I agree with Robert Imbelli that the Boston Globe editorial board as magisterium is an unalluring prospect. Granted, it might improve the Osservatore Romano sports page.

Still. Does no one share a more basic disappointment? If I have it right, Catholic Charities in Boston and San Francisco very occasionally placed hard-to-place children with gay/lesbian couples as part of their adoption programs. Case by case this was deemed best for the children. And despite much blustering to the contrary little empirical evidence suggest that gay/lesbian families "damage" adopted children while much empirical evidence demonstrates that unstable living situations do. Then a Vatican convinced that Catholic Charities could not countenance this practice intervened, with Archbishop Levada now emailing his old archdiocese, where the practice had apparently not seemed troubling to him at the time, ordering his one-time colleagues to cease and desist.

The ethicists among us can parse the fine points of material cooperation. And I won't touch upon the political uproar in Massachusetts. But isnt this an example of a reasonable Catholic casuistry being replaced by an unattractive, even sectarian, purity?