There’s a new blog for Catholic youth ministers called Totally Catholic, and when I mean new, I mean brand new. Still there’s a very interesting early post on what to do about “poisonous” volunteers, i.e. youth ministry volunteers who are like poison in your youth group. If you’ve experienced them, you know what I mean. I’m happy to say I’ve only encountered the phenomenon only a few times, but the hard reality is that sometimes you have to do something about them before something worse comes up.
By that I mean, usually they just bring your group down in certain ways, whether scaring kids away or driving the other volunteers (and the youth minister) crazy. But sometimes they’re bad news. I remember hearing about one youth minister who found out two of his volunteers, male and female, had moved in together. Another one found out that one of his volunteers was working as a stripper! (It did explain all the boys joining the group.) And, of course, there was the volunteer who was caught (by kids in his youth group) in an AOL chat room engaging in a homosexual chat with teen boys. He was sent packing rather quickly.
(That brings up another point: This guy has no criminal record, but he’s an obvious danger. What’s to stop another parish from bringing him in as a volunteer? Because after he was dismissed from volunteering, it was learned that he had been asked to leave a previous parish for the same reasons. But there was no mechanism for either of the parishes to let other parishes know about this guy. Scary.)
Anyway, check out the blog which is going to be about a lot more than just scary volunteers, I’m sure. The top post is about NET. Those guys are cool.
“Another one found out that one of his volunteers was working as a stripper!”
When is the Church going to start addressing the issues of pornography and sexually-oriented businesses? I’d say they invade more women’s lives than abortion does. Some may argue, with merit, that abortion is “worse” because it takes a life, but still, something doesn’t have to take a life to be wrong.
There are many parallels to abortion: both pervert normal sexuality, both industries prey on, violate, dehumanize, exploit people, esp young women; both industries thrive on rationalization and denial. As with abortion, the evil accrues, I’d say, more to the producers than the consumers. Not sure what the Catechism says about that, though. And prima facie evidence of evil – both industries support the Democrat party
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I think that by linking the two industries though as often as possible, the Church could reach women more effectively on the “building a Culture of Life” issues, one of which is pornography. Kudos to Cardinal Arinze for mentioning this in his “controversial” commencement speech at Georgetowne. Although abortion takes a life, I think that women still see the porn, etc stuff as more exploitive than abortion, which many of us have been convinced is necessary for our “empowerment.” If the Church could convince women that it opposes ALL exploitation of women, which of course it does, women might listen a bit more seriously to the Church’s anti-abortion message.
It also would help women to see that the Church calls men to account for their behavior as well, and that the Church is not “judging” them alone on sexual issues.
At the very least, it should be mentioned in Pre-Cana that the Church realizes that sexually-oriented businesses are a popular cultural phenomenon for bachelor parties, but that maybe looking at topless waitresses is not the best way for a man to honor his bride.
Other than the above, though, I have no strong feelings on this issue.