The Dogma of the People

Greetings all,

I've heard many negative attitudes towards Catholic schools and churchs. I went to a Catholic school, elementary and high school. Some people seem to think we are brainwashed. In my education, we were not brainwashed. We were taught subjects like everyone else. We were taught math, physics, chemistry, biology, history, etc as they taught in regular schools. God was not mentioned at all.

The only difference between a Catholic school (in my day) was that we had to wear a uniform and we had to take religion class. This is where we learned about our religion. In grade 11, we had learned about the major religions of the world. I don't know if in the public system they learn anything about other religions. Maybe they don't get exposed to religion education until they get to university.

The other thing was sex education. I think we had our first sex ed class in grade 6. It wasn't until high school where they advocated no sex until marriage. We all know this was poppycock because the teenagers probably experimented by the time they brought this up.

I went to church a lot as a child because my mother is a regular church goer. I don't think I mind going until I hit 14 and then I started questioning religion. I remember in grade 8, everyone was getting confirmed and it was about consciously choosing to be Catholic. I was skeptical about doing it but only did it because everyone else did. I think 2 people in my class didn't because they weren't Catholic so I don't think it would have been a big deal to not do it.

We didn't have pedophiles for priests in my church. As far as I know. My mom is involved in church life, such as giving out communion so I'm sure if stuff like that was going on, she may have told us.

So many people think it's unfair that Catholics get their own school. Obviously when it first got started, it was a reflection of the people - the population was mainly Catholic. Now times have changed and more people are either agnostic, atheist or humanist.

I personally support Waldorf education so for me, I would rather see Waldorf become mainstream.

I've had my own beef with the Catholic church but I don't think religion will go away. People will always desire religious community in some form. I just would like people to be more open minded towards religious schools and not assume we who have gone through it are brainwashed and poorly educated.

The other thing that bothers me is that people think if you have a religion, you obviously believe in all its theories. The truth is that many people do not agree with 100% of what a Church stands for. It's like a company. Chances are you belong to a corporate environment but you do not 100% believe everything they do and believe. But you still belong to it.

The Church has to have a tenant of beliefs to stand upon. They have to have values that all churches of the same belief 'agree to'. Does this mean all Catholic people believe in it? No. How about we talk to people as individuals instead of lumping them all and assuming they all share the same beliefs.

Religious freedom means letting people have the freedom to decide whether they want to associate with a religion or not.