Religion and Engaging with the Teacher

There is no separation between church and state in Ireland. 96% of primary schools are controlled by a church. Religious oaths and deference to the Christian god are still in the constitution. We can't even build a new national maternity hospital without it turning into a turf war between two sets of nuns.

You might like to inform yourself about the Enlightenment. Europe under Catholic Church control was a profoundly brutal and anti-intellectual place.

The tired old yarns about communism. Nothing to do with atheism. Nazism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism etc. all tapped into the same hooks in the brain that religion uses, they just replaced a cult of unquestioning obedience and veneration for a god with a cult of unquestioning obedience and veneration for a leader.

So you don't see the massive contradictions as massive contractions then. OK... If people just continue to go along with a system they don't agree with, and even do sacraments etc. they don't believe in, then nothing will change.

Parents have the same right to send their child to a school regardless of their religion or non-belief. They also have the right for their child to be treated equally and with equal respect regardless of their religion or non-belief.

It's the schools which used to refuse to allow the first thing (until the law stopped them) and the ones (many but not all) which still refuse to do the second thing which are the problem here, not the fact that non-catholic parents exist.

They usually have no choice other than to send their child to a religious patron school - but you knew that.

What they can do and tbh should do is insist that their child is opted out of religion. The greater the number of parents doing this the harder it is for schools to pretend that it's only a few "awkward" or "weird" people who want to do this, or that there's a silent majority of parents who just love catholicism despite never attending a church.

OP said they didn't have a non-religious school option, that's true for parents in most areas of the country, it's also true in my part of Dublin, too.

Hiding his beliefs to get a place? Catholic schools aren't allowed to discriminate against non-catholics in enrolment any more so whether he did or didn't "hide" anything is irrelevant.

I think part of the problem here is there's no such thing as 'atheist beliefs' - all atheism is, is not believing in a god. It's the default, everyone is born an atheist. They then chose to believe in a god at some point in their life.

There's a massive difference between raising a child as an atheist and raising them religious.

In one scenario, you're just saying you don't believe in something, there's no evidence to you that it exists. That does not mean that at some point in the future, such evidence could present itself and you could change your opinion. It's unlikely, but you're not completely ruling it out by considering yourself an atheist. Again, all it means is you don't believe in a deity right now.

In the other scenario, you are saying that yes, the deity does exist and not only does it exist, here's a strict set of rules it laid down to us humans a few thousand years ago which you must follow to get into the afterlife etc.

They are completely and utterly different.

Your child is receiving religious instruction so yes, you are allowing the school to force catholic beliefs onto your child. It's really not hard to understand - but many Irish people who grew up in this system have a hard time seeing how abnormal and abhorrent this is, even if they are no longer believers themselves - that's the power of childhood indoctrination in action!

And there's no need to be abusive.

You are calling the op a hypocrite for sending their child to an RC school but you've done the same thing. Explain how that works please.

As I mentioned above, not believing in something (aka, atheism) is not a 'belief'. You just don't believe in something. I'm sure you also don't believe in many other things, they aren't 'beliefs' either.

Excluding your child from religion is not 'forcing a belief' on them, because there's no 'belief' to force. Non belief is not a belief.

Yeah, Ireland. 🙄