you-get-the-portiuncula-indulgence-tomorrow
France and Francis and Francis … Holy Father visiting the amusement park to remind the persons there that they too are capable of being set free from undue attachments to creatures which is the temporal punishment of sins that are removed through indulgences , to strengthen our ‘bones ‘ of holy relationship with the Famly of heaven ..The bears who came to tear up the children who mocked Prophet Elisha – our times too , millions have been torn up by the bears of scorn and mockery towards God and the Sacraments …the call to bring them all again and again unto The Mother – to her many manifestations of the role given her in France alone – The Immaculate Conception – to be set free from the carnal flood waters of our times …manifested by those who are drowning in same… Lord never tires of throwing the ring of His holiness and Love unto us ..and tell us to be ever ready to be struck on the other cheek for doing same ..to keep at it without expecting honor from those who indirectly are demanding that they be seen as family in excess of tolerance without any demands of love as responsibility …
The Winning Family of Heaven – Sts Francis , Holy Fmly and all – flood waters of that Love to wash out the dragon waters … in the hidden springs of holiness such as at Lourdes and The Immaculate Conception … Glory be!
I will leave the link to the video of an Eastern Orthodox priest (based in California) speaking about the blasphemy and those who designed it. He also speaks about so-called “apology” (I agree with him and this is why I do not care about “apologies” from those people)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEMx33nsIyA
That they could only gather 27 out of thousands of bishops is itself a scandal.
I don’t think there will be an apology.
In any case, I think an apology won’t do.
Heads need to roll.
The Eastern Orthodox priest has it right.
I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it happens.
No desire to denigrate? No intention of disrespect? It’s unfathomable that anyone with a functioning brain can be that clueless.
Oh, and btw, if there was an outraged response from James Martin, SJ, the go-to guy for all matters rainbow, I must have missed it. I’m serious when I say, please, someone, let me know if he commented, and if so, how. Apparently, a response from the current pontiff is still forthcoming.
Or, maybe NOT a direct response from Pope Francis or from any pope? Would such an action be twisted to confer a kind of equivalence and legitimacy to a tribe of lunatics floating through Paris or wherever?
Another proposition is that the Holy Spirit already works in subtle but concrete ways…
The demand for an apology comes from bishops from around the world (just as the Olympic Games include nations from around the world). And the demand was possibly fostered by Cardinal Burke who, by incoherent circumstance, no longer lives in the Vatican. And, therefore, now is more free to say what must be said without engaging in an historic pissing contest between the perennial Catholic Church and moral mutants feeding on what’s left of the West.
The brief letter also evangelizes clearly and concisely, in only a few sentences, rather than in thousands of unread words on Vatican letterhead. The only fly in the ointment (fly, so to speak), is the earlier Vatican blessing of irregular “couples” under Fiducia Supplicans… butt surely pairs of drag queens are not to be excluded.
Better that oblique harmonizers of “polarities” stay out of this.
I would like to know if there was a pre parade briefing for the press as to the theme and nature of the depiction. Also what were the actors told by the artistic creators as to what they were portraying? If they say it was a pagan scene why the discrepancy? Why the misunderstanding? It seems that “there is something rotten in the state of Denmark “
I think that an apology will not be issued. The designers of the Opening Ceremonies will continue to insist that their display had nothing to do with Christianity.
So instead of continuing to demand an apology, I think we should drop it and concentrate on getting devout Catholic and Protestant Christians involved with planning/designing the 2028 Olympics which will be held in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. I know that there are plenty of Catholics who have experience and expertise in designing/managing large events–put out the call for them to get involved with the 2028 Olympics, especially those who live in/near L.A. We need to act rather than react, volunteer rather than boycott, and pray rather than fuss. I fear that if Christians choose to avoid any involvement with the Olympics, as well as other secular “big events” (e.g., anything in entertainment, or sports), and instead, wait til the offence is committed before we cry out “Foul!”, we will continue to see even greater offences against what and WHO we know to be sacred. The reason there are so many beautiful works of architecture and art in Europe is that Catholics designed and built them!
If they truly believe that it had nothing to do with Christianity make them prove it? What were the actors told that they were representing? Was the press briefed beforehand as to what it was all about? What scenario did the artistic creators present to those who made decisions about the presentation? Things were known, decisions were made and the people involved should be held accountable.
If you had to debate this issue from their point of view, what would you say?
I see that the Biden-Harris administration got the message re their odious deal with the 9/11 organizer.
Didn’t pussyfoot around pleading for/demanding an apology either.
An apology will not happen, primarily because they operate with no moral framework and no religious sensibility of right and wrong. So, we have the defaming of the Last Supper. Then we have the attack on normal sexuality by their allowing men to pummel women in physical contact sports, which could easily end in injury or death to the genuinely female opponent.But of course death appears to be preferable to these folks, compared to telling a small and clearly mentally ill minority that not only is allowing them to compete physically dangerous for their opponent, but also gives them a grossly unfair advantage to win. How much of a “win” is it, when you win by cheating? In my opinion, none. Its clear we are on a path to eliminating womens sports. Trying to continue in this way will inevitably end in tragedy. Sadly I do believe that for their own safety, women athletes should refuse to compete when paired with a male opponent. Finally, all people should be making their voices on this issue heard loud and clear to your political representatives. The democrats have been pandering to this abnormality and trying to normalize it for years. Its disgusting. Good old Joe Biden has just pushed through the changes in title 9 allowing bio men to change in womens locker rooms and play on womens teams at our public schools. To the parents of young women: no scholarship is worth the potential danger and sexual harassment of your daughter in this situation. Remember which party has been pushing this through when next you vote.Only the blind cant see this is a societal turning point.