By Steve Weatherbe

At first glance, it was just an ordinary invitation to parishioners at St. Andrew's Cathedral to participate in the ad hoc family choir being put together to accompany the Nativity play.

 But there was a catch: everyone would have to present a clean criminal record check to organizers.

The issue is not unique to singers at St. Andrew’s, a Roman Catholic parish in Victoria. Both would-be volunteers and old parish stalwarts are now required to have criminal record checks throughout the Catholic Diocese of Victoria, which covers all of Vancouver Island. Some are upset – reportedly enough to back off from volunteering altogether.

“This isn't being handled with pastoral sensitivity,” says Ann Richards, who received what she considers a peremptory notice from Our Lady of the Rosary parish in Langford which included a question she took particular exception to: Do you have $2 million liability insurance?

“I know this is to protect children from sexual abuse,” says Richards. “But I thought it was the priests who were diddling the children, not volunteers.”

Richards doesn't think she needs to do the check, since her last volunteer position was arranging a weekday afternoon mass, which was not attended by children.

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She thinks the diocese has gone overboard in an excess of zeal. A risk assessment issued by the diocese gave a ‘high risk’ rating to all presidents and treasurers of the parish Catholic Women’s League, for example, and to all active members of the Knights of Columbus, as well as to all ‘religious articles vendors.’

Richards says several parishioners are just not going to volunteer any more.

More reasonably, any volunteers whose role might bring them into contact with children, the elderly or the disabled – those who bring the Holy Eucharist to shut-ins, for example – are rated as high risks.

Father Paul Szczur, the pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary, defends the new criteria for vigilance. “We are trying to make the best, the safest environment for children,” he told BC Christian News, “not just here but throughout the whole world. I know some people are unhappy, but it is better to go overboard than to be sorry afterward.”

Our Lady of the Rosary parishioner June Tarry, who has volunteered there for 18 years, accepts the need for the new regulations. “I'm not upset. I feel it is to protect the children. And I would like to know, truthfully, that all the other people have had criminal record checks.”

January 2011