Tag: Religion

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As I get older, I have been thinking more of death and subsequently the afterlife. I have to say the afterlife really has little appeal to me. I mean it is eternity, for Christ’s sakes, what could I have against eternity. First, it is an awfully long time. Forever. It is kind of overwhelming.

Then there is the meeting all dead friends and relatives. This sounds good in theory but I a not sure the practice would meet my expectations. For example, my parents have been dead for over 20 years. Knowing them, they are already established in their afterlife and here I come along expecting to hang with them. Why would they want to raise me yet again? I was a lot of trouble the first time around and they have to show me the ropes yet again.

Or worse still, I will be met my Grandmother Schnell. She was a terribly unhappy woman on Earth and I can’t imagine that heaven would change her much. You are talking an eternity with a woman I avoided when she was alive. Sorry but I am not interested in an eternity with her.

Finally there is the eternity of church services. Praising God all day long 24/7/365. I could barely tolerate once a week when I was forced to attend services when I was a kid. Imagine an eternity of Sunday church services — bad singing, empty rituals, and haranguing sermons. Sounds very much like Hell to me. Maybe, just maybe, this is Hell especially for all those people who hated Church services. Think about it. What better way to punish these malcontents for an eternity.

But mostly it is the idea of having to learn everything all over again. Starting out all over again and learning a whole new system which doesn’t involve activities that I am particularly interested in. Things like drinking, sex, and goofing off with friends. Now that I could manage for an eternity but that isn’t what the brochure says about Heaven. Sorry, I just don’t think I have it in me.

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My parents were Catholic and so they took it up themselves to raise their five children as Catholics. In order to make this happen, I endured 12 years of Catholic schools. I am afraid the Catholic school system let them down terribly. On the plus side I acquired a pretty good working knowledge of the Bible and religious doctrines, at least, as understood by the Roman Catholic Church.

The first big roadblock to me continuing as a Catholic was I could never understand why Jesus Christ had to die for our sins. Nobody could really explain the reasoning. It hardly seems fair to have an innocent man die an incredibly violent death in order to save the souls of the worlds’ sinners.

Now, I get that something had to be done. The sinners were doomed for Hell but why God determined that the only way this could happen is for Jesus to die. Wait, I take it back, I really don’t understand why God created a world of sinners that needed Jesus to die in order to save them. Jesus whole death sentence is based in the failure of humanity to uphold God’s laws. Something he knew was going to happen when he created Adam and Eve.

Why does God need to have such suffering in order to say, well OK, Jesus died a horrible death, by dying, Jesus showed how much he loved human beings so I will give all human beings a second chance to get into Heaven. Even more troubling to me is that God knew Jesus would willingly die on the cross so even before He set all of this in motion, why bother?

I was in a Spanish Church with a Christian friend. We were marveling at the artwork which depicted Jesus on the cross when she said “you know he would do all again. Die for our sins.” Which,OK, given Christian Myth, true. But why? This wonderment that Jesus would willingly suffer death to redeem man leaves out the important question, at least for me. God could ask anything, certainly less painful methods of execution, yet he demanded death, a rather unpleasant death at that. Why?

Based on this fundamental tenant of Christian faith, why would I believe that God is a loving God. He sounds more like a sadist to me. Pain and suffering is a part of the plan. Dear God, why?

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Texas wants to bring back religious training back to the public schools. The idea here is that the majority religion is Christianity and, given this fact, Texas’ children will learn a little bit about it and become model citizens.

I am probably more blase about religious education than the typical non-religious person. It doesn’t bother me in the least because I know after 12 years of Catholic education, religious training only increased my antagonism towards religion. Add forced Sunday church services like my parents did and Texas will probably get the same share of non-religious people as before Texas began religious education. Really if kids are already having problems with math, history, English and science what makes Texas think that educators will be any better with teaching religion?

But that is not that question before us — the question is can Texas government make children learn about Christianity. I would unequivocally say yes if it weren’t for one important factor. The assumption here is that Christians will sit down and agree on what is to be taught.

Given the past 2,000 years of Christians bitter and brutal quarreling about Christian doctrine, this assumption is a lot of wishful thinking (See Savonarola, St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 1970’s Northern Ireland if you need some refresher on this). The primary reason the founding fathers separated the Church from the State is that European Christians had spent the last thousand years or so killing one another over religion. All of whom claimed, by the way, they were Christians.

The Founding Fathers thought that any preference to any religion would cause trouble with the other religions — especially within the various Christian groups. Better to leave religion to the individual who can practice as they wish without government interference or, and this is important, government giving a preference to any one belief.

The public schools are already a cultural battleground. Texas will only make it worse with the introduction of religion. Part of me, would love to see the various Christian groups attacking one another about the right Christian doctrine to teach. Particularly since they also claim that the Bible is clear cut about doctrine. Not. Only my sympathy for teachers and students who face an already difficult struggle with non-religious education and, of course, the fear of bloody sectarian warfare keeps me from fully supporting religious education in the public schools.

But Texas is going do what Texas is going to do, so we shall see. Have your bandages ready.

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Yeah, the Texas legislature is making sure that the Ten Commandments are on display in all Texas classrooms. How this might help improve Texas education is still a mystery but never mind children need to see the Ten Commandments because it is a foundational document for the American Constitution.

There are numerous foundational documents to the Constitution, why stop at the Ten Commandments?You could throw in the Magna Carta and English Common law if you wanted to give them a thorough knowledge of the basis for American Law. You might even post the Constitution if you really wanted to show them the basis of American law. But the Republicans are only interested in the Ten Commandments.

What now is going to happen for Texas students? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The problem here is that posting something doesn’t mean anyone is going to read it. Just one more of the numerous postings that go up in a classroom that most students will ignore. Furthermore posting the Ten Commandments without context is pointless particularly if the child is being raised by heathens. What do the authors of this law think is going to happen? If any child is so bold as to read the post that the child will be struck by a bolt of lightening and have a come-to-Jesus moment. Good luck with that.

Since Texas is a big state with lots of people, there are a lot of classrooms which need the Ten Commandments posted. This will cost a lot of money. For nothing. Absolutely nothing. It isn’t going to make heathens Christians and it isn’t going to give anyone a better understanding of American law. But lots and lots of money will be spent to make it happen. Money spent on getting the law passed. Money spent on the actual posters. Money spent on seeing that the law is being followed. Money spent on law suits defending the posters. All money that could have been spent on making Texas education better. What program that helps the poor will lose funding to promote this law?

The only conceivable benefit coming from this law is that Republicans get to gloat about passing a bill that promotes Christianity. All it is is a big middle finger to their opponents and nothing else. This from the Republican party who claim to believe in fiscal responsibility.

So Texas post away.

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I know that Donald Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the poor but I think it is important to question him, nonetheless, on his intentions here. Getting rid of social welfare programs is all fun and games to him, but it will have a serious impact on poor people thus on everyone else in the community.

Contrary to popular opinion, social welfare programs work. The biggest drops in poverty have occurred during the expansion of federal social welfare programs during the 1930’s and the 1960’s. Conservatives like to think that just cutting these programs will somehow force poor people to go out and get jobs. This has never worked. Never.

And we know that because there were an awful lot of poor people around before social welfare programs existed. Indeed they made up a much higher percentage of the population than they do now. Churches and charities were unable to make up the difference. That was why there were so many poor people back in the good old days.

Even Jesus realized this. Matthew 26:11 “The poor you will always have with you.” So how does Trump, Musk and company intend to help them. Taking them off the dole is hardly helpful. People need housing in order to take showers so they can make a good impression with looking for a job. They need transportation in order to arrive at the job on time. They may need psychiatric counseling so that they are coherent enough to hold a job. They may need drug rehab or alcohol rehab. They may need job training so that they can work the available jobs. The poor need an awful lot of help to make companies see them as potential employees. Where is this help going to come from?

I do have a modest proposal here and it is from the Bible — a source that Republicans particularly like to refer to. Matthew 19:20 If you want to be perfect (a perfect Christian that is), sell what you own. Give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

Come on Donald and Elon, you know what to do.

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The other day I was getting worked up over Oklahoma requiring Bibles in every classroom. Then, I began to think why. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is a bad idea and we should try to stop it. On the other hand, as bad ideas go, it is far down the list on what is important. Some religious people think that the mere presence of the Bible in the classroom will somehow magically change the children forced to sit in a room with it into Christians.

I am betting this won’t happen. If I seriously thought that these proponents of the Bible in the classroom could create an effective educational program that incorporated the Bible I might be worried. They really have no ideas beyond prayer and patriotism and if they tried to do anything more they would begin to fight among themselves. Christians, if you recall, have violently argued with one another for centuries about Christian Doctrine. Indeed, this was the main reason why the Founding Fathers wanted a religious neutral government — Christian sects have a tendency to rumble if it is possible to get an upper hand with another Christian sect.

So why is this meaningless gesture getting me so worked up? Because it is headline news. The press is only interested in controversy. Controversy brings in readers which brings in ad revenue and so the press will search for controversial issues to feed to the American public. They aren’t feeding the public anything that is particularly nutritious either. It is more like a table filled with desserts that we can’t help but pile onto our plates and finish them off in one sitting. Until we make ourselves sick.

It is an easy enough bon bon to make too. Anything to do with religion in public schools was sure to piss of every secular humanist in the country while getting the full fledge support of fundamental Christians. Some editor somewhere decided to fed this particular controversy to the American public because they knew their readers would lap it up and then raise their fists ready for battle. Sadly, they were correct.

What is so annoying is that I know this is the game. Sensationalism is the only consistent menu item and I keep falling for it. There is a good chance that the Bibles in every classroom will never happen or it will be slowed down in the courts for years to come and, after a few years of squabbling over this, and realizing that it is way too difficult to make it happen, the combatants will move on to something new to argue about.

More worrisome, is it illustrates the Media’s focus on divisive topics. Anyone looking at education would think that the most important topic in American education is the treatment of Trans children because a lot of people are talking about it. In reality, there are 73,000,000 people in the USA under the age of 18.. Of those 73,000,000, 42,000 of them have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and only 4,200 of these children have started hormone therapy. This means that when people are talking about this, they are talking about .00005 % of the student population.

The treatment of Trans children in public schools and religion in the public schools need to be addressed but that it dominates any discussion regarding education in the 2024 campaign is out of all proportion to how it affects the vast majority of public school students. It is there only to instill rage and division which is all really great fun for the Press but does very little to improve public schools.

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I have to remind myself that Conservatives believe that children actually listen to teachers and parents and that teachers and parents have some influence on what children will actually think and believe. Now I don’t mean to totally discount parents and teachers. They do have some influence to the extent that what the authority figure is saying makes sense to the child but once the adult has left the tracks, many children are apt to begin seeing life in their own way and not at all like the parents wanted. This is why I have some different ideas about the world than my Catholic parents and my Catholic school teachers despite their active indoctrination of me to become a Roman Catholic.

I think this is why so many Conservatives are afraid of sex education and Critical Race Theory. They assume that the mere mention of these things in class will influence the thinking of their children. This is why they go after the public school system with particular vigor, they think that indoctrination is possible and they want to be the ones indoctrinating and not those crazy Liberals. I wish I could assure them that children only care about their education to the extent of what is going to get them a good grade for the class. Otherwise their minds are elsewhere.

So I was amused to read Chaya Raichik and Charlie Kirk’s intention of outbreeding the Left. They think they will rid the world of pre-marital sex, gays, transexuals, abortion, birth control and, most importantly, Marxists which is loosely defined as anyone to the left of Marjorie Taylor Greene if only children heard the right things. That this didn’t work in the past should be evidence enough but somehow Raichik and Kirk believe the there were these halcyon days were people actually behaved well and listened to their elders.

Good luck with that. My parents had five children. All having, at least, 12 years of Catholic education and, much to my parent’s chagrin, they got no practicing Catholics out of the deal. Think about that. They paid extra money to the Catholic Church to indoctrinate their children so that when we reached maturity, their children would be Catholic. Well, they struck out. They had 5 children and got no Catholics after all that effort. And, to top it off, we are all to the left of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

And my parents never gave up. When we returned for the summer during college, my father insisted that we attend Mass. Despite the fact that our attendance while away was iffy at best and more accurately described as seldom to never. Arguing with him was pointless. He’d rather us sit dumbly in church, not listening to the priest, day dreaming about sex and parties or anything other than the Roman Catholic Church and Jesus than us doing something constructive like watching TV. He though that some day while we were sitting in church that a bolt of lightening would strike us and we would realize the error of our ways. It never happened to me nor did it happen my brothers and sisters.

Indoctrination doesn’t work. Even if you think it is working, even if the child is nodding their heads and passing their religion classes with A’s, you really don’t know what is going on in the mind of the child. So, using my family history as an example, instead of 5 Christian Conservatives, the Catholic schools turned out 5 people with slightly different ideas, so Raichik and Kirk can breed away but they shouldn’t be surprised if their children decide to go to the Free Palestine Rally after going to a polymorphīs orgy.

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Whenever I hear people saying if only children could pray in the schools, America would be a better place. They assume that forcing children to pray in school will somehow make them religious in the future. As someone who experienced twelve years of Catholic schools where prayer, religious ceremonies and religious instructions were all a part of the daily schedule, I can assure you that this rigorous adherence to prayer and religious faith in no way guarantees a Christian when this education ends. I have no desire be a Christian.

The religious training I received was boring, incoherent, and, whenever the questions got difficult, fell to stop asking all these questions and believe whatever I am telling you. Daily Mass was bore number one. If you want to turn a kid off religion, there is nothing better than daily Mass to do the trick. Mostly because it was daily. At some point, someone realized it was counter productive to force children, particularly small children, to sit quietly in Mass and listen to a religious service that had little meaning to them and so they went to a three days a week Mass schedule. By the time I graduated 8th grade, I think we were down to once a week. The teachers spent most of the Mass maintaining order among their unruly charges while the priest raced through the Mass in order to end, as quickly as possible, everyone’s misery. My fondest memories of Mass was that they sometimes served Long Johns (maple bars and chocolate bars) afterwards.

I attended St. Pius X grade school. One of St Pius X greatest achievements while he was pope was he lowered the age when a person could receive first communion. Children, if willing, could now participate in the sacraments. A fact that we were reminded about on a frequent basis. How lucky we were that we could become Catholics so young. Which is why I learned to curse Pope Pius X’s name because instead of limiting religious training to those few 7 year olds who freely choose to be Catholic, the Church, after Pius X, assumed that every child attending first grade would receive the sacraments whether they liked it or not. I guess I could have objected and the whole process would have stopped. But who is going to listen to a 7 year old concerning his religious commitment. They were in the business of making Catholics and no child was going to stop them from their duty.

Particularly troublesome for me was Communion. The whole idea seemed weird to me. The priest changed a piece of bread into the body of Jesus. I couldn’t figure out why. Really. Why are they doing this? Why did the church think it was so important to change a piece of bread into the body of Jesus Christ? More importantly, why did I have to eat Jesus’ body after the priest made the change? I was assured that one day it would make sense to me. I am still waiting.

Then there was Confirmation. Why? The only thing I could figure out is it allowed me to meet the archbishop of our diocese and I got to choose my confirmation name. Except my mother wouldn’t let me. My mother insisted my name was too long as it was. For those of you who don’t know, my name is Thomas Bartholomew Fitzpatrick. She insisted that my confirmation name be Bartholomew because of that. I tried to argue the point. In my confirmation training I was encouraged to find a saint who I resonated with. I reviewed the Lives of the Saints and found my saint. It was pointless. My mother, of course, won the argument and so all I really got from the whole Confirmation thing was a handshake from the Archbishop.

Too prepare for all these sacraments, most of the first four years of religion training was reviewing the Baltimore Catechism. The book outlined the important Catholic beliefs in a question/response format. By that I mean the book had a question: Who is Satan and then the book gave you the Catholic Church’s approved response to the question. If anyone in authority ever asked you a question about your faith, all you had to do is give the canned response from the Baltimore Catechism. Since I was good at memorization, I was golden. But I can’t say that I had a good sense of what the Catholic Church was about. In fact, soon after being confirmed, I promptly forgot everything I learned because someone older and wiser, perhaps my older brother or sister, informed me that no one will ever ask you a question from the Baltimore Catechism again. I, in case you are wondering, can confirm this to be true. I have yet to have anyone ask me a question that required a response from the Baltimore Catechism.

After twelve years of Catholic education, all I really I took from this time is a vague fear of Hell, a hatred of Confession, a difficultly staying awake during Mass, an unhealthy attachment to personal suffering and a pretty good recollection of biblical stories. Of these, only my recollection of biblical stories has helped me in real life as Biblical questions occasionally comes up in trivia contests. Faith, however, eluded me. I never quite developed any faith. I even asked my parents if I could stop going to church as I really wasn’t believing it. My parents declined my proposal and assured me that some day down the road, faith would come to me in some moment of need. I needed to continue with religion and religious education in order to prepare myself for this eventuality. As long as I lived with them, I had to go to church.

This might work for some people. It, however, was the worst possible way to persuade me. What I have discovered its that people either have religious sentiments or don’t. If you don’t, no amount of prayer is going to change that. In the 4th grade I remember a fellow student telling me he didn’t believe in God or any of this Catholic shit. I was amazed because, even though I had similar sentiments, I was confident that my parents were right. At some point in my life, it would all make sense to me. All I had to do was wait. I had no definite opinions on God one way or the other, but my friend definitively told me, “I don’t believe in God.” Think about it. After four years of Catholic education, in disagreement with his parents, his teachers and society as a whole, at ten years of age, he came to this conclusion. It is a feeling deep inside of him. You either have it or you don’t.

My parents wanted their children to be Catholics. In order to insure this outcome, they sent, at some expense, their five children to Catholic schools. The Church failed miserably. Zero Catholics out of five. I am sure there are better outcomes out there but I am betting those results had very little to do with prayer in the school or Catholic education. I once was arguing with my mother about God and I finally asked her, “What do you want from me?” She replied, “To get you to heaven.” I thought will this is impossible then. In her eyes, you are either Catholic or hell bound. For her, I was hell bound. How horrible to do everything possible to make your children Catholic and to fail. You won’t share eternity with your children because they rejected the Catholic faith. It was at this point I turned irretrievably against the Catholic Church. All I could think, and still think to this day, what a horrible religion. I understand that the Catholic Church is less strident about such ideas these day. Well good, it is, unfortunately, too late for my mother.

Pray with your children. Give your children a Christian education if you wish. Just don’t count on having a Christian when you are done.