Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!mephisto!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: lionti@ecs.umass.edu Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Fundamentalism and Catholicism Message-ID: Date: 20 Sep 90 08:18:14 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 93 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu heksterb@apple.com (Ben Hekster) writes: >My response [to Cindy Smith's original post] was: >> But whatever for? Would that imply that non-adults are too impressionable >> to be able to judge the validity of religious doctrine themselves? >I had intended this rather simplistic question to be rhetorical, but I did not >convey my meaning clearly. My reasoning was as follows: if children are not >deemed qualified by this Roman-Catholic (or whatever the case may be) to >appropriately judge the value of religious doctrine, how can this same person >then in good conscience himself proceed to religiously `indoctrinate'? Or, >in the larger question (and what I am really getting at), should parents >force their children to adopt a particular religion while they are obviously >not capable of judging its validity? > More apologies to the respondents, who deserve a less abbreviated >response than I at the moment am able to provide. I appreciate Ben's followup comments. They help me to understand what his perspective is. A perspective, I must admit, that never occured to me. I must say that I tend, however, to agree with our illustrious moderator who writes: >[I find it frightening that a parent might *not* want to pass on their >ultimate values to their children. I'm afraid my own view of is >somewhat more radical than yours. I believe Christianity is true, and >that we have an obligation to pass on everything of truth that we can >to our children... --clh] I agree with this sentiment whole-heartedly. In fact, my perspective is somewhat unusual. I was raised a Roman Catholic. In college, I fell away from the church and became very interested in Buddhism, then Existentialism, then John-Paul Sartre and Atheism. (I almost got a minor in Philosophy). In college, I fell in love and got married to a Catholic. My wife tends toward a very personal approach to religion, and I certainly respected her views, and basically we agreed to disagree. Well, after we were married for 3.5 years, a miracle occured in my life. And it wasn't something that happened once which I could ignore or pretend didn't happen so I could just keep on with my life. It was recurring, and continues to this day, 3.5 years later. As you may have guessed, that miracle was my daughter. Now I hope this doesn't sound trite, because I experienced it as nothing less than a miracle. I knew that *I* couldn't create this life! Unfortunately, this didn't immediately make me see the truth about God's existence. But I believed that my daughter should be raised to believe in God, because I recognized that even without God's existence, the message to be good, etc. was a good one; and I wasn't absolutely convinced of my own views. Obviously I had a long way to go toward understanding "real" Christianity. Well, I had decided to raise my daughter as a Catholic (obviously my wife played an important role in all this, I'm just giving my perspective) but I recognized that hypocrasy on my part (i.e. if I didn't believe what I was trying to teach her) would be deadly. So, in my own clueless way I set out to *force* myself to believe in God. Again, my understanding of the movement of God's grace was nil. So I started going to Bible studies with a friend who is in (I found out later) an offshoot of the Boston Church of Christ. This group is a little "cultish" in their aggresive recruitment policies, and since I didn't know where they were coming from this confused me somewhat (as to why they were always SO aggresive), but I owe my friend alot, because it was through this group that I finally came to believe in God again. The BCC's aggresiveness made me uncomfortable and so I started going to a Bible study at the local Newman Center and attending a discussion group on the Vatican II documents, and reading books on Catholic theology from the Newman center library. Now I would say I am a full blown Roman Catholic, in fact I have just gone through lector training and soon will be going through "special minister of the Eucharist" training and so will be serving the Newman Center Church in those capacities. To bring this around to the original topic, I originally did all of this for my daughter, though now I see that my wife and daughter are in some way a special gift of grace from God to me. To not fully share this gift with my daughter would be to reject its value, which I cannot do. Thus, I _also_ find it very hard to understand the idea of not raising your children to believe as you do. The only case where I have heard of this approach is in mixed religion marriages. I do not, thankfully, have to deal with that problem. Well, sorry this is so long, I guess this was my way of introducing myself to the Net. Thanks for listening. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eric C. McClure lionti@umaecs.bitnet Standard Disclaimer