Confidant Session Form

* Disclaimer I am training to be a paralegal and not a lawyer so my words here do not constitute legal advice I am just describing the law as I understand it.

I am currently in paralegal studies so to answer some of the questions here.

1) It's important to know the laws because we do not want to promise confidentiality we are legally obligated to break.

2) The laws that apply are the local laws of the clergy member as those are the laws you (the clergy member) are bound by.

3) It's important to know when and in what instances you can become a mandatory reporter. In many US states clergy are considered mandatory reporters.

4) Please read up on what constitutes confession in your local as in my home state just regular conversations would not be considered confession but a request via this form would likely be considered confession.

Finally this is in no way to discourage this form. Its just important that all those that part take of the service understand the limits and laws that apply.

Just a thought...

Think of a Confidence Session as a kind of EAP (Employee Assistance Program). In an EAP environment, the name of the person seeking help, and the one providing help is kept anonymous. They are only known to each other. In the US, there is what is known as HIPPA laws.These laws protect a patient from having their medical records given out to anyone other than their doctor. It has been stated that what we are talking about here, MIGHT fall into this category, if the confidence session has a medical or psychological basis. The best course of action would be to make all parties anonymous until the facts are sorted.

My suggestion would be that if a person needs counseling in confidence, they should fill out a confidence session form similar to what you have created but with no name given. At that point, the session form is distributed to a Clergy member who would only be identified by a predetermined number randomly picked by the Synods appointed designee to oversee this program.

If the two decide to identify themselves to each other, that would be their choice and no other needs to know.

edit:
Also, I would place a line in the form to denote whether the person seeking help wishes to talk to a male or a female, and if the person seeks someone in a particular age bracket.

I like your idea about annonymity, but in a practical sense how will that work?

Rosalyn J wrote: I like your idea about annonymity, but in a practical sense how will that work?

Clergy email address, however person seeking advice would possibly need to create a new email, all emails would need to be deleted.

In truth, I believe anonymity online is impossible.

I suspect you are correct Edan in the context of our web structure. It is never impossible, but difficult.

I guess what it comes down to is the person who wishes help to look over the list of Clergy and contact someone they fell is trustworthy for their situation.

It may come to just posting a list of Clergy with their personal info such as clerical rank, age,sex, background (a bio of some type), or whatever, so that the person seeking help can contact the person who may fit their needs.

Example Bio(this would be the true bio I would post): I am a 58yo male. I am married for 37 years with two adult children. (1 male and 1 female) the male is 28 and is a Marine, firefighter, married, and a father of two. My daughter is 24 and a manager in a business, unmarried.

I have been a Scoutmaster, PTA President, a HVAC installer, Paramedic, Lieutenant Firefighter, Trustee in a Village. I wasted 3 years in my high school years doing drugs. I have been active in many types of organizations.

I have been with the Temple of the Jedi Order since 2011. My religious background before that was Catholic. I went to Catholic grade school during the time of ruler slapping across the knuckles. I was an alter boy during grade school and served in several Rites (Catholic - Western Rite / Byzantine - Eastern Rite) and I taught CCE while in high school for 1 year.

At this time I have a strong belief in Joseph Campbell's idea that all religions are true in their metaphors and that these metaphors are all in line with each other. I follow Buddhist teachings, Christian teachings and Taoist teachings mostly, as they coincide with my belief in Jediism. I will never deny anyone's God and I believe in any profit who preaches Love, kindness, and compassion.

The idea here is that a person who reads this bio can see if anything in my background will help in their dilemma. Then they could contact me at their pleasure without anyone knowing through my personal email I have listed. It would be up to me as duty bound Clergy to keep the Confidence.

I do wonder if perhaps the anonymity is unnecessary? Catholic priests can see their confessors, and therapists know their patients. Anonymity cannot truly be promised and if the confession revolves around events at totjo, that anonymity will be hard to keep because likely the clergy will be able to guess the person's identity.

I‘m with Edan on this one - there‘s no such thing as true anonymity online and promising it would be misleading.

It's not a question of misleading anyone. The idea is to try to give someone with a problem someone to turn to without everyone else knowing. As I stated, I have an e-mail listed, if any of you wish to talk to me privately, contact me at that e-mail. No one will know you did unless you tell them. It is not attached to the Temple and is not filtered through the Temple. No one will know you contacted me. At that point we can continue through e-mail or we can Skype, Google Hangout, or if serious enough, I'll give you my phone number.

edit:

If you are truly interested in being clergy, and seeing to the needs of the community, you must be all in, within the context of being available at any time to any one, for any reason. I do not know what state of emergency it is for the person who needs my help, but if they feel it is important enough that they need my phone number...

As a member here I really like the idea of a confidant session, but it will be for more as an emotional session, at the beginning of the post you were talking that it will be like the catholic church "confession" and in that confession no legal stuff were involved, so I think that the legal discussion is off the subject here.

support 100% the idea and don't get involved in legal stuff that for every country is very different and here are members for all around the world

Anonymity is pretty much impossible in all things. But I do not think anyone really expects things to be perfect. So yes we can offer anonymous confession with the understanding that even if we know the parties involved it wont be brought up unless the person asking clergy support brings it up. That's the real point is the feeling of not having to name names unless you wish to.

Albali Cometlast wrote: As a member here I really like the idea of a confidant session, but it will be for more as an emotional session, at the beginning of the post you were talking that it will be like the catholic church "confession" and in that confession no legal stuff were involved, so I think that the legal discussion is off the subject here.

support 100% the idea and don't get involved in legal stuff that for every country is very different and here are members for all around the world

Legal stuff is most certianly involved in some cases if a person brings up things that a clergy member is mandated by law in their nation or state to report. Knowing that sort of thing is VITAL to keeping people out of trouble so its pretty on topic.

Albali Cometlast wrote: As a member here I really like the idea of a confidant session, but it will be for more as an emotional session, at the beginning of the post you were talking that it will be like the catholic church "confession" and in that confession no legal stuff were involved, so I think that the legal discussion is off the subject here.

It isn't, because these confidence sessions would function legally the same as confession wherever it's allowed by law to be a binding seal of confidentiality. We're just calling it something different because of a combination of factors. At least, that's my understanding. Correct me if I'm wrong, people.

steamboat28 wrote:

Albali Cometlast wrote: As a member here I really like the idea of a confidant session, but it will be for more as an emotional session, at the beginning of the post you were talking that it will be like the catholic church "confession" and in that confession no legal stuff were involved, so I think that the legal discussion is off the subject here.

It isn't, because these confidence sessions would function legally the same as confession wherever it's allowed by law to be a binding seal of confidentiality. We're just calling it something different because of a combination of factors. At least, that's my understanding. Correct me if I'm wrong, people.

If its allowed by law to be a binding seal of confidentiality then its legally functioning the same as confession. You see this is important because in my state some things are required by law for clergy to be reported UNLESS it is heard under the seal of confession. This is why the legal aspect is important to be clear on as in one case a person could be a mandatory reporter and in others they are exempt.

Are there any countries where Jediism is actually seen as a religion and therefore any laws regarding clergy confidentiality would actually be relevant? Correct me if I'm wrong but the 501(c) status that we have in the US only grants us rights as a non-profit, not as a religion.

Edan wrote: Are there any countries where Jediism is actually seen as a religion and therefore any laws regarding clergy confidentiality would actually be relevant? Correct me if I'm wrong but the 501(c) status that we have in the US only grants us rights as a non-profit, not as a religion.

If we are able to actually ordain a minister and thus license people to perform a marriage then we are able to enact the laws of confession. At least in the US. Because the US does not have an official list of recognized religion but if you wish to start a church ( which is what we have here) they take your word on it and thus in the US all the legal protections of confession do apply as per your state laws.

Council gas looked at the form. No problems. We are looking at how to integrate it

Link in the FAQ and a menu bar next to donate? So when someone is in need they aren't struggling to find it, they just find it?

Or, on a member only Forum section, to prevent anyone from using it?

And its up:

This is awesome! Thanks Ros and all involved

Literally the only change I would make would be to put it in title case. ("Contact Clergy" instead of "Contact clergy")

This is great though.

In legal terms, what goes through the totjo server is subject to french law.

France like many countries does not recognise the existence of any particular religion, although it keeps a list of thought-to-be-dangerous cults.(we're not on it)

Clergy people have no particular rights or obligations in comparison to regular people.

Do note that failing to notify the authorities that someone's life is in danger is a crime-ish.

French jurisdiction is limited in this case, I think the only time you would find yourself in trouble is if you live there, the threat to life (including to own) would have to go through totjo (which is only the initial 'clergy contact form' and not subsequent communication) And the life in danger would have to be in france as well...

A greater issue concerns eu privacy laws, which are being replaced by eu wide regulations in 2018. That should be fairly straight forward: do not take eu citizens information out of the eu and do not distribute it to 3rd parties without express consent (eu police doesnt count as third party), no matter who or where you are.