Religious education in schools

Duffman said:
Compare the posts on FMTTM of people of faith trying to impose their beliefs on others (haven’t seen many indoctrination threads) to those damming religion and seeking to remove people of faiths choice to believe? Can’t think of any on the first part of that question but absolutely loads of the second bit.
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Do people of faith give their children a choice to believe?
 
Duffman said:
Lot of ignorance on this thread. Many people commenting on the content of education in a schools with a religious character do so without having any recent experience of the breadth and quality of religious education taught in such schools. Intolerance or more precisely hatred of religion is always spewed out on here, amusingly from the same people who deplore governments removing our freedoms. I have stopped trying to have a balanced argument on here about religion as the pitchfork folk don’t do balance when it comes to people of faith. Parents can chose whether they do or do not want a school with a religious character for their child. It is a choice I hope they can continue to exercise.
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I have some insight. Note my post of a few days ago on another thread:

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Many faith schools dispense their duties under the law with distinction, but their ultimate purpose is to differentiate and divide. Catholic schools in England are invariably peopled by the children of former immigrants - Irish, Italian, and increasingly these days Polish and African - and the message is loud and clear: they may think they're top dogs in their own country but ours is the true, ancient religion. They stole our churches and our cathedrals, but their religion is a fake. In Ulster, the message is: they shout about their plastic faith, but this is our religion and our country and one day, we'll have it back. Division, and 'othering' of outsiders accompanies religion whatever the stripe.
And don't get me started with regard to Muslim & Jewish faith schools. You could hardly get a more warped, a more divisive, interpretation of 'education'. Ultimately, such schools seek to divide, to tell children 'they' are not like 'you', and the spiritual of ecumenical enquiry some practice up to a point, can equally be dispensed - and often is - in regular settings.
More than that though, religion incubates the forces of reaction - it seeks to row back the gains in personal liberty and tolerance that (Boydom is right) stem from Enlightenment values - and that is why populist (would-be) despots such as Putin and Orban cynically channel it. Alas, despite the best efforts of Pope Francis, the Catholic Church is destined to remain on the wrong side of the Culture War. Steve Bannon and his shadowy paymasters will see to that.
 
atypical_boro said:
Because the number of folk who actually hold religious beliefs in the UK has significantly diminished in the last 80 years, and will continue to do so over the next 80 years.

The state and religious beliefs should be kept completely separate in my view, and that includes
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equaliser said:
I have some insight. Note my post of a few days ago on another thread:

View attachment 73498
Many faith schools dispense their duties under the law with distinction, but their ultimate purpose is to differentiate and divide. Catholic schools in England are invariably peopled by the children of former immigrants - Irish, Italian, and increasingly these days Polish and African - and the message is loud and clear: they may think they're top dogs in their own country but ours is the true, ancient religion. They stole our churches and our cathedrals, but their religion is a fake. In Ulster, the message is: they shout about their plastic faith, but this is our religion and our country and one day, we'll have it back. Division, and 'othering' of outsiders accompanies religion whatever the stripe.
And don't get me started with regard to Muslim & Jewish faith schools. You could hardly get a more warped, a more divisive, interpretation of 'education'. Ultimately, such schools seek to divide, to tell children 'they' are not like 'you', and the spiritual of ecumenical enquiry some practice up to a point, can equally be dispensed - and often is - in regular settings.
More than that though, religion incubates the forces of reaction - it seeks to row back the gains in personal liberty and tolerance that (Boydom is right) stem from Enlightenment values - and that is why populist (would-be) despots such as Putin and Orban cynically channel it. Alas, despite the best efforts of Pope Francis, the Catholic Church is destined to remain on the wrong side of the Culture War. Steve Bannon and his shadowy paymasters will see to that.
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And with respect, the reality based on actually making hundreds of visits to 50 plus Catholic schools between the Tees and the Humber over the last decade couldn’t be further removed from your warped and bias interpretation.
 
Duffman said:
And with respect, the reality based on actually making hundreds of visits to 50 plus Catholic schools between the Tees and the Humber over the last decade couldn’t be further removed from your warped and bias interpretation.
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Hang on, so you think visiting 50 Catholic schools gives you a less warped and biased interpretation?
 
equaliser said:
I have some insight. Note my post of a few days ago on another thread:

View attachment 73498
Many faith schools dispense their duties under the law with distinction, but their ultimate purpose is to differentiate and divide. Catholic schools in England are invariably peopled by the children of former immigrants - Irish, Italian, and increasingly these days Polish and African - and the message is loud and clear: they may think they're top dogs in their own country but ours is the true, ancient religion. They stole our churches and our cathedrals, but their religion is a fake. In Ulster, the message is: they shout about their plastic faith, but this is our religion and our country and one day, we'll have it back. Division, and 'othering' of outsiders accompanies religion whatever the stripe.
And don't get me started with regard to Muslim & Jewish faith schools. You could hardly get a more warped, a more divisive, interpretation of 'education'. Ultimately, such schools seek to divide, to tell children 'they' are not like 'you', and the spiritual of ecumenical enquiry some practice up to a point, can equally be dispensed - and often is - in regular settings.
More than that though, religion incubates the forces of reaction - it seeks to row back the gains in personal liberty and tolerance that (Boydom is right) stem from Enlightenment values - and that is why populist (would-be) despots such as Putin and Orban cynically channel it. Alas, despite the best efforts of Pope Francis, the Catholic Church is destined to remain on the wrong side of the Culture War. Steve Bannon and his shadowy paymasters will see to that.
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What a bizarre and warped view you hold. Your opinion of teachers does nothing but harm and damage. The only division offered is by you and your words. I'm not so sure there are Catholic and Protestant child gangs at war over who is top dog. You're a fantasist!
 
atypical_boro said:
Hang on, so you think visiting 50 Catholic schools gives you a less warped and biased interpretation?
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you put forward I presumed based on your own opinion a picture of faith based education - including a very specific view on Catholic education that simply bears no reality with what is actually happening on the ground. Happy to hear some real evidence or detail to back up your extremely detrimental view of those who support and work in such schools?
 
Duffman said:
you put forward I presumed based on your own opinion a picture of faith based education - including a very specific view on Catholic education that simply bears no reality with what is actually happening on the ground. Happy to hear some real evidence or detail to back up your extremely detrimental view of those who support and work in such schools?
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I wouldn't hold your breath. Their adversarial and passive aggressive posts are indicative of society at the moment personified by the scenes we see in the HoC.
 
Duffman said:
you put forward I presumed based on your own opinion a picture of faith based education - including a very specific view on Catholic education that simply bears no reality with what is actually happening on the ground. Happy to hear some real evidence or detail to back up your extremely detrimental view of those who support and work in such schools?
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Me? I didn't mention Catholicism once.

I said religion and the state should be kept separate, including education.

You've now gone down some rabbit hole about Catholic schools.
 
Ofsted EIF says you have to prove the curriculum offers culture and citizenship etc. so religious education is a theme that runs through a large percentage of the school curriculum.
 
dorivasmiddlefinger said:
What a bizarre and warped view you hold. Your opinion of teachers does nothing but harm and damage. The only division offered is by you and your words. I'm not so sure there are Catholic and Protestant child gangs at war over who is top dog. You're a fantasist!
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I'm not talking about the children, but the parents. Then the children in turn become parents and pass on the same ideology, and so it continues. Like I said, my wife's family are Irish Catholics. Boydom himself, my original antagonist, made a weak joke about Protestantism which oozed with the same attitudes.
if you've ever driven into the Shankill with an ex-IRA man and a bunch of Catholic girls screaming for him to exit, you'd know all about the warfare of religion-based gangs in this country. That's what's 'warped'. I get that there are many on here who went to Catholic school and want to defend it, and maybe from their perspective, like I say, the indoctrination was only mild. And I also get that this constituency - and that of other faith school adherents is so strong and vocal that no political party would go near abolishing these schools. In that sense, what's the point in arguing - other than to point out what to most on this thread - not the ones slinging personal abuse I hasten to add - is obvious: faith schools, by their nature, sow division in society.
 
equaliser said:
I'm not talking about the children, but the parents. Then the children in turn become parents and pass on the same ideology, and so it continues. Like I said, my wife's family are Irish Catholics. Boydom himself, my original antagonist, made a weak joke about Protestantism which oozed with the same attitudes.
if you've ever driven into the Shankill with an ex-IRA man and a bunch of Catholic girls screaming for him to exit, you'd know all about the warfare of religion-based gangs in this country. That's what's 'warped'. I get that there are many on here who went to Catholic school and want to defend it, and maybe from their perspective, like I say, the indoctrination was only mild. And I also get that this constituency - and that of other faith school adherents is so strong and vocal that no political party would go near abolishing these schools. In that sense, what's the point in arguing - other than to point out what to most on this thread - not the ones slinging personal abuse I hasten to add - is obvious: faith schools, by their nature, sow division in society.
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You talk like passing on a religious faith is wrong. Why?

Your point is seems to be based on a a small section of society in Northern Ireland which is entirely un-reflective of the UK as a whole. Where else in the UK is that even remotely the same? Even to suggest the situation is down to religion alone is erroneous. You've simply used that to strengthen a flawed argument.
 
Some people of the religious persuasion seem to have done an awful lot of reading and study to persuade themselves ( in a moment of doubt ,no doubt) and in order bamboozle anyoneelse who sees clearly enough never to have a doubt or need a faith.
As humans we need to see patterns and order ( hence the addiction of gambling) when in reality most changes are the result of **** up rather than conspiracy and planning.
Those drawn to " an answer" simply can't accept that happenstance and an unimaginable length of time feeds into what you see today.. They cannot accept that they are "of nothing" in the great history of life and so pluck reassurance from whatever snakebite salesman had established themselves into the culture they were born in.
I could understand someone believing in an evil entity. There is enough evidence.
But to believe in an all powerfull, all knowing loving Deity in a world that includes childhood cancer. Paraplegia, Gaza, the holocaust, dementia, all the many cruel forms of mental health issues and all the numerous miserable misfortunes that befall millions of people to day is delusional and childlike.
I have eternity, so long as my grandson is as successfully as me and everyone of my direct ancestors in passing on genes.
I don't need to think I'll see those ancestors, nor my mam and dad , both of whom died in chronic pain and fear after a lifetime of praising a God who regularly gives this sadistic payback to his followers.
If your god is so all powerful , so omnipotent, omnipresent and truly loving why does rely on social misfits who usually dress like their grandparents and saddos like you ( and me) who spend too much time on football chat rooms.
Honestly WTF is he doing whilst your desperately trying to convince us of his existence?? NOT sorting out childhood cancer amongst other things I could mention.
Keep your faith if it gets you through life. I don't need it so just keep it to yourself.
 
Gunslinger said:
3000 years, 4000 years, i can give you 250000 years but there were humans kicking around then , even going back nearly 3 million years we had homo species

So i guess your god just fannied around with primitive life for billions of years, then suddenly decided to intervene in the most illiterate part fo the world at
the time (nowhere else in the world of course), the middle east and started to perform miracles for a while , then just stopped again and retreated back
to his magical sky kingdom

And then god sacrificed his son, except he didn't as if has eternal life to begin with there is actually no point to any physical death is there if you live on anyway
in some magical afterlife

Honestly is such a ridiculous nonsensical story, i am actually amazed people are invested in it
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So your not intending to acknowledge the huge leap in your imagination that has me down as the youngest of Young Earth Creationists then, you're just onto the next leap? 😂
As I said in my answer, the Catholic Church gives a large latitude in personal belief about the origins of the Universe. From your writing on this, I don't think you are genuinely interested in what I believe about it, so I'll leave it there.
If you could have planned Jesus birth for a better geographic location or time, I'd challenge you to name it, as the spread of His Church since then seems to show He knows what He is doing 😀 You'd also have to explain how, "in the most illiterate part of the world at the time" prophecies of His coming had been written, read and believed for the previous centuries.
If you think miracles have stopped, I can detail a few for you. One was on the front page of the Gazette and was the talk of the town at the time.
The point of Jesus sacrifice was to save us, it wasn't for Him.
Physical death is a consequence of the Fall, there isn't a 'point' to it, as I've said previously in this here thread 😀
I think the fact that so many people of many times and cultures have looked at this 'ridiculous nonsensical story' and believed that Jesus was who He said He was unto their own death is something that might tell you there is more to it. But as St Paul said "We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles” (1 Cor 1:23) I hope you take the time sometime to reconsider.
 
equaliser said:
There you go. Hell as a threat, the time-old dagger glints in its sheath. No, I'm not a Protestant, though had I been born in the 1500s I would certainly have opposed to cruel and corrupt Catholic church that prompted the Reformation. You supplied a quote, here's mine. In his foreword to his collected works, Dylan Thomas wrote:
"These poems were conceived for the love of man and in praise of God
And I'd be a damned fool if they weren't."
What this means to me is that the concept of 'God' is necessary to the human - and the poet above all (see Milan Kundera's Life is Elsewhere for a mordant exposition) - because. as Nero hinted, it tethers the ego to a concept of universal awe and a community of mortal understanding, mortal doubt. That doubt is human, but it does not require a religion to give it form; all it requires is a commitment to the common understanding and a will to work for the good of mankind and the planet. In doing so I am 'worshipping' the sense of universal belonging and doubt through which I love (and am grateful for) my life, this world and my fellows. My mortal doubt will not be solved by religion, because religions are, in all iterations, expressions of earthly power. You reveal such is your comments: only your church can forgive me. Put another way, you need me. Your concept of being 'saved' only works with the comfort of those who are damned working away for you in the background.

My Catholic mother-in-law, whom I absolutely adore, flocked along with her peers recently, to view, with awe, the hip bone of St Teresa, a 19th century French nun who started having 'revelations' (or manic depressive episodes perhaps); conveniently, at the very time in the mid-19th century the church was losing followers and really needed a blockbuster to bring the masses back into their movie theatres. For sure, the modern individual seeks ersatz 'revelation' in all sorts of similarly bizarre and mistaken places, but if you think St Teresa's hipbone is going to be where they find it, then you are cracked in the head. What your church is to you likely bound up with a sense of your childhood self and the fears it incubated, your deep love for your family, and your feelings of hope and belonging when you attend in its stained glass clad walls. That's absolutely fine. Your error is to believe that your path to peace is the only real path. You are wrong.
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"There you go. Hell as a threat, the time-old dagger glints in its sheath" I honestly think you are reading something into my answer that isn't there. The whole point of what I wrote is to say that those who are in Hell, choose to be in Hell. God will not force us into Heaven against our will.For those, like you, who do not believe that Jesus founded the Catholic Church, how is the Catholic understanding any more of a threat to you than the atheist understanding (that this life is all there is, with no hope of an eternal life to follow) would be a threat to me?
"Your error is to believe that your path to peace is the only real path. You are wrong." That opinion, if you wish, would be the beginning of a long discussion just on its own. Just to say that the Catholic Church (despite Feeneys best efforts to state the contrary) has never been that salvation is only possible for full visible members of the Catholic Church. However, peace is only possible with justice, and the Church has long accepted that we here on Earth (the Church Militant) "hope for what we do not see” (Rom. 8:25) and are therefore caught in tension between this imperfect present reality and the promised world to come. This means that we must be prepared to, on occasion, sacrifice peace to pursue justice; even to hate peace to speak the truth. The Catholic Church teaching on Social Justice is clear on this, but also on the belief that the only true peace is spiritual and rests in Jesus Christ. I don't need you, Jesus made you for Himself, and his wish is that you return to him.
 
theboydom said:
I think the fact that so many people of many times and cultures have looked at this 'ridiculous nonsensical story' and believed that Jesus was who He said He was unto their own death is something that might tell you there is more to it.
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How many of those people do you think came to that conclusion by themselves in adulthood, with a truly open, free mind, and how many do you think came to the same conclusion after having being told all about it by their parents of faith, from birth, and having lived a life surrounded by the church and like minded people and never having known any different? Being constantly told that the way of the world as viewed by their parents is the true way of the world?
 
Osboro said:
Some people of the religious persuasion seem to have done an awful lot of reading and study to persuade themselves ( in a moment of doubt ,no doubt) and in order bamboozle anyoneelse who sees clearly enough never to have a doubt or need a faith.
As humans we need to see patterns and order ( hence the addiction of gambling) when in reality most changes are the result of **** up rather than conspiracy and planning.
Those drawn to " an answer" simply can't accept that happenstance and an unimaginable length of time feeds into what you see today.. They cannot accept that they are "of nothing" in the great history of life and so pluck reassurance from whatever snakebite salesman had established themselves into the culture they were born in.
I could understand someone believing in an evil entity. There is enough evidence.
But to believe in an all powerfull, all knowing loving Deity in a world that includes childhood cancer. Paraplegia, Gaza, the holocaust, dementia, all the many cruel forms of mental health issues and all the numerous miserable misfortunes that befall millions of people to day is delusional and childlike.
I have eternity, so long as my grandson is as successfully as me and everyone of my direct ancestors in passing on genes.
I don't need to think I'll see those ancestors, nor my mam and dad , both of whom died in chronic pain and fear after a lifetime of praising a God who regularly gives this sadistic payback to his followers.
If your god is so all powerful , so omnipotent, omnipresent and truly loving why does rely on social misfits who usually dress like their grandparents and saddos like you ( and me) who spend too much time on football chat rooms.
Honestly WTF is he doing whilst your desperately trying to convince us of his existence?? NOT sorting out childhood cancer amongst other things I could mention.
Keep your faith if it gets you through life. I don't need it so just keep it to yourself.
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"If your god is so all powerful , so omnipotent, omnipresent and truly loving why does rely on social misfits who usually dress like their grandparents and saddos like you ( and me) who spend too much time on football chat rooms.
Well I can't claim any special non-saddo place in the Church, but the reading at Mass last weekend reminded us that “we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”(Ephesians 2:10) and the fact that He has chosen me for some special purpose is amazing to me 😀
Honestly WTF is he doing whilst your desperately trying to convince us of his existence?? NOT sorting out childhood cancer amongst other things I could mention."
I cannot convince you of His existence, only He can do that. I am only on this thread because someone made a comment about RE in schools I chose to answer 😀 Childhood cancer is a shocking evil, and the question you have asked there is the hardest one, with no clear answer. All I can do personally is pray for those affected and offer service where I can. Pondering on the problem of evil is something we have been doing for as long as we have existed, the book of Job is thought to be amongst the oldest of the Wisdom literature that mankind has, and that is exactly what it speaks about. Why do bad things happen to good people. It does not propose an answer to this question, but shows that suffering is part of God’s plan, that it has to be accepted as long as it lasts, and that God does not abandon the sufferer. The fulfillment is in Jesus sacrifice and Catholics believe that by uniting ourselves to the sacrifice of Christ, we will turn all this negative stuff into a source of 'supernatural light' and will find in it the peace and the joy which no created thing can provide. Not an easy path to walk by any means, and I have spent my own time in lamentation, as did Job, and had to cling to the ideas that the suffering tested my virtue, protected me from pride and increased my humility, and it encouraged me to put myself completely into God’s hands.
 
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