Rallying Cries

[Therese Martin]

Rallying Cries for Expressing Opposition or Support

CAF prohibits posting addresses or telephone numbers of individuals, institutions, or commercial enterprises. It also prohibits "board swarms," which are calls for members to go to another web site or Internet discussion forum to harass its proprietors or members. Some confusion has arisen as to whether these policies preclude members from utilizing CAF to draw attention to matters on which they feel compelled to voice support or opposition, based on religious and/or moral convictions.

It is not within CAF's purpose or mission to host a springboard for public protest; however, CAF recognizes that such issues arise and that members believe that their voices and those of others can potentially make a difference if appropriately channeled to relevant governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations, media outlets, or commercial entities. Such issues potentially include marketing strategies, media programming, goods offered for sale, legislative or regulatory proposals, and nominations to public positions.

This policy clarifies the circumstances and manner in which members may employ these forums to draw the attention of their fellow members to such issues and encourage them to join in expressing their viewpoints, with an eye to either affecting change or discouraging it. Members are strongly urged to be highly selective in choosing issues which they raise in this respect.

The following rules apply to threads and posts of this nature:

• The issue of concern must be serious in nature and of critical importance to Catholic doctrine and/or morals
• The stance urged to be taken must be consistent with the beliefs and teaching of the Catholic Church
• The issue must not involve expression of support for or opposition to any political candidate, political party, or electoral race
• This process must not be used to solicit funding to support or oppose any person, institution, or issue
• The issue must not be so local in focus or impact that other forum members cannot reasonably be expected to be privy to the implications and nuances involved in taking the action urged
• A link must be afforded to publicly-accessible documentation of the matter at issue
• The opening post must include a factual presentation of the issue, circumstances, and consequences involve (Note: Please observe fair-use guidelines by quoting no more than three paragraphs of text copied from another site and providing a link. If you can't cut it down, then just provide the link.)
• The entity that is the target of the protest or support must have an identifiable mechanism (e.g., mailing address, telephone line, or e-mail address) in place that has as its purpose to accept public comments or complaints, etc., to assure that any Rallying Cry does not become a vehicle for harassment or otherwise threaten the entity's ability to conduct its routine business
• The member must not begin more than a single thread related to the matter and should initiate the thread in the forum most appropriate to the topic of the issue at hand (any duplicate threads begun by others will be closed with a link to the active thread)
• All forum rules continue to apply with regard to the content of posts and member conduct in the the thread

To assure the effectiveness of your communication with the entity involved, members are strongly encouraged to be factual and civil in their correspondence, avoiding the urge to be emotional or to express their outrage in terms that will cause their communication to be disregarded. Members are also cautioned that multiple complaints from a single individual are likely to be dismissed as spam and may negatively affect the weight that is given to their opinion by its recipient.