Terms of Service – Liberal Catholic Church of St. Thomas

Introduction

These Terms of Service apply to your usage of this website and specifically our members-only features. By continuing to use our online services, you confirm that you have read, understood and agree to be bound by these Terms of Service.

In these Terms of Service, “we”, “us” or alternative grammatical forms refer to the Liberal Catholic Parish of St Thomas, an association registered with the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission (ABN 15 344 610 096), and “you“ means you as the user. Our “online services” refer to both this website as well as the functionality provided on it, including our members’ forums.

Privacy and collection of personal information

By using our online services, you agree and acknowledge that we will collect personal information about you as described in our Privacy Policy. By continuing to use our online services, you acknowledge that you have read, understood and consent to the terms of that Policy and the terms of collection and use of your personal information as specified therein.

Free and voluntary nature of our services

Both this website and our online services – including our members’ area – are provided on an entirely free and voluntary basis for the purposes of advancing the mission of the Liberal Catholic Church in Canberra and the world. We do not charge for the provision of any of these services nor do we derive any advertising or other revenue. Additionally, those administering this website, moderating our forums and providing our online services are acting on an unpaid and voluntary basis. Indeed, in the Liberal Catholic Church generally, all our clergy are unpaid and most have secular jobs in addition to their ecclesiastical careers.

Limitation of our liability

Because our website is operated by volunteers for the benefit of the community, our liability associated with your use of our services for any claims however described (whether for negligence or any other cause) is limited to the fullest extent permitted by law. Since you are not paying us to provide our online services, we do not owe you any contractual obligations. We also make no representations and provide no warranties as to the ongoing availability, features or quality of our services. Although we will use our best endeavours to ensure that this website remains available and functional, we provide no guarantees regarding the same. We also reserve the right to change the nature of the services we provide or to cease providing them entirely for any reason.

Our objectives and goals

That said, we do endeavour to provide you with the best experience possible. This means that we will use reasonable endeavours to ensure that:

Your data is handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
You are provided with any support, whether technical or pastoral, in a timely manner upon requesting it. As volunteers, we cannot promise a specific service level agreement (SLA) for technical support, but we will endeavour to respond to support requests within 48 hours. The timeframes for pastoral and religious support depend upon the availability of our Clergy and the nature of your needs.
You have a safe and enjoyable experience on our website, including on our member’s forums. We will moderate the content on this website and on our forums (and implement spam filters and anti-malware measures) to minimise the risk of you being exposed to objectionable, offensive or dangerous material and malware.
If you register for our members’ forums, you are able to participate in free and open discussion regarding religious and spiritual matters in the spirit of the Liberal Catholic Church’s guiding principles, subject to our community standards outlined below.
The forums remain restricted to those who have a genuine interest in the Liberal Catholic Church and/or our Parish, so that you may discuss spiritual matters freely without such discussion being available for the world to see.

Community Standards

In order to help us achieve these aims, you must comply with our Community Standards, as follows:

The Liberal Catholic Church encourages freedom of thought and belief, but we must always strive to obey Lord Christ’s commandment to love one another. Many of the below guidelines are simply examples of behaviours in which we should and should not engage in order to obey this commandment.
You must not post any content that is unlawful, objectionable or could reasonably be considered offensive. This includes but is not limited to material such as pornography, material glorifying violence and material that could reasonably be construed as racist, sexist or otherwise in breach of equal opportunity, anti-discrimination or anti-vilification laws.
You must not use these forums for any commercial purposes or any other purposes that are not aligned with the mission of the Parish of St Thomas or the Liberal Catholic Church of Australia. This means that you must not use our services for the purposes of advertising or posting spam or mass-marketing material. This is a Church forum and not a marketplace, so it should not be treated as such.
Please be respectful to other members. This means that you should avoid inappropriate language or engaging in personal attacks when participating in debates and discussions. Whilst we encourage honest debate in good faith, we should not engage in name-calling, insults, bullying, harassment or other behaviours that are not conducive to a safe and harmonious community.
Please take care when posting about or discussing material related to politics. Our forums are primarily for the discussion of spiritual and religious, not political, matters. We understand that it can be difficult to separate politics and spirituality, particularly in the context of ethical and moral issues. As such, members are free to express views on political issues if they wish to do so, but these forums should not be used for political campaigning, the promotion of a particular political candidate or ideology or political organising. In other words, whilst you are free to make political statements in the context of genuine discussion (subject to the other community standards described here – keeping the discourse respectful is important), you should remember that people are free to hold their own political views and should not be subjected to campaigning material on a forum intended primarily for the discussion of religious and spiritual matters.
These forums are primarily for participation by members 18 years of age and over. However, we may consider membership requests from minors who have provided evidence of written parental consent. As such, please ensure that what you post is appropriate for reading by younger people. A good rule of thumb is that if something is not something that you would be allowed to show at a school or a workplace, then perhaps it should not be shared.
We do have a sense of humour and are happy for members to share memes, jokes, etc. in the “General Chat” forum. However, please make sure that these jokes and memes are in good taste and do not violate the other community standards outlined herein. In particular, please do not post any memes that contain offensive material or that could reasonably be construed as discriminating against a particular group.
Please respect the privacy of other members. This means that material shared in private forums should remain private and must not be shared outside them. Likewise, private communications between members should be kept private unless both parties involved have consented to their publication. The exception is the reporting or referral of issues to moderators – if you believe that a post or communication is inappropriate, you may report it to a forum moderator, the People’s Warden, the Priest’s Warden or the Vicar, who will take the appropriate action to address the matter.
Try and keep discussion logically organised within topics and threads. If a moderator determines that content was posted in the wrong place we reserve the right to move it. We also reserve the right to lock any threads that go too far off topic or that should be locked for any other reason.
You must not attempt to compromise the security of our website, the members’ area or any infrastructure that supports our services. This means that you must not engage in activities that could be descried as hacking, reverse engineering, privilege escalation, the distribution of malware or similar activities.

Intellectual Property

Since we do not run this site for profit, we do not make any claim over any intellectual property that you own (including copyright in original content that you post). However, in order for our community to function properly, the following rules about intellectual property apply:

You must, when using our online services, respect the intellectual property rights of others. This means that you must not copy, share, post or repost material that you do not have the right to share. In the event that you do so, you agree to indemnify us against any claims by third parties in connection with any infringement or alleged infringement of intellectual property rights.
You grant us an irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive and royalty-free licence to any content you post in which you own the intellectual property. This licence gives us the right to keep the content that you posted in our members’ area, but does not give us the right to share or distribute the content further without your consent.
You agree to respect the intellectual property of others who participate in our interactive online services and not plagiarise, share without consent or otherwise infringe their intellectual property rights.
You must not make any claims or attempt to derive any profit from any material posted on our website or our forums that does not belong to you. This means that whilst you are free to, say, publish your own posts (or excerpts therefrom) in magazines or on your own blog, you must not do this with content in which you do not own the rights unless you have come to an agreement with the owner of the rights that permits you to do this.

Possible consequences in the event of a breach

In the event that a moderator or a member of our Vestry Committee deems in their sole discretion that you have breached these Terms of Service, you may be subject to action as follows:

Normally, we will attempt to resolve minor issues informally through discussion with the person(s) involved and may issue a warning.
We may edit or delete any offending materials that breach the Terms.
In more serious cases, we reserve the right to terminate a user’s access to the forums. This might be for a specified period (in the case of less serious breaches) or indefinitely in the case of more serious offences.
In certain extremely serious cases (such as when material of a criminal nature is posted), we may refer the matter to the appropriate law enforcement authorities, along with sufficient information to enable law enforcement to identify and prosecute the person(s) involved.

Conclusion & Contact

Like Lord Jesus said, we should love one another as He has loved us. This means that we should participate in this community with respect and with regard to helping each other with our ongoing spiritual evolution. By following the above Terms of Service, not only are we helping create a harmonious community that helps us achieve this aim, but we are also reducing the administrative workload associated with maintaining these forums.

If you have any questions about these Terms of Service or any issue raised by them, please contact us at admin@lcccanberra-wp.azurewebsites.net.