New policy requiring mandatory prayer before CYO-sponsored athletic events in Bay Area not well received by some parents, coaches.

Some parents and coaches involved in Catholic Charities’ CYO sports programs in the Bay Area are balking at a new requirement that a prayer be recited before all games, the archdiocesan newspaper Catholic San Francisco reports.

CYO athletics director Courtney Johnson Clendinen told the archdiocesan weekly she has received some “pushback” from parents and coaches in Marin County over the mandatory pre-game prayer. The parents and coaches complained, “This is not church,” Catholic San Francisco reported.

“She has gotten some positive responses but also received five or six unpleasant phone calls and six or seven critical letters, she said,” reported the archdiocesan weekly on Oct. 7. “In writing the prayer, the idea was to ‘try to make it as interfaith and ecumenical as we could while still maintaining who we are with our Catholic identity,’ she said.”