1. Religion's Real Child Abuse

Comment #70507 by kiodasu on September 15, 2007 at 7:26 pm

Hi..
I hope this is the right place to put this comment.
Writing a bit to say you can be catholic and have a normal upbringing, and still think science/ is great...
Maybe not called "true" catholic by others.
You tell me.

I think I am a roman catholic. I went through all the rituals ( baptism, communion 1 & 2, church wedding ).
I spent 6 years in a catholic school, then 6 years in public schools in Europe.
My mother taught catechism / church history to little kids for 15 years. Some priests and nuns in the family, people working for christian charities. At home, no big emphasis on religion except sometimes some books/history, and before I turned 12, my mother trying to bring us to church every sunday morning. Also got some saturday morning classes a few years.
That`s for my background...
Oh, and book-addict, I devored religion history books, ancient and recent archeological studies.

At school, I didnt feel like the teachers were trying to indoctrinate us. We had a nun teaching music, and sometimes giving catolicism history lessons - otherwise everybody else was normal teachers. Some of the kids were muslims, other jews. It didnt really matter to us kids - it was more important to know if a kid was fat/short/strange ears/intelligent/teacher`s pet/.

Sometimes we had to go to the school church, yawn a bit, wait till it finish - and it was sometimes followed by cakes. We liked cakes.

At home, my father preferred soccer on tv or going to the swimming pool, on sunday morning,
so going to the church was never a big issue - my mother would go there more often than us,
and pray for our salvation maybe, or for the soul of loved ones that had died - she knew we would get bored to death if we go there too often. No point of teaching spirituality to 10years old who want to run and do things all the time.

Our neighbour and friend was the priest - he had worked with the army years ago, and had lots of jokes from that time - that he could not tell when saying the mass, of course... He had a very good friend who was helping him at home ( cooking, cleaning, ... ) and in an ideal world, would have been his wife. This was not too be, "god forbids". She wept a lot when he died and when his distant "family" nearly throwed her out of his/their house.

This priest had lots of opinion running directly against
the church teaching ( on abortion, birth control, ... ) and would only speak of them with close friends like my parents.
His superior in the church do not look fondly on priests who have their own opinions.

My mother was teaching catolic history and traditions mostly - she didnt force anyone to believe this or this, but rather tried to pass on traditions. She like the pope and believe the medias are most often changing what he is saying or unjustly critising his words.
She doesnt follow blindly what he is saying and believe he is a human who can also say rubbish,
or that most church edicts should be guidelines, but you should not think you will burn in hell if you dont follow exactly what the church is saying. That is the attitude of lots of people around us, still calling themselves catholic. Moderate ?

Because she didnt believe in the 6-days creation, was ok with abortion, was happy to see kids asking lots of questions, and mostly wanted people to grow up as nice and happy people more than being 100% church-goers,
some parents told her she was a "witch" turning their kids against religion.
( the religious school where she was a voluntary teacher, kept her for years - to happy to have an educated person willing to spend times teaching religion stuff )

I grow up with this, seeing religion, struggling with all the contradictions and trying to understand why there are not more people seeing them, or why my parents seem to be so keen on catolicism... I loved long arguments on religion, and most of them would end up with "you are too young" or "you have not studied the bible well enough" or "go read St Augustin", or "you must have more faith and it will clearer to you".
Well, I was not convinced.
Ah, and I was reading lots of SF at the time too...which of course was a baaaaad influence, seeing how so many authors can produce books speaking of different world, history, gods, ...
The human mind can weave so many stories..


So, coming out slowly now ( atheist )...hard to face and please one family with one`s non-belief, or belief rather in science/experimentation, rather in the words and propaganda of men dead a long time ago...
I have a son now...dont know yet if he will get christened - to please family and make him part of a larger culture, and also please the part of me that is still a tiny bit catholic,
or to get to be agnostic/atheist from the start,
with all the risk he will be converted to another (more) dangerous religions ?
( speaking of islam there - giving my opinion )

Well, he will have to make his own mistakes - I sure hope he will get to know my culture, my religious background,
and come to love history too - and criticism too !
So I`ll start him on the catholic culture early, but mixing Father Xmas, Fairy tales, Bilbo the Hobbit, Jesus, Feynman & Einstein, and that doing sports and observing nature is important. I`m a hopeful father planning too much!
If someone try to abuse him, on religious grounds or not, he is going to feel his skull banging against the wall pretty soon, priest or not.

Your comments have made me think and I`m no longer so sure how much of my religious background is really "needed" by my kid.

I hope catolicism can be still used and be perpetuated, but I hope more as a ritual, some place where you go and have a family gathering ( for wedding, communion, .. ), big dinners. Or people who can help you relax, or give advice, help people get more spiritual and nice, but not giving lessons on "if you dont believe that X is the transcendant part of god on a blue moon and if you say differently you will go to hell".

That will be a start, before religion disappears completely. Saying goodbye is not too easy as I`m doing it slowly. Maybe saying goodbye is hard because I will feel I wasted so much of my time on age-old propaganda/poems, taken as a guide to one`s life.
In that sense, it was abuse.

One thing i have to admit catolicism education was good - was the notion of forgiveness. Or maybe that was just the education given by my parents. Being open and forgiving people, that is a very big deal to me.

Hope you have a good day -
Thanks for your books and website,
they put words on thoughts I could not get out.

To be true with oneself and follow consistency is not so easy but a rewarding path.

No easy solution for all the kids that got abused, I hope they meet good people who help them rebuild themself. My old neighbour would have punched/kicked any priest who did bad stuff to a kid, and then turn them to the police.

I hope your books get translated in more languages.