From: "Sean Gallagher" <sean-AT-dendro.com> Subject: Re: pick a religion with no research on your part! Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 13:57:58 -0500 Well, the survey put me in the "Liberal Quaker" slot too. Whatever; I suspect, however, that there was a reason why I had such a low correlation with "Roman Catholic", my current default affilliation. I coach a CYO soccer team, and help out with intramural basketball. A few weeks back, the parish that runs the school my kids go to announced that all volunteers would have to fill out long personal history forms with character references AND submit to a criminal background check. This, they said, was to "first, protect the children, then to protect the volunteers, then to protect the parish." Total bull. As the pastor admitted during a rather brisk cross-examination last night by myself and about 14 other coaches, it was in fact primarily to evade liability. We suggested that if he was really out to protect children and coaches and the church, that policies could be put in place to guarantee that adults were not left alone one-on-one with other people's children--without spending money we had raised for school supplies to pay private investigators to run our prints through the NCIC. We had gone to see the pastor understanding that this was to be a conversation about the policy. Instead, the pastor said that the policy was the policy, and had a detective with him ready to fingerprint us all in case we acquiesed to his stand. 19 coaches have already quit over this; some of the girl's coaches have already been fingerprinted, but the majority of the male coaches have so far refused. All the coaches are parents of players; many will now go to local recreation councils with their kids to coach and play. Essentially, one arbitrary decision by a decidedly reactionary priest has damaged or perhaps destroyed a big piece of a previously thriving intentional community that had grown around the school. I suppose if the insurance company told him that we all needed to wear the mark of the Antichrist to be accepted as volunteers, he'd have gone along with that as well. Thank God for him though; if he'd have been more touchy-feely, I might have actually started to get more serious about organized religion.
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