Community members are expected to conduct themselves in the Christian virtue of charity at all times. While discussions here revolve mainly around the Catholic faith journey of our members, we welcome participants of any faith, while expecting all members to respect each other. We have set out these guidelines for member conduct in the interest of maintaining our spirit of Christian charity.

Please note we are a Catholic organization with limited staff. While we strive to keep in touch with all our members, supervise website activity and fix any tech issues as soon as possible, we do not have the bandwidth to review all member-generated content prior to publishing. For this reason we implemented a system that allows each member to flag comments, prayers and replies as inappropriate.

If any content receives 2 or more “abuse reports” it will be automatically removed from the site and the author will be flagged for our moderators to review.

1. Membership Information

Please be honest about who you are and why you are posting.
Make sure all information that you provide to us for your membership is truthful, correct and up-to-date. You must use a valid email address at which we may contact you under the terms of our privacy policy should the need arise.

Display names, Signature Lines and Avatars are to be consistent with the Catholic Faith. They appear on every post, in any Forum whether Debate or non-Debate – thus, they cannot be inconsistent with Catholic teaching, nor can they be contentious among the Faithful. Display names and Signatures with specific Catholic significance, such as Fr., Sr., Rev., Bro., Brother, Deacon, etc. are reserved only to Catholic clergy. A non-Catholic may use an appropriate title from his/her church or denomination in the forum Signature. We ask this to avoid the obvious confusion which could arise among other members.

Examples of such Signature lines:
Fr. James Koe, Anglican priest
Fr. John Doe, Greek Orthodox Church

2. Appropriate and Truthful Language

Posts are to be worded in a manner which encourages charitable dialog in an effort to safeguard and nurture a prayerful space.
No insult – no blasphemy – against Our Lord, Our Blessed Mother, the saints or the Church are allowed. Slanderous, libelous and calumnious remarks about current or past Church figures are not allowed. Any accusations against current public Church figures must be verifiable and backed up with references.

Personal attacks on other members are not allowed. No mockery, insults, ridicule, threats, ethnic slurs, excessive sarcasm, etc. Do not slander other posters or denigrate their character. Restrict your comments to the words the other members post, not to the member himself. I.e., you can say you do not believe someone else’s facts are true, but you cannot call that person a liar. You are entitled to respectfully disagree but not to harass, insult, demean or harangue another member. Members may not exploit other members. Political comments are not allowed, references to political figures should be avoided as it can lead to conflict and discord.

Vulgar, Abusive, Racist, and Sexist Language will not be tolerated. No obscenity, profanity, vulgarity, pornography, or links to same. Posts which provoke hatred, incite or support bigotry, mock peoples or beliefs, or which contain an obvious affront to charity are not allowed. As in all cases, Moderator discretion will prevail.

3. Discussion Forum Posting Guidelines

While there is no limit to the quantity of topics you can create in the forums, no mass posting or flooding of the boards is allowed. Off-topic posting is not allowed. Cross posting in general is not allowed.

No “bumping” of posts. Please do not respond to yourself, or post immediately after yourself, without explicit Mod approval. Give others time and opportunity to respond to your post.

Questions of a general nature concerning sexual morality may be discussed, but explicit and specific acts of sexual intimacy may not. Please remember the wide reading audience of a public forum, and use modesty and discretion.

Solicitations for money and advertisements of things for sale are not allowed.

Non-English (Latin, Spanish, Greek, etc.) terms and quotes in a post should be posted with an accurate English translation.

Links to a specific quoted or referenced document is helpful and should be provided to substantiate statements of fact and to follow copyright guidelines. Links to helpful and faithful Catholic sites are welcomed.

All posts of articles and videos must also include the poster’s own related commentary on the article. Commentary must be more than a few words (e.g. not simply an “Amen!”). It must present the poster’s view on the article, and show the article’s relevance to the topic or forum.

Posts linking to videos should also include a description of the video content.

You cannot schedule forum topics to go out in the future and you cannot save a topic draft to complete your message at a later time. Therefore, if you wish to work on a topic for more than a few minutes, we suggest using a text editor offline on your device, and then copy-paste the text in the new topic form when you’re ready to post.

Please note that while replies to a topic are not public, a summary of the topic text will be public for anyone to see. Therefore a small part of your topic text may be indexed on search engines such as Google. To respect everyone’s privacy, do not ever include sensitive information in a topic including but not limited to: last names, precise locations, physical or e-mail addresses, phone numbers, or any other means through which a specific person could be identified or located.

If you need help using the website, our apps, our podcast, or have particular suggestions for changes, do not post them for public discussion or debate. Instead, please use the chat in bottom-right corner to contact us or write directly to support at divineoffice dot org.

4. Intercessory Prayers Posting Guidelines

You can post one intercessory prayer each day. Don’t worry about typos: you can edit your prayer for 30 minutes after you have created it. You can also schedule intercessory prayers for a specific day up to one year in the future. This is useful if you’d like to, for example, commemorate an anniversary, or to ask the community to pray for a specific event.
Just like when you pray or speak in a local community, please do not disclose sensitive information: your prayer request and a summary of your topics will be shown to all community members and to anonymous website visitors alike.
When posting intercessory prayers, please keep in mind the “ABC” of praying in a community:

Aloud.
While in a community setting, be sure your voice can be heard by speaking out aloud. While writing, be sure your prayer is articulated enough to make sense to people that do not know you personally, while being careful of not disclosing sensitive information.

Brief.
Intercessory prayers need to be brief and to the point. One prayer should cover a specific issue, person or event. Please avoid generic prayers that cover multiple topics. Your prayer should only be about what is most important in your heart today.

In Christ.
Intercessory prayers are not a place to tell your opinion about something or someone. You are leading your community to pray for your heartfelt intention. It’s recommended to pray for discernment before interceding. If you wish to share an opinion on an event or debate on a specific topic, please feel free to create a discussion in our forum instead.

Only registered members can post intercessory prayers and show their participation in your prayer intention by clicking on the “Amen” button. Anyone, even anonymous users, can read the prayer intentions.
Please note that your prayer content is public, therefore it may be indexed on search engines such as Google. To respect everyone’s privacy, do not ever include sensitive information in a prayer including but not limited to: last names, precise locations, physical or e-mail addresses, phone numbers, or any other means through which a specific person could be identified or located.

5. Moderators

Moderators “moderate”, and maintain an atmosphere of Christian charity, fellowship, intellectual and spiritual exchange. They have authority to enforce these guidelines, and to use good judgment in situations not explicitly covered in this document. They additionally have authority to remove posts and members.
The staff of DivineOffice.org asks for and appreciates your prayers for us in our efforts at serving Our Lord and His Church in this apostolate, as we keep all of you in our prayers.

6. Agreement updates

The site administrators reserve the right to change the terms and conditions of this agreement without prior notice to the user. It is the responsibility of the user to regularly review the terms of this agreement.