Fr. Jim Tucker on the Arlington Diocese's new system of
background checks for volunteers. He has some important concerns, especially involving the understandeable reluctance of hardworking Hispanic volunteers of questionable immigration status to submit to such a system.
Another practical problem, of course, is the general reluctance of any volunteer to submit to this kind of rigamarole in order to freely give up his time and energies to serve the Church and community. My wife has just been asked by our parish priest to teach CCD this coming year, that is, to teach CCD while simultaneously taking care of our one-year-old. No easy task, but it doesn't help that, in order to do so, she will also have to spend a whole day filling out forms, stamping her fingerprints, standing in line, having her entire background scrutinized, and answering, in multitudinous forms and variations, the question of whether or not she is a paedophile.
