Catholic School vs State School

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ewohdrol said:
I mean your wife cannot earn a wage as she is teaching your kids. Often when people exclaim how cheap home schooling is they don’t factor in loss of potential wages
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It’s not about earning a wage. It’s about raising kids. My wife chooses to raise her children rather than entrusting them to the state or day care or grandma. That’s the problem with so much of our society. We turn over the raising of our kids to others and then complain when things don’t go the way we hoped.

Having a mom is more important than designer jeans and soccer.
 
catholic03 said:
Thank you for your kind response. Regarding terminology: I avoid the term ‘gay’ altogether. It used to mean happy and I wish to reclaim it as such. I use the term ‘homosexual’ to mean those who practise the lifestyle. I use the term ‘sufferer of same sex attraction’ to mean someone who has taken up God’s call to be celibate, or just a general term for all those who share this attraction. I feel that abortion, contraception, homosexuality, and atheism are the biggest issues in the world. Therefore, I emphasise them as such. But, as a young man trying to make sense of this confusion, I am quite harsh in my words. I emphasise that, in line with the Church’s teaching, I know that the homosexual inclination is not a sin. Whenever I talk negatively about homosexuals, I mean those who practise the lifestyle. I honour and respect those who are celibate. They are wonderful and carry a heavy cross; I hold NO prejudice to them.

I am very careful not to be so harsh at school, doing so could be offensive, and I understand that. However, around supporters of the Church’s doctrines, I happily openly express her teachings.

The film I am talking about is called Billy Elliot. It is about a boy who is a ballet dancer. Not only does it take a direct hit at Mrs Thatcher, but it also promotes effeminacy. It is contrary to morality.

Thank you for your lengthy responses. They are very kind and detailed. You know a lot about education and this certainly helps.
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Thanks for posting the reply.

In what way is the film “contrary to morality”?

Is the idea of “a boy who is a ballet dancer” “contrary to morality”? I would suggest that it’s not.

I was never a ballet dancer but it happens that my cousin was a world-class ballet dancer and instructor and that’s something I’ve always had a lot of respect for.

I can imagine a man in the U.S. in the 1950s saying, “I don’t want my son to be a ballet dancer because he might turn gay!” but fortunately our society has advanced beyond that point.
 
Just to clarify, the OP is talking about secondary school, not university.

Looking ahead, unlike the USA, New Zealand does not have Catholic universities. The UK, where he is also thinking of going to university, has four Catholic universities. Some remarks about that though:
  1. Catholic universities in the UK have a pretty poor academic reputation. We don’t have world-class Catholic universities like Notre Dame and Georgetown. We don’t even have averagely good Catholic universities. Catholic universities in the UK range from below average to among the worst in the country.
  2. Catholic universities aren’t even particularly Catholic. Students don’t choose to go to a Catholic university because it is Catholic. They may even choose a Catholic university in spite of its being Catholic or not even particularly realising that they are going to a Catholic university. All Catholic universities have societies for LGBT+ students and for students of non-Catholic religions.
  3. The main reason for going to a Catholic university in the UK is because you can’t get into a better one. If you can get into a reasonably good university such as Leicester or Kent you are not going to turn that down to go to Newman or Leeds Trinity because you want to get the Catholic university experience.
  4. Catholic universities are small.
  5. If the OP wants to find a Catholic wife at university I honestly think that he is at least as likely to succeed in that aim at Oxford than at a Catholic university. As mentioned on another thread, the OP would be eligible to apply to St Benet’s Hall, a Catholic permanent private hall (essentially a college) of the university. Oxford has an excellent Catholic chaplaincy with a lot of activities going on.
 
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Londoner said:
The main reason for going to a Catholic university in the UK is because you can’t get into a better one.
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That’s sad. In the USA we have Catholic universities that have famous academic reputations but questionable adherence to the Faith (ND and Georgetown, as you’ve described, fit that bill) and newer schools that have less reputation but excellent fidelity (Franciscan, Ave Maria, JP2, etc.). It sounds like across the pond, you all get the worst of both worlds.

We could certainly use more faithful Catholic students in this country—just saying!
 
I understand your logic, and I think that the hope of establishing your kids in a good Catholic community is a perfectly reasonable justification for choosing Catholic school, it doesn’t negate the issue of having to learn how to deal with a situation where you fall out of your echo chamber and have to deal respectfully with someone who believes differently than you do. The OP didn’t elaborate on whether or not he had faithful Catholics among his inner circle who support him spiritually. If he had said, “I’m considering changing to a Catholic school because I feel like I don’t have enough faithful Catholic peers,” then I would say that was a good plan. What he proposes is that he want to escape being among gay people and those who advocate for gay people, which is a different mindset.

Apart from that, I can’t follow your logic. First of all, having the search for potential breeding partners as a criteria for a school you are choosing for a teenager is a little, well, creepy to me. Secondly, you are just flat out incorrect that one must choose their spouse from among their classmates or coworkers. That just isn’t so. If you are looking for a faithful Catholic, the place to look for them is the parish Church! Or the soup kitchen. Or the internet, because you can find pretty much anything you want on the internet. I found my husband on the internet and he is very faithful. Also, the OP is a male, so he probably doesn’t have to worry about drying up before he can produce an acceptable quantity of offspring as your daughter. Also, many faithful Catholic parents don’t consider quantity to be a measurement of their success at their parental vocation anyway. Being open to life doesn’t mean getting married the second your step off the graduation stage so you can make as many babies as possible. If it takes ten years to find the right spouse with the faithfulness and temperment that can allow you to create a faithful Catholic home, that’s worth it to most to sacrifice a few breeding years.
 
Allegra said:
Secondly, you are just flat out incorrect that one must choose their spouse from among their classmates or coworkers. That just isn’t so. If you are looking for a faithful Catholic, the place to look for them is the parish Church! Or the soup kitchen. Or the internet, because you can find pretty much anything you want on the internet. I found my husband on the internet and he is very faithful.
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Right, I didn’t mean to say you could only find a Catholic spouse at work or school. I’ll cross-post something I just said in another thread.
Cricket13 said:
about how you knew the person you’re about to spend your life with, or already are, was the one
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100% Fidelity to the Church. No ifs, ands or buts. I’m assuming you’re in the USA. The majority of people who identify as Catholic here do not meet this criteria. I hope with your generation, things are getting better. But as someone who had to spend 10 years searching, suffering with loneliness, until finally finding the right person, the #1 thing I wish I could tell my younger self is:

Community.

Find a faithful Catholic community. It could be a parish, a group within a parish, a college/working group (e.g. Theology on Tap), associated with a religious order, and so on. Many of these groups are tied to ethnic groups (e.g. Hispanics, French) with historical ties to Catholicism; these are definitely places to look. Don’t be afraid to move in order to find such a group if you have to. (In my case, it turned out to be an Altar Society at a traditional (though not TLM) parish).

The Catholic online dating services like Ave Maria Singles, Catholic Chemistry, Catholic Match, etc. are there, but there really aren’t that many seriously-searching people on them. They are an option, but they aren’t a replacement for a stable, faithful Catholic community.
 
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You’ve got it! And I honestly doubt whether the Catholic universities we have in the UK are going to be as academically rigorous as somewhere like Franciscan Steubenville. Or as Catholic as Notre Dame. We’re talking really low academic standards and at best nominally Catholic.

Yes, there is no reason for the OP not to consider going to America. Overseas tuition fees and living costs at Oxford are going to be very expensive, so a Catholic university in the USA is not ruled out on financial grounds. On the other hand, he has no family connections with the USA, which seemed to be a major reason for considering Oxford. Also, if his family are thinking of paying out something in the region of NZ$70,000 per year for his education, they may not be prepared to part with all that money for a product they don’t think it worth it. Being realistic, if I lived in New Zealand and my child could go to one of several excellent universities in New Zealand, I would need a very, very good reason to be persuaded to pay ten times as much to send them to a university overseas. Also, with a good degree from a New Zealand university, he could apply for scholarships to do graduate study in the UK or USA. Best of both worlds: take a degree at the Victoria University of Wellington at minimal expense, then apply for full funding for a master’s degree at Oxford, Cambridge, or wherever.
 
That sounds pretty accurate. I walked past people celebrating in Trafalgar Square the day she died, which I thought was in poor taste, but having lived through the 1980s, when people would heckle the TV every time Mrs Thatcher was on it, I was not surprised. A friend of mine told everyone that he was keeping a bottle of champagne chilled ready for the moment he heard the news she’d died. Again, I thought it was in poor taste.

The film is set in County Durham in the mid 1980s. You would not expect Mrs Thatcher to be popular in County Durham in the mid 1980s. It would be like watching a film set in Gdańsk in 1982 and complaining that some of the characters express dislike of General Jaruzelski.
 
Oh, I agree. Of course, she was also loathed by some of the more hardline Ulster loyalist types.

Per his other thread, he was thinking of applying to Oxford to read theology. Possibly Newcastle, although presumably not to read theology. Personally, I think it would be mad to come all the way from New Zealand to go to Newcastle (not that there’s anything wrong with Newcastle, but there are equally good universities in NZ). I could just about see the point of coming from NZ to go to Oxford if one has very rich parents prepared to foot the bill. I know someone who came to the UK from Canada to study at Oxford as an undergraduate despite the enormous cost. Ditto the USA, although they often pay a fortune to go to university in their own country anyway, so it makes more sense.

And yes, someone who thinks that Billy Elliot is challenging is going to be in for a shock when he gets to university. In some ways, theology is going to be more challenging than something like English or history of art, because it will involve being exposed to a wide variety of points of view about topics about which he already has very strong opinions.
 
Right. The film depicts the politics and events of the time period. The film’s characters were losing their traditional livelihood because of Thatcher’s policies and they were p’d off. It wasn’t a “smack” as much as an accurate depiction of how government policies effect the real lives of families and communities and how people have to band together to deal with them. Should we pretend that those policies didn’t effect anyone negatively in order to avoid triggering Thatcher fans?

Furthermore, the film deals with many different issues in very complex ways. The main character coming to terms with his friend’s femininity/homosexuality is only one sub plot of a very complex coming to age story. I assume that’s what the OP is referring to when he claims the film promotes femininity. I certainly hope he isn’t trying to suggest that a boy training to become a professional dancer is effeminate or sinful, because then I’d say he needs to take the class again watch the film a few more times! Overall, the main theme of the film is loyalty. Loyalty to one’s family, one’s community, one’s friends, etc.
 
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Yes, Oxford is basically secular, although the university and most of its colleges are notionally Anglican (e.g. the university church is an Anglican church and most of the colleges have Anglican chapels). The Faculty of Theology and Religion is completely secular. It accepts students and academic staff of all religions and none based purely on academic merit. The syllabus is not Anglican. It’s a rigorous academic degree in theology and religion, no different to studying geography or chemistry.

The thing about the Catholic halls is this: every member of the university has to be a member of a college, society, or hall. A hall is basically indistinguishable from a college. There is a Jesuit hall, a Dominican hall, and a Benedictine hall (as well as two Anglican halls and a Baptist hall, which, oddly, absorbed a former Franciscan hall). So a hall, in case it’s not clear, isn’t just like a hall of residence, it’s an essential part of becoming part of the university and provides teaching as well as somewhere to live.

University education in the UK is very different to the USA. Basically, all universities are either secular or only nominally religious. We don’t really have religious universities in the way the USA does. If you want to study theology, you do it at a secular university or you do it through one of the very small religious colleges that mostly train people for ministry and have their degrees validated by another UK or foreign university. If you want to live a particular religious lifestyle at a UK university your best bet is to choose a university that has a thriving chaplaincy. Oxford, London, and Manchester are all universities I know of that have good chaplaincies, but I am sure there are others.
 
It is effeminate and watching it is pure torture. The most boring thing I’ve ever seen in my life was the Nutcracker Suite.
 
Oh well, some of us love ballet. Nothing effeminate about it. Have you ever seen Rudolf Nureyev dance? Tell me that’s not a manly man!
 
You are just showing your ignorance. There is nothing effeminate about ballet. When ballet was really developing in France it was the men of the Jockey Club who were its biggest patrons. Likewise, later, the tsars of Russia. All the greatest choreographers and composers were men. Stalin had a private box at the Bolshoi permanently ready for when he wanted to go to the ballet. During the Second World War British soldiers used to be entertained with ballet performances. By all accounts it was very popular with the troops. Sergei Polunin, the greatest living male ballet dancer, is a notorious homophobe. You are just showing your bigoted prejudices.
 
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It’s not bigoted or prejudice. I have nothing against anyone who wants to enjoy it. I find it extremely boring and think guys who do ballet look like little sissies.
 
Well, I guess I should be more wound up by the fact you don’t believe in vaccines. Nobody ever died from not liking ballet.
 
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