Non religious (unbaptised) children in Catholic school - your experiences

krankykitty

Hi,

I know we have done the whole "religion in schools" thing on here a lot, however I'd like to start a discussion or survey about peoples actual experiences of having a child of non faith in a Catholic school (supposing you actually got them in without a baptism cert)

Say there is a hypothetical child who is not baptised and are not being raised in any faith. Now, said parents would like said hypothetical child to attend the catholic school in the area, as there are no Educate Together or similar in the area. The child is not baptised but manages to get in to the school. As he's not baptised he probably won't be doing communion etc (but the parents have no problem if he wants to participate in the religious activities in the school)

I'm looking for your experiences of similar situations and whether such a child would experience discrimination from the school or students because he isn't baptised, or because he is not being brought up in a faith. I have heard stories (admittedly, from the 80's) where primary schools have set up things called "faith friends" and the couple of Muslim/Jewish/Other kids in the class were left out and not invited to other kid's houses because of it. I presume they wouldn't carry out such discriminatory activities even in a faith school in 2011... would they ? :eek:

I'd also be very interested to hear if any parents have experienced such discrimination and if so, how they handled it.


NOTE - Before the usual *rabble rabble, the parents shouldn't be sending child to catholic school* brigade come out, please bear in mind that there isn't exactly a wealth of choice, seeing the vast majority of schools have a Catholic ethos. In this example, the nearest Educate Together is many miles away - and the parents want to send their child to a school in the area (so the child can make friends with other children in the area). I don't think this should be too much to ask in Ireland 2011.

Dades

Perhaps expand the anecdotal net to cover nieces and nephews of posters here? I don't know if there are that many posters with kids actually in school.

People - if we could keep the responses free of what has been said many times before and let the real life experiences speak that would be great.

krankykitty

Thanks Dades, yes experiences from nieces/nephews would be good, also friend's children...

Animord

This is not exactly an answer to your question, but I have very close friends who are Christmas/Easter Protestants. Their children are baptised into the CoI but religion just doesn't really come up much in their lives. Anyway the children are all at a local small town school and there are no other protestants (or indeed any other faith/non faith) children there. My friends did not want their children to go to mass or be involved in religious instruction and the school is fine about it. There are times when the whole school is going to mass and clearly the children can't be left alone and my friends are ok about the children going to mass under those circumstances.

Anyway, getting to my point (!), the greatest pressure that I can see is actually from the other children. One of their daughters (9) has been in the class that has been taking first holy communion. It has been very difficult for everyone particuarly the child - she cannot understand why everyone else is getting dressed up, fake tanned, hundreds of euro and she can't have all this stuff. It clearly isn't fair when you are nine. And some of the other children seem to have been positively cruel to her about it. The teachers were worried because she was upset and feeling left out and suggested that the child be allowed to go to the service and be blessed rather than actually be given communion. The parents gave in under pressure from the child and everyone else, wrongly in my opinion. Someone lent her a dress and shoes and we all went. Most people were fine with it but some of the children made remarks to this child that she had no right to be there. She has been told that she will go to hell and Jesus doesn't love her - presumably they have learnt this from their parents. All this is fine when you are old enough to deal with it but at nine you just don't have the capacity to understand or deal with it.

But the biggest problem for her is that everyone else is getting loads of 'stuff' and when you are her age that matters - the other children are boasting about what they will buy with their communion money and this child just can't understand why she is left out.

On the whole I think that it is ok for all the children, they are generally accepted as just being different but this communion year has been difficult for everyone.

quad_red

Just wanna plus one this thread! Myself and Mrs Quad will all things going well have a little mr quad in 2/3 weeks time.

We resisted the catholic wedding but I foresee the whole baptism thing as being a major battle ground with the grandparents (to be) with education being a major issue.

So I'm Very very interested to hear folks experiences. The *only* reason we are considering baptizing is on school grounds.

Robert ninja

I remember my school days. There was a foreign kid who to class from Portugal. He wasn't catholic. Nobody knew but me for a while but then the local priest came in to check our holy star chart. It was basically a star chart specifically for religious behaviour.

So the priest was looking over it... seeing that my name had less and less stars and I had even asked to have my name removed making me the only atheist in the whole fking school. But he did notice that the new kid didn't even have his name up on it.

He asked the teacher why, and in front of the whole class announced that he wasn't of their religion. The preist shot the kid a look that could kill! I couldn't believe it... I was cringing. After that, he got bullied so much in the next two weeks that he and his family went back to their home country.

I felt really bad for that kid. I was the only one who treated him like a human being during his stay in Ireland. This was years ago.

That's my only experience of such things... hope it helps.