The Diocese of Clifton is continuing to finance and promote a charity that openly endorses and facilitates the adoption of children by same sex couples, despite the Catholic Church’s formal withdrawal from adoption services in England and Wales on precisely those grounds.
The Catholic Herald can reveal that an optional special collection for Clifton Children’s Society is listed in the Clifton Diocesan Liturgical Diary for Sunday 11 January 2026, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
Clifton Children’s Society, known as CCS, originated as the Catholic Children’s Society of the Diocese of Clifton. Its transformation followed the 2007 introduction of the Sexual Orientation Regulations, which required all adoption agencies receiving public funding to place children with same sex couples. The Catholic Church in England and Wales opposed the legislation, arguing that it compelled Catholic agencies to act against conscience and doctrine. When the government refused to grant an exemption, Catholic adoption agencies across the country were forced either to close or to sever formal ties with the Church.
In Clifton, the diocesan agency ceased to be institutionally Catholic and in 2008 was renamed Clifton Children’s Society. Although the charity retained its historic acronym and its roots in the diocese, it no longer operated as a Catholic organisation. Despite this decisive break, the Diocese of Clifton did not withdraw its institutional support. Bishop Declan Lang, then Bishop of Clifton, continued for several years to be named as President of CCS in a non executive honorary capacity, and the charity continued to be promoted through diocesan structures.
CCS remained listed in the diocesan directory, benefited from annual appeals and collections scheduled in the diocesan liturgical diary, and received funds through crib collections and diocesan schools. A snapshot of the newly published 2026 Clifton Diocesan Directory again includes CCS, showing the continuing relationship.
From the outset of its existence as a secular agency, CCS has publicly and enthusiastically promoted adoption by same sex couples and by individuals identifying as LGBTQ+. Its website states: “The Adoption and Children Act 2002 gave LGBTQ+ adopters the same legal rights as heterosexual or cisgender parents. Since then, the number of children adopted by lesbian, gay, bi or trans parents has grown year by year, as greatly promoted and supported by CCS.”
The charity also features online the story of “an LGBTQ+ couple” who have adopted two children through CCS. Elsewhere, it claims that “40 per cent of new CCS adopters are from the LGBTQ+ community”. On another page, CCS states: “If you have transitioned in terms of gender, it would be important that you were established in your gender identity and had a secure sense of self before applying. At CCS, we recognise the strengths and skills that LGBTQ+ adopters bring and positively welcome enquiries from Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender adopters, and over half of our approved adopters in the last year have been people from the LGBTQ+ community.”
The scale of this promotion is notable. The figure of “over half” of approved adopters being from the LGBTQ+ community is more than two and a half times the national average. It is also widely understood that such figures largely reflect same sex couples, given that only around ten per cent of adopters in the UK are single people and that adoption statistics do not usually record discrete data for single adopters experiencing same sex attraction or gender dysphoria.
CCS has not merely complied with the minimum legal requirements imposed by Parliament but has actively championed the very practices that led the Catholic Church to abandon adoption services altogether.
The background to the Church’s withdrawal remains one of the most significant Church state clashes of the Blair years. In early 2007, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, then Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, wrote to Prime Minister Tony Blair seeking an exemption for Catholic agencies. He argued that compelling them to place children with same sex couples amounted to “unreasonable, unnecessary and unjust discrimination against Catholics”.
The government refused. Mr Blair announced that agencies would be given a 21 month transition period but insisted that “there is no place in our society for discrimination”. Cardinal Murphy O’Connor said the Church was “deeply disappointed that no exemption will be granted to our agencies on the grounds of widely held religious conviction and conscience”, while warning that the decision raised “crucial issues for the common good of our society”.
The outcome was the effective end of Catholic adoption provision in England and Wales. Some agencies closed, while others, including CCS, chose to continue as secular bodies.
Within Clifton, however, diocesan support for CCS persisted. In 2014, Bishop Lang was approached by LifeSiteNews and reportedly stated that, to his knowledge, CCS did “not facilitate adoptions of children to homosexual couples”, despite the charity publicly advertising that it did so and despite Bishop Lang still being named as its President. When subsequently presented with evidence that CCS was facilitating adoptions by same sex couples, he reportedly made no response.
Financial ties have continued. In its most recent Annual Report for the year ended 31 March 2024, CCS states: “Donations from the Clifton Catholic Diocese contribute significantly to the organisation’s community fundraising income. The organisation has a long relationship with the diocese, who continue to support through annual appeals, crib collections and parishioner donations.”
Lay Catholics have repeatedly raised concerns that parishioners are not being properly informed about CCS’s policies. Letters have been sent to Bishop Bosco MacDonald, the current Bishop of Clifton, urging him to end diocesan support for the charity.
When approached for comment, the Diocese of Clifton did not respond by the time of publication. The diocese was contacted on multiple occasions and remains free to respond.
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