File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2000/anarchy-list.0012, message 136


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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