What I Learned at Virtus Training -- I

My Catholic parish announced it was short of ushers and put out a call for volunteers. I'd been wondering how I might become more active anyhow, and I had experience ushering at various Episcopal parishes, so I signed up. I discovered the process was involved: I needed to be fingerprinted and have a background check, and I needed to attend Virtus training. While Episcopal and Anglican ushers, at least in my experience, don't get background checks, the logic is compelling. A child can wander out of mass unaccompanied by a parent (a dumb parent, as the trainer pointed out) in search of the rest room. The church needs to be sure an usher is the sort of person who on one hand won't use the opportunity to molest the child, and on the other, will recognize the need to keep the kid safe and under some sort of watch.

The training outlined the facts that many of us know if we've stayed informed: there are people who will go to great lengths to work themselves into positions of trust where they can have unsupervised access to children for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Once they develop a successful pattern, they will keep at it for decades, or until they're arrested. The occupations where this is a potential problem include priests, teachers, coaches, counselors, and babysitters, but relatives, neighbors, and friends can also molest children in home environments.

The Catholic Church began to experience this problem beginning at least in the 1950s, and after considerable struggle, began to address it systematically after 2000. One result is Virtus training for employees and volunteers. The class is very well-presented, with a competent trainer. I've got to say that I've come to expect this standard of excellence from every Catholic institution I've run into. Unfortunately, one effect of it was to turn my stomach at what happens in the real world (the trainer said this is deliberate, and recognized that some people may need to leave the room briefly to regain their composure).

The bottom line is that the class is about evil and the works of the Enemy. They don't say this directly, but clearly that's what the whole thing is about. The purpose of the class is to outline specific actions that parishes, parish employees, and volunteers must take to remove opportunities for this particular evil in their environments, as well as to stress constructive attitudes and the need for vigilance.

A slightly wider topic that came to my mind, since I'd recently learned of "Bishop" Martin Sigillito, is the duty of the Church, and the Christians in it, to protect other vulnerable groups in its care. Not for nothing is Christ the Good Shepherd. The elderly, those with special needs, and well-intentioned but naïve or lonely people are also vulnerable to sexual exploitation as well as more general con artists.

There was some opportunity for small-group discussion in the class. I was so disturbed by what I'd run into about Robert William Bowman, Interim Priest at ACA's All Saints Fountain Valley parish, with a 2009 arrest for child pornography on his record but still in a position of trust with access to children in 2014, that I brought it up. I'd e-mailed Frederick Rivers, the Vicar General of the ACA Diocese of the West, via his parish, and Brian Marsh, Presiding Bishop of the ACA via the ACA contact form, and had heard nothing back, with Bowman still at that parish.

I told the group it was my former denomination, I'd become Catholic via RCIA, but I was still very, very upset about the situation. Several of them turned to me and asked, pointedly, "And what are you going to do about it?" After all, we were in a class where this is important. When children are taught in Catholic education about the issue, they're told that if it happens to them, they must tell someone in authority. If they don't listen, tell someone else, until someone listens.