Hiya Folks... I don't think it is the Irish link, but may be the hierachy link... We Quakers are almost as much Irish as English, and don't have lots of sexual abuse of kids in our meetings, as far as I have seen, and we have teen weekends and lots of other events where kids are with older Quakers at camps of one kind or another. This is why when we were, in my meeting, putting aside the term for our respected members who help advise others, who had been called elders (a term I like) then were called overseers, a term we recently rejected for it's slavery days conotations (not at all concected to our use of it, but we acknowlege in my meeting there is pain associated with the word....) BUT NOW we have what is called a Pastoral Care committee... my great fear is the introduction of the persception of a Quaker cleargy, for the reasons we see above, the perception of power is sometimes abused, and if we have not had that problem, lets not come close to inviting it in... now I don't say this as being anti-Catholic, but it is just a matter of us not messing about with a system that seems to work... I like elders, as a term, as it avoids the fuedal power with cleary may have inherited by historical hapenstance.
Good luck friends, Larry