More information not sent with above letter to the editor.
The system that I thinking of as I make this recommendation, and one I am
familiar with as I was a certified social worker on the system from 1985 to
the present, is the Texas Social Worker Certification system. It is online
at
http://www.tdh.state.tx.us/hcqs/plc/lsw/lsw_default.htm.
You can download a complete list of certified social workers. The list
online today was last updated 6-18-04. If the person you are looking for
is not on the list then they should NOT be working as a social worker.
The same type certification system could be used for priests.
With different software a much more flexible and up-to-date system could be
set up, much better than the Texas Social Work Certification system.
There would be many benefits of such a system:
1) People would not need to use Google to check to see if criminal charges
or allegations had been made against their priest or a visiting
priest. (This was apparently what happened in the situation reported 6-30-04
in the Dallas Morning News and 7-1-04 in the Fort Worth Star Telegram - see
#5 below.) Hopefully the priest database would be much more accurate,
reliable, and up-to-date than simply using a search engine.
2) If the database is updated daily it would be much easier for a traveling
priest to receive clearance if he wanted to say mass in a diocese he was
visiting. If the database was expanded to be worldwide then this could
also help
foreign priests and/or any priest traveling internationally.
3) Many of the current communications needed for a priest to receive
clearance in a diocese they are visiting would be eliminated, or at the
least simplified.
4) Such "transparency" would help Catholics and Non-Catholics alike to begin
to have more faith in the integrity of Catholic clergy. The questions many
people currently have could be resolved or eliminated quickly online.
6) Such a system would increase the potential that children would NOT
be molested by a Catholic priest.
As a retired social worker who spent most of my working years in Child
Protective Services, and as a 25+ year "computer junkie" now teaching Computer
Literacy, I think there is no doubt that such an online
database would be another tool to help protect children.
It is certain that the Kenedy publishing company, which publishes the
current national directory of all priests, already has the database for US
priests in an electronic format It would be relatively easy (less than the
cost of a new church rectory) to put it online with search and update
capabilities.
Bill Betzen