I’m beginning to think that for every whacked out fundamentalist falsehood leveled at the Catholic Church as proof she is the spawn of the Devil, there is a whacked out Catholic trying to prove them right.
To wit, this guy who claims that the Third Secret of Fatima is that Mary is God. Naturally he says that Pope Benedict is anti-Mary and anti-Christ and is an anti-Pope. Of course, there’s nothing about how exactly he happens to know what this secret is because it is after ... it’s a secret. Right!
And how did I know about this site? He sent out a press release.
The Archdiocese of Detroit requires a background check in addition to the training.
Details and announcement described here:
http://tinyurl.com/b5nq5
“Background checks will be run on all current archdiocesan employees and all future job applicants … Besides identifying people who should not be working with children, the system should act as a deterrent, in McGuire’s view.”
“If people know we’re going to check their criminal background, a lot of people are going to pre-screen themselves out of our environment,” he said.
Wow, I’m so glad to see you posting about this. I had to take that Virtus training a couple of years ago, and through gritted teeth asked about some of the dubious statistics and why they presented a teen-aged girl who had been abused by a woman (really! how often does that happen). My general impression is that it was long on emotion and very, very short on any practical advice in recognizing and/or preventing sexual abuse. The Boy Scout program is much better (but of course they’re part of the eeevil anti-gay cabal).
As a friend of mine put it: it’s a beautiful sacrifice you make for the Church.
I’ve never received any emails, though. Perhaps I mis-typed my email address, whoops!
Oh yeah, they do that in Boston too. The problem is that criminal background checks only catch people who’ve been caught by police before. It doesn’t catch the guy who’s been working his way up to an actual crime, nor does it protect against one who provides false information or who has been protected from arrest by someone else.
It’s like airport screenings. It looks great that you’re screening everyone including 80-year-old grandmas, but by refusing to profile, i.e. “discriminate”, you’re making the system so cumbersome that cracks and loopholes appear.
render unto the Underwriters that which belongeth to the Underwriters
I had to sit through this when I taught CCD (or whatever we “officially” call it) in Boston.
Worse, I sat in on the meeting that trained other facilitators to show the videos and advance the gospel of low-risk (as in insurance).
For a moment I thought I was in a Kingdom Hall or a Tom Vu seminar, but no, just a Catholic school in Brighton. On a Sunday morning. With clergy present, but no Mass. Have to do that Saturday night, doncha know.
This is what burns me up: Fr. Buggery gets reassigned and the evil grows until it explodes. But if some guy wants to shovel the snow in the front of the school, now he has to sit through 3 Saturdays of insurance molestation videos and have a file opened for him in D.C. What if the Feds notice he has a prior record for pod-casting the bible without expressed written consent?
Because I was moving away w/in 6 months and wasn’t involved in parish activity, I didn’t go to my parish’s training sessions. I received a series of letters signed by the deacon who is also the family-life minister, whose tone was the same as that of a magazine to which you’ve previously subscribed, begging you to re-up or they’ll have to . . . well, there’s some veiled threat lurking under there with the magazine, with the parish, it’s that you can’t volunteer anymore. Assumed guilty until proven innocent. (Not that I blame the deacon for this, what else can they do?) What frosts me is thinking about all the money spent on paper on follow-ups like that (and the whole effort in general), on seminars and training, all this implied blame-the-laity, when the bishops don’t want to get real and deal with the actual problem. Or are the insurers paying for all this prevention?? Man, thou art a folly.
Same question I asked on “Your bishops’ conference at work”: does this apply to all US dioceses, or only to those who choose to participate? Is every diocese part of the Nat’l Risk Retention Group?
Seems like an opportunity to make one’s voice heard at the collection plate. There are plenty of solid Catholic charitable groups one can donate to.
Ignore this person. The way to deal with whack jobs is to talk softly while carefully moving towards the nearest open door.
I have yet to take VIRTUS! None of the dioceses I have been in use that as the program.
Monica,
I’m not sure about the second part of your question. NRRG is a corporation set up by the dioceses in order to self-insure, but I don’t know if every diocese is a member.
This is just another way for our friendly wacko progressives at the chancery to weed out—not the perverted—but the faithful “competition” as they see us. Pray hard and stay the course until you *are* the establishment. It’s the Church’s only way out of this mess…..
Dominic proclaims his theology extensively here.
Almost every one of his posts includes a reference to the Holy Spirit. He claims that Mary told him that she is God. He claims that God talked to him.
I suspect that Dominic has been involved in some form of spiritualism—that some spirit or other made an appearance to Dominic and presented him with this deception. It’s unlikely that anyone is going to dissuade him. There is a good reason the First Commandment forbids contacting disembodied spirits.
Something to consider—
As dedicated Catholics pony up for the Virtus program and the background checks are run, someone somewhere is getting themselves a nice database of U.S. Catholics.
Meanwhile we are watching Canada put the slow squeeze on any public Christian activity. Can the U.S. be far behind, what with the dedication of the ACLU?
Imagine the database in the hands of the ACLU. It’s not totally far fetched.
Just to be clear the “Dominic” that Carrie refers to is the guy who thinks Mary is God, not me (I spell my name “Domenico”).
I’ve taken VIRTUS. Believe me, it is one of the better ones. It contains the laughable distortions that the scandal is not related to homosexuality or that lay volunteers whose only access to children is when they are surrounded by children are of equal concern to priests and of lay staff who potentially are alone with a child. All risks are equal in the view of VIRTUS.
We know that Dom!
Yes; whacko is the word but sadly,he will create followers. They always do.
Dom, you yourself have insulted Our Lady by giving air and publicity to this weirdo. WHAT WAS IN YOUR MIND IN PUBLISHING THIS RUBBISH?
It would be interesting to know if background checking and VIRTUS training have had any impact on the numbers of volunteers.
Calling attention to ridiculousness is one of the things I do. When you drag evil and lies into the light of day they wither away. Better than to let it lay there and fester in the dark.
If a woman I love is being insulted and lied about, I’m going to stand up and declare the lies for what they are. It is a greater honor to come to her defense than to let the lies stay where they on the off chance they won’t spread.
Not every diocese is a member of the NCRRG.
This is, in essence, a self-insurance pool, spreading risk. The “Insurer” is in essence, the diocese themselves. These are run by lawyers, not “underwriters”.
Larger diocese often have their own insurance company. (most in Vermont, all in the publec record)
I have to admit I’m a little confused and dismayed at all the posts that think this is a bad idea.
I had to go through the program, being the YM for the parish. Having a degree in both Mental Health and Theology I found the material acceptable even helpful.
Look, I know that nearly every Bishop seems to bypass the whole homosexual issue. I get that and yes, it’s immensely frustrating and wrong.
However, I don’t see a problem with all of us being more AWARE of ANY issue that is not right with a kid. Sexual abuse causes a great deal of shame and secrecy is part of the abuse. If some adult notices behavior that they learned about from this program and gained the trust of a kid so that the kid could get help-isn’t this preferable to continued abuse??
We want our Catechists to be trained in the Faith so that they are teaching the Truth. I don’t think it is such a bad idea to have them be aware of issues that might be going on in the student’s lives. Finding out that there is a trusted adult just might save some kid.
I do agree it is lawyer run, and believe you me, this is not the only issue that has a lawyer behind it. But why all the vitriol? Why can’t we be ready and prepared to help? Is it because the whole mental health idea is scary and uncomfortable for people? Is it the annoyance that they still won’t admit it is part of the homosexual lifestyle? What is the issue really, here?
(PS I didn’t keep up with the emailed info either, I already knew much of what they sent anyway)
Jen, the issue is…there is much more to this program than meets the eye… there is an isidious agenda at play here.
The organization behind this VIRTUS program is the same organization that recommended the abusive “Talking about Touching” program, that showed explicit and graphic sexual information (in the name of education) to children in Boston and other area Catholic schools.
One of the people listed in the “Expert Consulting Team” is Phyllis Willerscheidt – Director of the infamous “Woman’s Commission” in my Archdiocese: http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:_fZT8YzuQnwJ:www.virtus.org/virtus/virtus_description.cfm+"Phyllis+Willerscheidt"+++&hl=en target=nw
http://www.ctrsr.org/related.asp
Interfaith Sexual Trauma Institute has its director as Dr. Phyllis Willerscheidt, who was one of the key consultors for VIRTUS. Her website is listed in the same listing with dozens of gay, lesbian, transgendered, and the most prominent Planned Parenthood-associated organization in the U.S., called SIECUS. She was also quoted in the following shortly after our current Pope’s election.
“I look at him as being an interim pope because of his age, so there will probably be some changes, but I would think that he would continue some of the same direction that he’s taken before. Sometimes I’ve liked that direction, and sometimes I haven’t.”
– Phyllis Willerscheidt,
director of archdiocesan Commission on Women
And last but not least… the following is quote is part of the “The Catholic Rainbow Parents Declaration” (whose goals are totally contrary to Church teaching… “We share the perspective of the National Catholic Risk Retention Group’s VIRTUS programs, with which the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis collaborates in response to the mandate of the “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” adopted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in June 2002. The VIRTUS programs report that, ‘It is a myth that most sex abusers are homosexuals. Most sex offenders are not homosexual; they are heterosexual . . . Studies repeatedly show that most male molesters of boys are not homosexual with adults. It is a faulty assumption that an adult male who selects a young boy as a victim is gay’.”
BTW, I had to watch the Virtus Video, Protecting God’s Children, about 4 times.
I have to say that it is informative because of the two “perps” who tell their stories. How child molesters think and act, as told by child molesters, is information worth knowing. I felt a little smarter.
My beef is how the package is presented, how it comes w/ the TAT program in Boston, how it has the Don Lapree / Tom Vu sales pitch. So I groan more at the form than the content. And how this new strong response is directed at laity when we’re still not satisfied that the problem has been addressed, let alone fixed. “Hey, look over there!” That kind of thing.
But I guess I have to get used to the way things are going to be run from now on. I almost had to be the fingerprint cop at my parish. In the Diocese of Camden, mandatory fingerprinting now. Which is not a bad thing especially in bigger parishes where everybody doesn’t know everybody all the time.
But I wasn’t looking forward to hounding the old church ladies for their FBI fingerprint card. Some of them are insulted. They (especially the older ones) feel the church lied to them for decades, and now they’re being harrassed as potential “perps”.
I kind of skimmed the comments here but I don’t think I saw mentioned that if you take the VIRTUS program, you are automatically relegated to the role of mandatory reporter if you suspect child abuse. In other words, if you suspect abuse you have to report it to the authorities or risk legal prosecution if it is proved you either should have or did know of the abuse. Not sure how this is enforced but it was mentioned (and you signed a paper) during our parish sponsored, mandatory VIRTUS ‘training’.
“Ipost
Hmm..Mandatory reporting…does that include mandatory reporting of liturgical abuses? Mandatory reporting of priests who refused to read the Bishop’s letter denouncing homosexual “marriage”?
Jen,
Midwestmom who’s having trouble posting comments for some reason sends the following reply:
The most recent post on your VIRTUS thread, by JenB….she doesn’t understand what everybody’s griping about but admits at the end of her post that she didn’t answer the required bulletin emails.
That’s the whole point! How many lay people are dutifully answering those bulletins, under the impression that somebody in the chancery is tracking their compliance, when it’s likely that no one truly is keeping track? The whole program is a farce. And, can we all agree that it wasn’t the laity who were molesting altar boys?
There were CCD teachers at our session that didn’t even have computers. I’ll bet my life that they have never been sent any of the bulletins by regular mail.
I have to go to a Virtus this Sunday. They keep better track of who goes to it than who goes to the teacher preparation. I’ll bring a book and sit on the back row. It reminds me of how little old ladies are searched in airports. Do priests take this course?