Too much trash talk against Christianity

Nola Microscopic Sucker wrote: »

I wasn't asked for a baptismal cert when I enrolled my son in an RC school last year. In fact 10% of students are not RC which for a relatively small school is a fair chunk.

We cater for non RC children by them either remaining in class or leaving the roomcand being supervised by another member of staff.
I'm also on the board of management, so so much for Catholic bias !!

I don't think this portrays the full extent of what happens when children are singled out like this. Children of five, six, seven years of age have no concept of religion and are just being told that they are different from the rest without really being able to understand why. This can have a traumatic effect on young children who are just starting to build relationships with their peers.

looksee wrote: »

My comments were aimed at the government and the departments involved. I do not believe the Catholic Bishops have any obligation to act to remove themselves from education, but the public representatives have an obligation to remove them.

I don't think public representatives actually have that power, even if they wanted to, the RCC would wave the Constitution in their faces and claim that no public representative has the power to over-ride the Constitution, that any change must be put to a referendum. The obligation would be on people themselves to vote to have the special protection given to religion (that would be any religion, not just the RCC) removed from the Constitution.

That is a great theory, but if all the schools within reasonable distance are Catholic ethos, and this is given as the reason the children are being kept at home, it is hard to see how parents would be convinced to send their children further afield. This is a complex area and full of 'ifs' and 'what abouts', but the solution would be to have non-religious schools as the norm, and let religious schools be the exception.

That would be the nuclear solution, not to mention the fact that you would then have to make alternative arrangements for parents who have children already in religious ethos schools. The State requires that children are given a mandatory minimum standard of education. The Constitution doesn't specify how that standard should be achieved, and the only obligation on the State is a reasonable and practicable one, though the Constitution doesn't specify how that should be measured either.

If a child was in foster care and the social workers had specified that the child's religious beliefs were to be maintained, then they were quite right to take issue. On the other hand it might have made more sense to make sure the child was placed with a more appropriate family. Surely in a country where such a high proportion of people identify as religious it would not have been too difficult to find a suitable family?

It was an odd one alright, I didn't have access to the full details of the case, but I imagine they were the most suitable family could be found, apart from that one particular detail, which is why it stood out to me as so unusual.

I found a recent thread where someone was offended at the basic Christian concept of original sin, which was both funny and sad. Perhaps the priest explained it badly, and religious education in schools is a notable disaster.

looksee wrote: »

The same arguments applied to the marriage equality change to the constitution; that was set in motion by the government, and passed! And all other changes to the constitution have started with government action. For sure the only way for there to be a referendum is for the government to initiate the proceedings. I do think we are probably not quite ready for it yet and another couple of years would be advantageous to the non-religion faction.

Support for the marriage equality referendum was in the works for years before it ever gained popular support among the Irish people enough for the Government to call a referendum on the issue, and even then the Government didn't particularly want all that much to do with it because they knew it was a political hot potato.

I think education is another matter entirely because parents will be more invested in it than people who don't particularly care one way or the other. I imagine it would probably be the same turnout of the electorate as the children's referendum because children are literally at the mercy of adults to determine their future. If not enough adults actually care about the issue, I couldn't possibly predict the result of any referendum to amend the Constitution with regard to education.

I don't think though that it's time is the issue, but rather creating public awareness and informing people about their choices so that at least they can make an informed choice for themselves.

As to the children who are already in religious schools, that could be solved by having an overlap period when children entering a state school did not have religious instruction but children already there would continue with the current situation as long as they were in the school. Or provision could be made for religious instruction to take place at the end of the school day for those who wish it, during the overlap.

I know you know it's far more complex than that, and no school with a religious ethos would allow for that, so you're talking about having children from the same family in two or even three different schools. That might also alleviate the past pupils and siblings criteria which comes into play in oversubscribed schools far more often than the religious criteria (actually I know a good many parents who send their children to particular schools based upon the fact that they and the staff participate in sports and clubs together).

I've heard of the idea of moving religious education classes to the end of the day, or the start of the day, but I don't know that that would actually suit many parents either to have to bring their children to school later or collect them earlier. I think that would apply though more to parents who don't want their children to participate in religious education, and with the new ERB curriculum being talked about, it may prove to be even more of a logistical nightmare for both parents who do not want their children exposed to religious education, and those parents who only want their child exposed to a particular religious education.

It all comes down to the gathering support among parents really before any action will be taken by Government.

Labarbapostiza wrote: »

Be the Jaysus. I don't want a religious funeral. That would be the final insult. Having a pedophile con artist saying some hokey and getting paid as they lower me in. Over me dead body, they will.

You basically said every priest was a nonce and no remarks was passed by anyone, if you said the same thing about a muslim or jew no doubt the ban hammer would have been down on you.

I've always been of the opinion it's open season on all things Catholic around here and posts like this do little to convince me otherwise.

Galwayguy35 wrote: »

You basically said every priest was a nonce and no remarks was passed by anyone, if you said the same thing about a muslim or jew no doubt the ban hammer would have been down on you.

I've always been of the opinion it's open season on all things Catholic around here and posts like this do little to convince me otherwise.

The RCC gets a bad press and frankly much of it is merited, not necessarily just for the actions of individual clerics but for the collective refusal to admit culpability and suppression of truth.
I'm not an adherent of any religion and I have met clergy of all persuasions whom I have liked and admired and others whom I thought did not really have a vocation but who were trapped by circumstance. No doubt this happens in all religions but is, I think, compounded in Catholicism by celibacy. This can lead to frustration, not just in the sexual sense but in day to day interaction with the world.
Roman Catholicism needs to step back and take a good look at itself, I often think it compares to political parties which put party before country. The RCC needs to decide are they Catholic first or Christian first, an internal reformation if you like. It's my opinion that, in the first and second world at least, failure to change will eventually lead to irrelevancy. Let's face it, if you had predicted fifty years ago that upwards of 90% of Catholics in Ireland, then possibly the most Catholic of countries, would not attend Mass on a Sunday, people would have said you were mad. Therein lies the future.

Baggy Trousers wrote: »

A lot of very bad things were done in the name of "Christianity" in this country in the last 100 years. People are angry at having been duped for so long. I think it's payback time.
I am convinced that the current generation of kids will be more enlightened/informed about religion and less frightened by religion and will cast it to the scrapheap.

You know, part of me agrees with you. There is no doubt that evil stalked the corridors of the Catholic church throughout the last century. It wasn't only the last century though. I believe that God and any semblance of goodness, completely abandoned the church for long periods of the middle ages. They are changing, but very, very slowly.
Recently a close relative died in St Francis hospice. I attended a memorial, organised by the Capuchins, for the relatives of those who died in the past year. It was absolutely terrific. If the young people you speak of, could witness that side of the church, I think they would not want to see it completely tossed onto the scrapheap. I came away thinking that there is a role for the church in society, but they really must get back to the basics and abandon the pomp and nonsense that infuriates so many people.

Safehands wrote:

You know, part of me agrees with you. There is no doubt that evil stalked the corridors of the Catholic church throughout the last century. It wasn't only the last century though. I believe that God and any semblance of goodness, completely abandoned the church for long periods of the middle ages. They are changing, but very, very slowly. Recently a close relative died in St Francis hospice. I attended a memorial, organised by the Capuchins, for the relatives of those who died in the past year. It was absolutely terrific. If the young people you speak of, could witness that side of the church, I think they would not want to see it completely tossed onto the scrapheap. I came away thinking that there is a role for the church in society, but they really must get back to the basics and abandon the pomp and nonsense that infuriates so many people.

You're talking about people taking care of other people and being kind to them in a time of need. That has nothing to do with a god. The god business gets in the way of people being kind and often mandates unkind behaviour in the name of adhering to religious doctrine. I get that doctrine is important to keeping religions going but religious are are only good in so far as they encourage bad people behave well because most good people will behave well due to normal social pressure.

Christianity isn't being unfairly treated as such, it's just being held to the same standard as any other code of conduct. It was immune to that kind of scrutiny in the past and now it isn't.

Marhay70 wrote: »

Really, only in the last century? The Catholic Church has been guilty of evil over the whole course of its existence.
That is not to say that there are no genuinely good people in all positions throughout the church, there are and always have been. It is the church as an institution that is the problem, successive hierarchies have abandoned the principles of love, tolerance and forgiveness as preached by Jesus, in favour of a totalitarian system which demands obedience and conformity in all cases.

I agree with you. That tolerance and love you speak of is what they need to get back to. Give up the nonsense that they go on with. I believe that the young people will then identiify more with them. They don't identify with the type of things the church preaches right now.
There is a place for that tolerance and love message in all sectors of society, particularly with the young.

love humanity wrote: »

Bashing of Christianity is encouraged in the media (especially USA media which we get a lot of here) and the people bashing follow what they are fed by them.

"Let me be clear as I can be: In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about. That’s not keeping it real or telling it like it is. It’s not challenging political correctness… that’s just not knowing what you’re talking about.... The rejection of facts, the rejection of reason and science — that is the path to decline. It calls to mind the words of Carl Sagan, who graduated high school here in New Jersey, he said: 'We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depths of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.'" - President Obama, Rutgers University Commencement

That US media Christian bashing?

love humanity wrote: »

No that is a quote from an American president. I am talking of the mass media and entertainment industry.

Regardless, reality doesn't care how people spin it or who preaches whatever to the contrary. Reality just is.

love humanity wrote: »

Bashing of Christianity is encouraged in the media (especially USA media which we get a lot of here) and the people bashing follow what they are fed by them.

You're right of course, Christianity bashing is getting way out of hand, I think all religions should be bashed equally seeing as they are all as bad as each other.