tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038032059747160770.post7972310866224593766..comments2020-02-26T15:18:11.053-05:00Comments on <br><br>Living Without God—A Life of Reason: Was I Ever a True Catholic?Bill Cooneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07877676340567105536noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038032059747160770.post-18170888906130409182009-03-16T12:38:00.000-04:002009-03-16T12:38:00.000-04:00Don't forget that Catholic schools get to torture ...Don't forget that Catholic schools get to torture students with medieval punishments like kneeling on chalk or gravel for extended periods. Believe me, I know.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038032059747160770.post-82062316459792534552009-03-15T21:21:00.000-04:002009-03-15T21:21:00.000-04:00I wasn't aware that many Protestant churches held ...I wasn't aware that many Protestant churches held off on baptism until adulthood. Well it certainly is the lesser of two evils. • You're right about Dawkins. He holds nothing back in Chapter Nine of <I>'God Delusion' - Childhood Abuse and the Escape from Religion.</I><BR/><BR/>Interesting story about your son. It brought to mind the question of why so many parents will consider taking the good with the bad when sending their kids to Catholic schools. The point I would make is that the reason so many private schools rate as highly as they do is simply that they do not have the same mandate that public schools have. At the first sign of trouble, they can expel anyone they please - and they do! With that kind of advantage, it's no wonder they generally perform so well. If they had to keep everyone they accepted - through thick and thin - things wouldn't be nearly so rosy.Bill Cooneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07877676340567105536noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8038032059747160770.post-40203852008679328722009-03-15T06:42:00.000-04:002009-03-15T06:42:00.000-04:00Good post, Bill, especially that last paragraph.Br...Good post, Bill, especially that last paragraph.<BR/><BR/>Brings to mind a couple of disjointed thoughts:<BR/><BR/>Many of the Protestant denominations that are especially hostile toward Catholicism pride themselves on rejection of infant baptism. Quite a number say they don't even baptize before the onset of legal adulthood. All well and good, but that's not to say they don't work very hard at indoctrination from an early age. That's Dawkins' number one complaint about religion: Labeling children as "Catholic kids" or "Christian kids" or "Jewish kids" when those labels are imposed from without. <BR/><BR/>The other thing that comes to mind is the baptismal certificate from about 50 years ago that I still have ready access to in a file here at home. When my son came to reside with us here in the B-belt, the public schools here were so bad as to force us to contemplate enrolling him in a private school. There's no such thing as a non-religious private school 'round these parts. But there are a couple of highly rated Catholic schools. I was very close to whipping out that certificate and using it on his behalf, getting him enrolled at the greatly reduced tuition rate for Catholics that is offered by all of those schools. It would, of course, have meant attending Mass and going through the motions of the sacraments, and all the nosy little questions about my current marriage to a lapsed Methodist and my previous marriage to a Jew -- all the things that plagued my mother as I was growing up. The things that filled her with fear and shame. <BR/><BR/>As it turned out, my son endured one year of very depressing public school here, then got to go back up north and the story had a happy ending, with him now a college freshman. No ashes on the forehead, no further exposure to dysfunctional belief systems.Vollyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14514280952695776270noreply@blogger.com