SMWally

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

With as often as pastors get moved around anymore, he's the least of our worries. It gets questioned plenty, every few years someone gets offended by it (always a fairly new leader that thought we were just joking about the policy. Funny, the kids never complain without instigation from a leader. They know a visit to some country parish will at least have heat in winter, a/c in summer and flush toilets. Families join our troop for the great program and traditions, then some think they should start fixing what ain't broke.

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?