For $160 you can be a chaplain, sort of [View all]

[salvorhardin]

How to become a member of the clergy on the subscription plan.

Last spring, at the urging of her pastor, Nina Alonzo Ochoa and her husband agreed to attend a chaplaincy program in Indianapolis.

It was simple. Fill out an application with your name, address, telephone number and birth date and pay $160 and you would get a seven-page booklet. Then, after sitting through about three hours of lectures on two different days, the candidates would go through a graduation ceremony and get a patch and an identification card that indicates they are chaplains.

Ninety-one people took part in the program that April weekend, Ochoa said.

But Ochoa became suspicious. The seminars were all taught in Spanish, and she was really taught nothing, she said. She was, however, told that with her badge she would have access to jails and prisons and hospitals, anywhere they wanted to go. The new chaplains, she said, were also told if they were stopped by the police, they could show the officer their chaplain ID.

Full story: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20120717/LOCAL0201/307179976/1047/LOCAL0201