Dom Bettinelli has a post about a recent letter sent by the USCCB’s office of Child and Youth Protection basically threatening issuance of some sort of stamp of disapproval (well, non-compliance) to dioceses which let parents opt out of school-based "safe environment" training unless the parents sign letters stating that they were offered the training and refused it.

(By the way, my child is in a Catholic school….no "safe environment" training here for her that I’ve heard of. For volunteers, yes, but not in the school.)

Well, this is obviously purely lawyer and insuror-driven, don’t you think? We can get all bent out of shape all we want about the ethical aspects of it, as well as the irony, as Diogenes points out at CWNews of bishops willing to pay the price on compliance on this, and not, say, Ex Corde Ecclesiae. But the cold fact is, this is all about CYA, legally, and for insurors.

Children need to be educated, it’s true, on the myriad ways in which their innocence is potentially exploited in our culture. In a society in which 6-year old boys are listening to hard-core rap and absorbing the misogyny contained therein, and little girls are, in turn, absorbing Skank Culture, it is not unreasonable for Catholic institutions to teach modesty, respect and the importance of being on guard and never simply assuming that someone has your best interest at heart. As long-time readers know, I’m a strong supporter of implementing procedures similar to what the Boy Scouts do (basically, no adult alone with a child) and being straightforward with young people about boundaries, and that when a 32 year old priest or a 20-year old youth volunteer wants to be your best friend….that’s not normal.

But of course, that’s not what "safe environment" programs are about, for the most part. They’re about liability – just as anyone who’s ever actually held a job and had to go through some sort of training like this – sexual harrassment, for example – it’s all done just so the institution can have the paperwork and say, "There, we did it. We did our part. You can’t sue us, because we gave them the training."