Regarding the foster mother, it seems to me that a main problem is the tendency to apply laws rather literally. What I mean by that is, that thanks to moral and post-modern relativism, it has become impossible to apply rules on the basis of what used to be termed 'common sense' and lateral thinking.

Unable to discriminate, those in authority seem to have no choice but apply rules as if they were unthinking automatons, which means invariably there will be absurd judgements made in cases where the rules - and human wisdom - did not anticipate every last eventuality. And where we do try and anticipate such things, it leads to a morass of laws and 'principles' that often contradict or clash with each other. To me, it seems a classic case of living by the letter of the law rather than by the spirit of the law.

There's a very good example of this in the New Testament where the pharisees (who were also responsible for enforcing the dozens of rules and regulations that emanated from the Mosaic law and Deuteronomy) got very cross with Jesus because he healed a blind man on the Sabbath. The rules stated clearly that no work was to be done on the Sabbath, and healing was considered to be work.

They couldn't see the charity that had been performed, they just had a kind of slavish obedience to 'the rules' - rules which after all, had been created in the first place because humanity was finding it so difficult to get a handle on the more holistic principles that underpinned them.

In otherwords, if humanity can't regulate itself through awareness of and voluntary adherence to the basic charitable spirit it is going to need specific rules and sub-rules and sub-sections of sub-rules spelled out and codified.

Afterall we wouldn't really even need rules if everyone voluntarily adhered to the guiding principle 'love your neighbour as yourself' [there was another, critically important part to that guiding principle that I won't post here out of deference to all other 'Catters, but anyone who wants to know what it is can PM me)

The poor unfortunate man would have had to come back another day because the rules said so and 'the office was closed'.

(Discrimination, despite the negative connotations this word seems to have acquired, is not always a bad thing: e.g we discriminate between mushrooms that are safe to eat and those that are not and would be foolish to do otherwise)