Adoption

Is the child ours in the Church’s eyes?

Yes. The Church’s law takes the civil adoption as it stands: “Children who have been adopted according to the norm of civil law are considered the children of the person or persons who have adopted them.” Can. 110 Nothing further has to be done in the Church for the child to be yours.

The law treats the bond as real kinship, and draws the consequence kinship draws: those related “in the direct line or in the second degree of the collateral line by a legal relationship arising from adoption cannot contract marriage together validly”. Can. 1094 An adoptive parent and child cannot marry, nor can two people who are brother and sister through the adoption.

The Church asks families to adopt. Christian families “will be able to show greater readiness to adopt and foster children who have lost their parents or have been abandoned by them”, and such children, “rediscovering the warmth of affection of a family”, “will be able to experience God’s loving and provident fatherhood witnessed to by Christian parents”. Familiaris Consortio 41 For couples who cannot have children, adoption is the first of the services the same exhortation names, Familiaris Consortio 14 and the Catechism counts “adopting abandoned children” as an expression of generosity. CCC 2379 The same exhortation sets this inside a wider call: Christian parents are to spread their love “beyond the bonds of flesh and blood”. Familiaris Consortio 41

Orazio Gentileschi, The Finding of Moses, c. 1633. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

Ex 2:6

2379

The Gospel shows that physical sterility is not an absolute evil. Spouses who still suffer from infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves with the Lord's Cross, the source of all spiritual fecundity. They can give expression to their generosity by adopting abandoned children or performing demanding services for others.

110

Children who have been adopted according to the norm of civil law are considered the children of the person or persons who have adopted them.

1094

Those who are related in the direct line or in the second degree of the collateral line by a legal relationship arising from adoption cannot contract marriage together validly.

Familiaris Consortio Nov 22, 1981

From the Catechism

In the Code

From the Magisterium