Lack of Religious Knowledge

mikeindublin

From The Irish Times

Survey reveals low level of religious knowledge in young
Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent

Only 5 per cent, or one in 20, of 15 to 24-year-olds could quote the first of the 10 Commandments when interviewed for a new survey in Ireland.
Almost one-third (32 per cent) could not say where Jesus was born and more than one-third (35 per cent) did not know what is celebrated at Easter.
These are among the findings, published today, of an opinion poll conducted last December and January by Lansdowne Market Research for the (Catholic) Iona Institute and the (Protestant) Evangelical Alliance Ireland group. The survey involved a representative sample of 950 people nationwide.
The poll on Christian teachings found that such knowledge was highest among those over 65 and lowest in the 15-24 age group.
The survey found that only 52 per cent of young people could name Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as the authors of the gospels, while only 38 per cent knew that there were four gospels.
Fewer than half of the 15 to 24-year-olds surveyed (47 per cent) could name "Father, Son and Holy Spirit/Ghost" as the three persons of the Trinity, while only 48 per cent were able to name Genesis as the first book of the Bible. Thirty-eight per cent were aware that there were seven Sacraments, but just 15 per cent knew that "transubstantiation" (whereby bread and wine is transformed into the body and blood of Christ) was the term used to describe what takes place at the Eucharist during Mass.
Only one in 10 of the young people surveyed was able to say that the Immaculate Conception referred to Mary, the mother of Jesus, being free of original sin. In fairness, less than one-third - 32 per cent - of the over-65s got that one right, compared to an average of 19 per cent for the survey as a whole.
David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute, said the findings of the survey indicated that the level of Christian knowledge among young Irish people was "alarmingly low".
This seemed especially so for those who were either still at school or had only recently left school, which was "probably the opposite of what you would expect", he said.
He called for an examination of the reasons why knowledge of the faith was "in such sharp decline".
(The first of the 10 Commandments is "I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have strange gods before me". Jesus was born in Bethlehem and Easter celebrates his Resurrection).

Crucifix

Interesting. I wonder if all those interviewed were catholic though.

philologos

That is rather alarming indeed. But it is to be expected when Ireland is becoming a secular society.

PDN

I'm disappointed to see the Evangelical Alliance described as 'Protestant'. Was this in the original Irish Times article or added by the poster? I am a member of the Evangelical Alliance, but I would reject the label of Protestant.

As to the article itself, it's hardly a shock that an increasingly secular society lacks knowledge of biblical facts or of Roman Catholic beliefs.

Dave!

Not surprising TBH. I'd say a large portion of those interviewed would consider themselves Catholic, too.

Splendour

mikeindublin wrote:

From The Irish Times

David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute, said the findings of the survey indicated that the level of Christian knowledge among young Irish people was "alarmingly low".
This seemed especially so for those who were either still at school or had only recently left school, which was "probably the opposite of what you would expect", he said.

Wheras I agree that Christianity should be taught in schools, if a kid isn't getting any Christian guidance at home, it's a pretty pointless excercise. Though I'm not Catholic, I had a discussion recently with a Catholic priest in which we both agreed Communion & Confirmation should not be the responsibility of the schools.If a family really has an interest in their child receiving the sarcraments, why not just do it through the church.

As regards the full article itself; I'm not at all surprised, but rather saddened...

philologos

But then on the other hand people are demanding that the Religion course be secularlised, which has been done to an extent, by adding humanist philosophy, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism etc. The problem with this is you rarely have time to study scripture in it.

Splendour

Jakkass wrote:

But then on the other hand people are demanding that the Religion course be secularlised, which has been done to an extent, by adding humanist philosophy, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism etc. The problem with this is you rarely have time to study scripture in it.

Dunno where you went to school Jakkass, but in my secondary school days we certainly didn't study alot of scripture during religion class. It was what was commonly known as the 'doss' class...

:rolleyes:

philologos

Talking about LC Religion, and I'm still in school. And no we don't do Scripture really since there's so much other stuff on the course now. So it isn't that big of a priority anymore I suppose if we have to secularise religion classes.

Dave!

You say it like it's a chore, Jakkass. The class is called Religious Education, not Religious Indoctrination. It should be secularised so that you can learn about the different religions in a fair and balanced manner.

Splendour

PDN wrote:

I'm disappointed to see the Evangelical Alliance described as 'Protestant'. Was this in the original Irish Times article or added by the poster? I am a member of the Evangelical Alliance, but I would reject the label of Protestant

Forgive my ignorance PDN,but I always assumed (in context of the subject), that if one not Catholic, they must be protestant..?

philologos

It's not a chore, infact I've been facinated about many of the new things on my course (including humanist philosophy, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism etc) it's nice to know what other faith groups (or lack of faith groupings) believe or don't believe and the works they have produced for their causes. it's simply an explanation of why one wouldn't know as much indepth about Christianity anymore. It is because of the change in the way religion is taught now as opposed to the way it was taught say a decade or two ago.

Dave!

Ahh my bad, sorry

PDN

Splendour wrote:

Forgive my ignorance PDN,but I always assumed (in context of the subject), that if one not Catholic, they must be protestant..?

Actually, no, for example you have non-evangelical forms of Christianity such as Orthodox & Coptic churches that predate the Reformation.

Also you have evangelical Catholics who, while remaining as members of the Roman Catholic Church, hold to an evangelical view of Scripture and the necessity for a personal 'born-again' experience of Jesus Christ.

Then you have a growing number of believers such as myself who reject the label 'Protestant' because it defines people primarily in terms of what they are against. I am not interested in protesting against the Catholic Church at all. Also, for me, the label 'Protestant' carries cultural & political overtones that I have no wish to be associated with.

I pastor hundreds of Irish believers who, although baptised & raised as Catholics, have chosen to embrace an evangelical & pentecostal view of Scripture & Salvation. To a man (& woman) they would be absolutely horrified if you tried to tell them they were Protestant.

To me the whole division of Christendom into Protestant & Catholic involves a simplified view in which all non-Catholic denominations share some common denominator and ascribes some kind of primacy to Catholicism.

Hope this helps explain things a bit better.

PDN

Scofflaw

Wasn't the same dismal state of religious knowledge revealed by a survey in the US?

If so, it's hardly a product of a less religious society. A less learned culture, probably.

cordially,
Scofflaw

sex_offender

PDN wrote:

Actually, no, for example you have non-evangelical forms of Christianity such as Orthodox & Coptic churches that predate the Reformation.

Then you have a growing number of believers such as myself who reject the label 'Protestant' because it defines people primarily in terms of what they are against.
PDN

I thought that protestant was about protesting 'for' certain things not 'against'? But. seriously I could be wrong and PDN seems better informed than me on these matters.

However I wonder how many people ever understood or 'knew' about some of these doctrines? Does anybody know of any comparable data from say twenty years ago that we could compare these results with. My guess is that there was always a lot of confusion among those filling the pews over doctrines such as 'transubstantiation' or the 'Immaculate Conception' anyway. And I do not know what effect having correct beliefs about these matters ever had on believers practice of faithful living. It seems to me that the emphasis in the past of ensuring the faithful knew their catechism went along with an authoritarianism that we would be loathe to go back to and that militated against people exploring their personal faith in Jesus.

I think we should also put this in the context of where church leaders are at on these matters. I was talking on Easter Sunday with a cousin of mine who is good friend and a practising Roman Catholic (I am not, does that make me a prod?). She was asking me did I believe in an 'afterlife'. The origin of her question lay in the results of some survey she had seen in which 40 percent of Roman Catholic priests had reported that they did not. I do not know if anyone here has more information on this? In any case my intuitive understanding is that within the ranks of all the larger denominations there is probably disagreement 'or a lack of confidence in their 'official' line on a wide range of doctrinal issues. And I do not think that simply teaching right doctrine would solve this.

So maybe it is a good thing that the veneer of Christian culture gets swept away and we get a different basis for establishing faith in Jesus in this land?

Also I kind of recall that the apostle Paul especially had some major issues with trying to get people straight on what they were supposed to believe, so I guess there is nothing new about this.

So I suppose that my big issue with a survey such as this is whether it is really useful at all in helping Christians understand where people are in terms of their relationship with Jesus?

PDN

Scofflaw wrote:

Wasn't the same dismal state of religious knowledge revealed by a survey in the US?

If so, it's hardly a product of a less religious society. A less learned culture, probably.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Less learned or just a different kind of learning? I am a committed Christian and a pastor, but I don't believe that a publicly-funded school is the correct place at all for children to learn religious doctrine (except in history where matters of doctrine have impacted on historical wars & other events). If any religious organisation (be they Muslim, Catholic, evangelical or anything else) wishes to set up a school and fund it themselves then they should be free to do so, but I strongly object to the State using my taxes to indoctrinate children into the beliefs of any church.

Scofflaw

PDN wrote:

Less learned or just a different kind of learning? I am a committed Christian and a pastor, but I don't believe that a publicly-funded school is the correct place at all for children to learn religious doctrine (except in history where matters of doctrine have impacted on historical wars & other events). If any religious organisation (be they Muslim, Catholic, evangelical or anything else) wishes to set up a school and fund it themselves then they should be free to do so, but I strongly object to the State using my taxes to indoctrinate children into the beliefs of any church.

Seconded.

cordially,
Scofflaw

philologos

PDN wrote:

If any religious organisation (be they Muslim, Catholic, evangelical or anything else) wishes to set up a school and fund it themselves then they should be free to do so, but I strongly object to the State using my taxes to indoctrinate children into the beliefs of any church.

As someone taking the LC Religion course at the minute, it is hardly indoctrination when you are teaching students to be more tolerant of other faith groups and learn about them (including atheism, agnosticism and works by these people. Infact I found some of Albert Camus' philosophy very interesting). We are encouraged to hold an open mind and people are encouraged to believe what they wish. It isn't indoctrination as the teacher isn't telling us to believe in Christianity, or Hinduism for example, nor is she telling us to be aggressive atheists.

BostonB

PDN wrote:

Less learned or just a different kind of learning? I am a committed Christian and a pastor, but I don't believe that a publicly-funded school is the correct place at all for children to learn religious doctrine (except in history where matters of doctrine have impacted on historical wars & other events). If any religious organisation (be they Muslim, Catholic, evangelical or anything else) wishes to set up a school and fund it themselves then they should be free to do so, but I strongly object to the State using my taxes to indoctrinate children into the beliefs of any church.

I think the survey demonstrates that they are not being indoctrinated. RE classes were always pitiful and obviously still are. Thats in RC faith schools at least. If you don't want a child to attend this dismal RE classes then they don't have to, that's hardly indoctrination. You could also move heaven and earth to put a child in a multi-denominational schools or other school elsewhere. People emigrate to find work or go to college, I don't see why schools are any different. Indeed people who emmigrated have returned with the sole reason of educating their children in Ireland. So where there's a will there's a way. But I don't think anyone needs fear indoctrination based on this survey.

I guess you have to decide do you think the govt should fund any faith school/multi-denominational or just secular schools. If just secular then theres a problem because they're aren't any AFAIK. Mind you there aren't enough places in faith schools so the Govt is failing on all sides. This is simply a lack of Political will do address the greed of over development and bad planning leading to lack of school places, and lack of schools choice. I do agree there should be more choice of school type. Not sure if thats not a different topic though.

In the context of this survey, I would agree with this comment from Scofflaw.

Scofflaw wrote:

...If so, it's hardly a product of a less religious society. A less learned culture, probably.....

Scofflaw

Jakkass wrote:

As someone taking the LC Religion course at the minute, it is hardly indoctrination when you are teaching students to be more tolerant of other faith groups and learn about them (including atheism, agnosticism and works by these people. Infact I found some of Albert Camus' philosophy very interesting). We are encouraged to hold an open mind and people are encouraged to believe what they wish. It isn't indoctrination as the teacher isn't telling us to believe in Christianity, or Hinduism for example, nor is she telling us to be aggressive atheists.

This is the kind of thing that makes it hard for atheists to stay out of Christian threads...why 'aggressive' atheists? Is that shorthand for 'atheists who actually deny God' as opposed to 'people we call atheists because they don't think about God'?

'Aggressive' in what way? Do you mean that we evangelise? Like Christians do? We preach? Like Christians do? We'd like to see our morality generally adopted? Like Christians would?

I think your teacher may be failing you.

cordially,
Scofflaw

BostonB

Scofflaw wrote:

T...'Aggressive' in what way? Do you mean that we evangelise? Like Christians do? We preach? Like Christians do? We'd like to see our morality generally adopted? Like Christians would?...

I also was wondering what "aggressive atheists" meant, but you've just explained it.

philologos

I should have used the word extreme before Christianity and Hinduism, excuse me, I was trying to compare the extremes. However now that the point has been raised. There are serious Christian extremists such as the Phelps' (although one could argue that they are grossly manipulating our faith), and that there are also militant atheists who believe religion itself is harmful such as Richard Dawkins. Sorry for the mistake... I didn't claim that all Atheists were aggressive though. There is infact a definition for militant atheism, sometimes phrased as aggressive atheism - "A related stance is militant atheism, which is generally characterized by antireligious views."

lostexpectation

Jakkass wrote:

But then on the other hand people are demanding that the Religion course be secularlised, which has been done to an extent, by adding humanist philosophy, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism etc. The problem with this is you rarely have time to study scripture in it.

yet you still can't the difference between pluralism and secularism, just like martin mansergh, thus you make the same mistake as him accusing people being aggresive secularist when in fact you are merely reffering to pluralism.

PDN

Jakkass wrote:

As someone taking the LC Religion course at the minute, it is hardly indoctrination when you are teaching students to be more tolerant of other faith groups and learn about them (including atheism, agnosticism and works by these people. Infact I found some of Albert Camus' philosophy very interesting). We are encouraged to hold an open mind and people are encouraged to believe what they wish. It isn't indoctrination as the teacher isn't telling us to believe in Christianity, or Hinduism for example, nor is she telling us to be aggressive atheists.

But it is indoctrination when children are barred from attending a state-funded school unless they can produce their baptism certificate, forced to take first-communion preparation classes in school time, and where non-Catholic children are forced to attend mass. All of this occurs in Irish schools in direct contravention of Article 40 (2.4) of the Irish Constitution.

philologos

PDN wrote:

But it is indoctrination when children are barred from attending a state-funded school unless they can produce their baptism certificate, forced to take first-communion preparation classes in school time, and where non-Catholic children are forced to attend mass. All of this occurs in Irish schools in direct contravention of Article 40 (2.4) of the Irish Constitution.

Never happened in my primary school. I went to a Church of Ireland based one though.

PDN

Jakkass wrote:

Never happened in my primary school. I went to a Church of Ireland based one though.

Never happened to my daughter, either, I paid for her to go to a private Christian School. Best 100 quid a month I ever spent, well worth the sacrifice of having to drive a succession of beat-up old cars.

BostonB

PDN wrote:

But it is indoctrination when children are barred from attending a state-funded school unless they can produce their baptism certificate, forced to take first-communion preparation classes in school time, and where non-Catholic children are forced to attend mass. All of this occurs in Irish schools in direct contravention of Article 40 (2.4) of the Irish Constitution.

For some reason you fail to quote same.

"2.4°: Legislation providing State aid for schools shall not discriminate between schools under the management of different religious denominations, nor be such as to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school."

Of course you also have Section 7 of the Equal Status Act 2000. Which is denominational schools are permitted to refuse to admit non co-religionists in certain circumstances.

"(c) where the establishment is a school providing primary or post-primary education to students and the objective of the school is to provide education in an environment which promotes certain religious values, it admits persons of a particular religious denomination in preference to others or it refuses to admit as a student a person who is not of that denomination and, in the case of a refusal, it is proved that the refusal is essential to maintain the ethos of the school,"

Ditto a clause for same genders..

"(a) where the establishment is not a third-level institution and admits students of one gender only, it refuses to admit as a student a person who is not of that gender,"

AFAIK you can opt out of religious education completely on request, and I haven't heard of any schools insisting on baptism certificate when challenged. But perhaps you have 1st hand experience of a many schools doing this. Though obviously if its a faith school, and it has a faith ethos, (as its entitled to have) its going to be hard to avoid that ethos completely.

Which schools force/req kids to

1) have a baptism certificate
2) take first-communion preparation classes
2) attend mass

IMO the state funding is discriminatory and prejudicial. The RC faith is indoctrination, as are many other religions. However its indoctrination you can opt out of. Not easily, but that's simply because of the historical context, and the lack of political will to change the status quo.

philologos

I've never heard of a RC school that forces children to go to mass. If that is true it is something that should be seriously frowned upon. Children should be encouraged to develop their own faith in God.

Splendour

PDN wrote:

Also you have evangelical Catholics who, while remaining as members of the Roman Catholic Church, hold to an evangelical view of Scripture and the necessity for a personal 'born-again' experience of Jesus Christ.
PDN

Thanks PDN, your post cleared up a couple of things, but am mystified by the above quote. If one is an evangelical,(of which I am),I do not see how they can also remain practicing members of the Catholic church,(of which I was-very much so).

As evangelicals we believe soley in the word of God. I don't understand how someone can call themselves a born again Christian and also adhere to Catholic teachings. Is this something you would equate with Messianic Jews who also keep their jewish traditions?

BrianCalgary

I certainly agree with PDN's post regarding 'protestant'. I am not protesting anything, I am proclaiming Christ. There is a difference. Especially historically.

One can be an evangelical Catholic, if they are out proclaiming their faith and wishing to bring people into and introduce them to Christianity.

Back to the OP: It is a sad state of affairs with the lack of knowledge going around. It is not solely on religion though. We just celebrated the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Peoples lack of knowledge on that and other Canadian history is sorely lacking here in Canada.

Even in our church when we ask our youth a few little Bible trivia questions their knowledge is sorely lacking.

We certainly aren't arming our youth with the word of God. We are instead filling them with fluff.

philologos

Messanic Jews also believe in the Word of God alone I think you'll find.

BostonB

Jakkass wrote:

I've never heard of a RC school that forces children to go to mass. If that is true it is something that should be seriously frowned upon. Children should be encouraged to develop their own faith in God.

Consider that some parents might send their child to a specific faith school in order to get religious education in their faith. However the survey would suggest children are not remembering too much about it regardless.

Spyral

the problem is that religion is not taught. Long ago people learned the 'rules' / guidelines (to uber trads they are rules and you burn if you dont follow ) of the church and had catechisms and things.

Thats all gone. FFS I never heard of purgatory until I read a catechism and Im condisered learned in terms of religion.

Splendour

Jakkass wrote:

Messanic Jews also believe in the Word of God alone I think you'll find.

They believe in the word of God, but they also (some of them) keep their Jewish traditions. If they believe that Jesus died on the cross for them but still feel they also need to keep up their traditions for salvation, then this IMO,is wrong.

Similarly with 'Evangelical Catholics'; if they too feel they need to keep certain rules and regulations despite having accepted the message of the cross, I also feel this is wrong and quite frankly goes against scripture. It's like saying to God, 'well hey, just in case you didn't get it right, lemme give you a hand out here...'

For the record,I am NOT claiming here that all Catholics are not Christian, in case some might pick it up that way...

Zombrex

This may seem like a dumb point, and apologies if it has already been covered, but what exactly is this survey comparing itself too?

I mean did people 50 years ago, or 100 years ago or 500 years ago know more on average about the dogma of each religion more than today?

For a long period the vast majority of Christians had never read the Bible. There is that bit in The Crucible where the priest asks the man and his wife to recite the 10 Commandments and they do it in the wrong order, which I imagine was put in on purpose to reflect the level of religious knowledge of the ordinary person in the 16th century.

Even after the Bible was mass produced in languages other than Latin it still had limited availability because a lot of people couldn't read. This was a fact well into the late 19th century.

Maybe people in general never really knew this stuff?

Asiaprod

Jakkass wrote:

I've never heard of a RC school that forces children to go to mass. If that is true it is something that should be seriously frowned upon. Children should be encouraged to develop their own faith in God.

Does a Christian Brothers School count as a RC School? If it does, for 6 years I was forced to go to mass EVERY day at 6:30.

lostexpectation

BrianCalgary wrote:

Back to the OP: It is a sad state of affairs with the lack of knowledge going around. It is not solely on religion though. We just celebrated the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Peoples lack of knowledge on that and other Canadian history is sorely lacking here in Canada.

We certainly aren't arming our youth with the word of God. We are instead filling them with fluff.

inregard to irish education i think its got more to do with too much focus on exams and lack of broad education.

BostonB

Asiaprod wrote:

Does a Christian Brothers School count as a RC School? If it does, for 6 years I was forced to go to mass EVERY day at 6:30.

Against your parent wishes? Where was this?

philologos

Splendour wrote:

They believe in the word of God, but they also (some of them) keep their Jewish traditions. If they believe that Jesus died on the cross for them but still feel they also need to keep up their traditions for salvation, then this IMO,is wrong.

Their traditions are all clearly defined in the Bible. Infact it's always been a question on my mind why Christians don't celebrate Passover, as it's relevant to Christ as well as Moses. As long as they don't claim that people are ritually unclean, and stone people to death (very unlikely to occur anyway their practises are perfectly within Christian bounds.

Asiaprod

BostonB wrote:

Against your parent wishes? Where was this?

O'Briens in Malahide. I was a boarder there for 6 pleasent years and RC indoctrination was de facto.

PDN

Jakkass wrote:

I've never heard of a RC school that forces children to go to mass. If that is true it is something that should be seriously frowned upon. Children should be encouraged to develop their own faith in God.

Presentation College, Greenhills, Drogheda. Not only were children forced to attend mass at Christmas, but one non-Catholic child who asked to be excused was told by her teacher, "You'll be at that mass, even if I have to drag you by the hair."

Splendour

Jakkass wrote:

Their traditions are all clearly defined in the Bible. Infact it's always been a question on my mind why Christians don't celebrate Passover, as it's relevant to Christ as well as Moses. As long as they don't claim that people are ritually unclean, and stone people to death (very unlikely to occur anyway their practises are perfectly within Christian bounds.

We celebrate the Passover of the new covenant-Easter!:)

robindch

Wicknight wrote:

Maybe people in general never really knew this stuff?

Personally, I'd have expected religious knowledge in this country to have peaked in the mid-20th century, when education first became pretty-much universal, and before the churches first began to lose influence in the face of an educated population.

Recall that most of the religious instruction of the time was the kind of Kafkaesque rote-indoctrination which was shown in the freaky school-room scene in "The Rocky Road to Dublin" which everybody should see, in case anybody thinks that the past was a better time than now. And yes, I remember quite clearly being taught that kind of stuff in that kind of way in the 1970's down the country...

BrianCalgary

Splendour wrote:

We celebrate the Passover of the new covenant-Easter!:)

I went to a Messianic Jewish Passover celebration last year and it was unbelievably enriching. To get and understand the tie in between the passover and the last supper was fabulous.

I think we as evangelicals have done two things over the years that have hurt richness in Christianity.

They are distancing ourselves from the feasts of teh OT and also distancing ourselves from Catholicism and the style of worship in teh RC church.

maitri

Asiaprod wrote:

Does a Christian Brothers School count as a RC School? If it does, for 6 years I was forced to go to mass EVERY day at 6:30.

And having left that school (and the Catholic faith) you still managed to find and join the only Buddhist school where everybody is required to get up really early every morning to meditate. Must be some sort of karma, eh?

BostonB

Asiaprod wrote:

O'Briens in Malahide. I was a boarder there for 6 pleasent years and RC indoctrination was de facto.

Against your parent wishes, that terrible. Why did they not just take you out of it? Why on earth did they have mass at 6.30 everyday. I would thought there can't be anywhere other than a monastery that does that.

PDN wrote:

Presentation College, Greenhills, Drogheda. Not only were children forced to attend mass at Christmas, but one non-Catholic child who asked to be excused was told by her teacher, "You'll be at that mass, even if I have to drag you by the hair."

What did the parents to deal with the situation?

PDN

BostonB wrote:

What did the parents to deal with the situation?

One complicating factor was that some of the parents were asylum seekers and thought that if they raised any objection it could be used against them to deny their applications for Irish citizenship. Therefore they approached me, as their pastor, and I went to see the principal. I guess it was like a religious 'class action' case.

Let's say that the principal and I agreed to disagree. But we have had no recurrence since.

Asiaprod

maitri wrote:

And having left that school (and the Catholic faith) you still managed to find and join the only Buddhist school where everybody is required to get up really early every morning to meditate. Must be some sort of karma, eh?

Hi Maitri, indeed. I would have to say I actually enjoyed the experience of spending the early morning in meditation (mass). I guess it is someting that has stuck with me. Early morning is so peacefull and the time spent sets one up for the day.:)

BostonB wrote:

Against your parent wishes, that terrible. Why did they not just take you out of it? Why on earth did they have mass at 6.30 everyday. I would thought there can't be anywhere other than a monastery that does that.

No choice in the matter, it was a school for special needs students i.e, those who had lost parents or who had difficult environments in their home life.
Luckily I do not hold it against them, not all of the Brothers were bad.

maitri

Asiaprod wrote:

Hi Maitri, indeed. I would have to say I actually enjoyed the experience of spending the early morning in meditation (mass). I guess it is someting that has stuck with me. Early morning is so peacefull and the time spent sets one up for the day.:)

Lucky you!:) It must be nice indeed to be such an early morning bird. Never been able to change myself into that, having always been more of a night owl - and really dreading early mornings.
But nights are also peaceful quiet times.

I wouldn't mind early morning meditation myself... but I already get up at 530am, I don't want to get up even earlier!!