THE WHYS AND HOWS ….
During the course of the last 15 years, our Roman Catholic Diocese of Calgary under the guidance of Bishop Frederick Henry has come light years. One needs look no further than the expansion of Youth Ministry within the Diocese for proof - two thirds of our parishes now have active Youth Ministry.
Another example of how we’ve become increasingly better in terms of progressive organizations would be the arrival of the Parish Pastoral Council. “If you go back to the time of the Vatican council, we didn’t have ANY parish councils,” said Bishop Henry in a February address to volunteers gathered at St. Bonaventure for the unveiling of the Diocese’s new Volunteer Screening Program. 
“Then, after a number of years’ experience, we had to insert the word “Pastoral” because the Parish Council had been doing all kinds of maintenance but weren’t really doing anything with the life of the parish.”
In his address, Bishop Henry goes on to say that on the heels of the P.P.C. came the mandating of Finance Councils. “We have all sorts of [wonderful] stuff now going and its operative in every parish.”
Transformation of our Communal Life
“The whole thing has been one massive transformation of our communal life together,” said Bishop Henry. “And … we’re now starting to talk about collegiality, co-responsibility, and collaboration and of course when you’re trying to do that in a larger family you have to put down some rules and regulations.”
Our society has become acutely aware of the need for such rules and regulations needed to combat some of the realities we are faced with today. Be it sexual abuse, assault, misconduct or other forms of breach of trust such as financial mismanagement, theft, and abuses in leadership, our Diocese is part of a nation-wide, organization-wide campaign to establish procedures designed to protect those who are vulnerable among us as best we can.
Intended to build structures to facilitate the growth and the happy, harmonious operation of the community itself, the Strengthening Our Parish Communities Volunteer Screening Program provides instruction to help protect the laity who minister; as well as the people they are seeking to minister to.
Goals
- To ensure that we do all we can to protect the vulnerable people we serve
- To ensure that we work as effectively as possible with our volunteers, making sure that we have the right person, with the right gifts, doing the right ministry
- To do all we can to protect the financial resources of the Archdiocese by ensuring that we are always protecting ourselves from liability.
This program involves the screening of all volunteers as well as an ongoing program of good volunteer management.
Nothing unusual happening here
All organizations that work with vulnerable people are required by society today to have in place procedures for screening and monitoring volunteers. This program was originally introduced in Ontario in 1999 by the Ontario Provincial Government, in collaboration with a national organization called Volunteer Canada, under the title, “The Ontario Screening Initiative”. At that time the Government invited all sports groups, community groups and faith groups to participate. Thus, not only did the Archdiocese of Toronto initiate this program, but so did every Catholic diocese in the province and ultimately, throughout the entire country.
Making the Gospel more Relevant
“What we’re going through (the implementation of the program) is quite normal. It’s something that does occur with the development and the growth of the church as it seeks to adapt itself to the culture and the times in which it’s living in order to make the gospel more relevant,” said Bishop Henry. “This is extremely important and I see this as being one more step in becoming mature as a Catholic community of faith.”
Please click here to learn more about The Strengthening our Parish Communties Volunteer Screening Program on our Diocese website.
English 
Italiano 
