I was thinking about this issue the other day, and it occurred to me that maybe the Roman Catholic Church sees genealogy researchers as stickybeaks, that we are looking through our ancestry for gossip and scandal when we should really be minding our own business... Elyssa Alan wrote: > Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:17:46 -0600 > From: Alan Kania <alankania@mac.com> > Subject: [POLAND] Church records vs. family historians (revisited) > To: poland-roots@rootsweb.com > > > I can understand why some priests believe that they are supposed to be > the only people who protect the parish records. And I understand that > there have been allegations that unscrupulous "researchers" may have > cut out pages of church records. And I understand that parish priests > may be inundated with requests from all over the world. However, I > don't understand why the church doesn't do at least one of two > possible solutions: > > 1. There are laypeople who serve in various capacities within the > church. As you've mentioned, many family historians are willing to pay > buckets of money for online services, professional researchers, or > their own time and travel expense to do first-hand research. With the > high rate of unemployment (especially in rural villages), wouldn't it > be helpful for churches to provide an opportunity for some of their > trusted yet unemployed members of the church to work with researchers > for a fee? It would bring a little revenue to the operations of the > church and provide a stipend to the unemployed parish member. The > initial funds could even go to making full-sized reproductions of the > records so the actual church records would not be disturbed from their > dusty shelves. > > 2. I understand the philosophical differences between the Roman > Catholic Church and the Church of Latter Day Saints; therefore the > churches disagree on issues of microfilming the records. We also > understand that these important church records are deteriorating badly > while being improperly (from an archival perspective) stored in parish > offices. It's clear that several commercial services are successful > with their paid online services that make a variety of official > documents available (for a fee) to family historians. The benefits > are clear -- the important church records will be digitally preserved. > The parish priests are freed from answering requests from around the > world. Unemployed parishioners can be recruited to help with the > microfilming. The Roman Catholic church can get into an > entrepreneurial program that provides family historians an opportunity > to establish closer roots to the church through their ancestors, and > earn enough income to underwrite the program. > > To me, this is a no-brainer, but perhaps someone may know of some > reason why the Roman Catholic Church hasn't found a solution to the > issue of church records and genealogy. Other churches seem to have > reached some kind of solution to this situation. > > -- Alan