Four years ago the Scottish executive launched a review of the adoption system. Last June an expert group produced a report containing more than 100 recommendations and suggestions for improvement. The majority are reasonable and sensible. Some, including proposals to allow joint adoption by unmarried couples, including same-sex couples, are highly questionable.

The executive supports the majority of the recommendations including those on unmarried and same-sex couples and has launched a consultation, inviting responses by October 31.

The proposals aimed at addressing and improving adoption will rightly be analysed by professionals, including Catholic adoption agencies, which will comment in detail. For most people, however, this will be another exercise by experts for experts.

There is no doubt that the current system fails to meet children’s needs. According to official figures, adoption applications in the past 20 years have fallen from 1,000 a year to less than 400, while 6,500 children are in the care of local authorities. Many are in care for long periods. Sadly these statistics highlight a growing insularity within our society and an unwillingness on the part of couples and families to look beyond their settled lives and ask “what can I give to society?”

Many answer the call to public-spirited action in other areas, as blood donors or members of children’s panels.

Perhaps it is time to remind families of the enormous benefits they could provide for vulnerable children by adopting.

To Scotland’s 250,000 Catholic families and the thousands of Catholic couples married in our churches every year I send a plea: consider sharing the love and stability that fills your homes with a child who has little or no experience of either.

To all Christians and people of goodwill I ask, consider these words from St Matthew’s gospel: “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

Accepting these words means acting to meet the needs of others, always remembering God’s promise: “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me”.

Were more families to consider adopting, there would be no need to widen the definition of suitable adopters. The proposal to extend joint adoption to unmarried and same-sex couples is at least in part based on the report group’s view that it “could make a contribution to extending the potential pool of adoptive families”.

I cannot understand this view. A mass of evidence attests to the instability of unmarried relationships and the chronic instability of same-sex partnerships, yet worryingly our “experts” ignore it.

Since unmarried couples have opted not to legally entrench their relationship in any recognisably permanent way, why assume that the entrenched permanence of adoption would appeal to them? Similarly, since less than 2% of the population is homosexual and a minority of this group are in “stable” relationships, very few might consider adopting.

It is difficult to see how the changes advocated can have any meaningful impact on “the potential pool of adoptive families”.

Times Recommends

• Charles blazes trail as sun king
• Thalidomiders win payout 50 years on
• Libel gag on talk of 'medical hurricane'