Days after the two recent priest abuse scandals in the news, attendance at mass Sunday afternoon was up. Way up. In fact it was standing room only. The type of thing you might expect on Christmas Day or Easter Sunday.
Will these recent stories help or hurt Catholic oriented Radio programming? I think it will help. Personally, I watch over an hour of EWTN programming every day on TV, while I've yet to tune to the new Catholic radio station for more than just a few minutes to check it out.
From a marketing point of view, I think that radio station's biggest need is that potential listeners are pretty much only hearing about it by word of mouth. It was, in fact, a Catholic friend that I originally met when I was working in Dallas Radio who called to tell me about it. He listens to that station in his car now on the way to work.
In regard to the bad press about priest abuse locally, I feel that an annual voluntary lie detector test for all pastors, priests, and all those who deal with children at church related activities would come pretty close to solving the problem.
It sounds like a simple solution, but it's actually legally difficult to actually do.
I took two Law courses while working on my BBA, and while I am not an attorney, I feel the legal situation is something like this:
From the Criminal Law perspective, lie detector tests may not be used as legal evidence.
From the Civil Law point of view, a disgruntled former employee might sue because they lost a job after refusing the test, or to dispute the findings of the test.
My feeling is that the needs of our innocent children outweigh the above Criminal and Civil legal rights. If it would take a Supreme Court ruling or Constitutional Amendment to offer America's children such a simple -- but effective -- protection, then perhaps we should have one.
Will these recent stories help or hurt Catholic oriented Radio programming? I think it will help. Personally, I watch over an hour of EWTN programming every day on TV, while I've yet to tune to the new Catholic radio station for more than just a few minutes to check it out.
From a marketing point of view, I think that radio station's biggest need is that potential listeners are pretty much only hearing about it by word of mouth. It was, in fact, a Catholic friend that I originally met when I was working in Dallas Radio who called to tell me about it. He listens to that station in his car now on the way to work.
In regard to the bad press about priest abuse locally, I feel that an annual voluntary lie detector test for all pastors, priests, and all those who deal with children at church related activities would come pretty close to solving the problem.
It sounds like a simple solution, but it's actually legally difficult to actually do.
I took two Law courses while working on my BBA, and while I am not an attorney, I feel the legal situation is something like this:
From the Criminal Law perspective, lie detector tests may not be used as legal evidence.
From the Civil Law point of view, a disgruntled former employee might sue because they lost a job after refusing the test, or to dispute the findings of the test.
My feeling is that the needs of our innocent children outweigh the above Criminal and Civil legal rights. If it would take a Supreme Court ruling or Constitutional Amendment to offer America's children such a simple -- but effective -- protection, then perhaps we should have one.