SMWally

Our Troop is chartered to a Catholic parish church' date=' and we identify as that church's Scout Troop. By tradition, and on direction from the COR and parents association board, our Troop always attends Catholic Mass together while on campouts. We pretty much insist that all the Scouts attend together, treating it like any other part of the program. We make it clear to parents of Webelos crossing over, and new Scouts joining the Troop, that this is our policy. Even so, occasionally a new leader will balk and sit in the parking lot during Mass or take his son back to the campsite while the rest of us go. Most of the leaders and about half of the Scouts are Catholic. The other half of the Scouts are pretty evenly split between other Christian denominations or do not identify with any denomination at all. Is there any BSA policy on Troops attending church services together when they are sponsored by a religious institution?[/quote']

 

Frankly, SMWally, on Scouter dot com I think you will find members with a strong contempt for religion by a margin of 2-to-1 or greater. I don't think you will find the best information for the issue you are describing here. Take it up "in-house" and "in-person" with the leadership of your COR and/or Council leadership that might be more willing to have an open, unbiased dialogue with you about the role and policy of religion in Scouting.

2 to 1? I like those odds compared with most people I run across, scouters included.

I am part of a Catholic sponsored unit. We do attend Mass on campouts if we're not going to be back in time for scouts to attend with their families. We have a few non Catholics as members; we let their parents decide if they will attend with us, if they don't want to they can hang out in the parking lot or back at camp depending on logistics.

 

This probably warrants a talk with your Pastor, I would be surprised if he actually supports the idea of non Catholics being required to attend Mass. It's likely that this is some interpretation or tradition that hasn't been properly questioned in a long time.

Article IX seems to even forbid grace before meals. Doesn't leave much room for "a Scout is reverent".

In an ideal world, we would always be back on Sunday morning in time for everyone to attend their own church, or no church. But that cannot always happen.

For our Scouts that do not belong to any church, the thought has always been it is good exposure at least one Sunday (or Saturday evening) a month.

For those Scouts that do belong to another denomination, I wish their churches had 1-hour services at 5:00pm Saturday, and 8 / 9:30 / 11 am on Sunday, and we had enough leaders to get them all to their different churches. But neither is the case. And on many occasions we would not have 2-deep leadership for any non-Catholic Scouts who would stay back in camp. So we all go to Mass together.

Our Troop is chartered to a Catholic parish church, and we identify as that church's Scout Troop. By tradition, and on direction from the COR and parents association board, our Troop always attends Catholic Mass together while on campouts. We pretty much insist that all the Scouts attend together, treating it like any other part of the program. We make it clear to parents of Webelos crossing over, and new Scouts joining the Troop, that this is our policy. Even so, occasionally a new leader will balk and sit in the parking lot during Mass or take his son back to the campsite while the rest of us go. Most of the leaders and about half of the Scouts are Catholic. The other half of the Scouts are pretty evenly split between other Christian denominations or do not identify with any denomination at all. Is there any BSA policy on Troops attending church services together when they are sponsored by a religious institution?