Religion, Parenthood, Brainwashing and Branding

[PRmerger]

Would it have been better to have been brought up as a Muslim or a Hindu rather than you making up your own mind?

We all make up our own mind, luv, if we are given the gift of living past the age of reason.

It seems as if inculcating a child with any belief system is wrong…unless it happens to be the one that you currently believe.

Correct. We don’t inculcate our children with a belief system because they have to have a religion.

We inculcate them with a belief system because it’s true.

#truthtrumpseverything

 

[JRKH]

It seems as if inculcating a child with any belief system is wrong…unless it happens to be the one that you currently believe.

Every child is inculcated with a belief system and (when a child is very young) it is always the one that the parent currently believes to be true. This is equally true if the Parent is Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Atheist or whatever. It is also true that the child will learn much more from the parent’s actions than from their words. Children are sponges and will soak it all up. So every child will be inculcated - it just depends on what they see and hear from the parent.

As the child gets older the source of teaching changes and becomes wider. This cannot be avoided. School, the media, friends, etc. all play a role in expanding the child’s knowledge. Questions and “skepticism” come naturally as the child - young adult - tries to reconcile what they have been told by their parents with what they see and hear in the wider world.

It’s a silly idea to try to say (as the OP suggests) that a child not be “branded”. Every child will be branded in some way. The question is simply which way.

Peace
James

 

[Bradski]

Every child is inculcated with a belief system and (when a child is very young) it is always the one that the parent currently believes to be true. This is equally true if the Parent is Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Atheist or whatever.

Maybe every child you know. Others…not so much.

Would you believe that my kids didn’t know I was an atheist until they were in their late teens? And I guarantee that my actions in their formative years gave no clue as to that. In fact, they expressed some surprise on being told.

 

[JRKH]

Maybe every child you know. Others…not so much.

Would you believe that my kids didn’t know I was an atheist until they were in their late teens? And I guarantee that my actions in their formative years gave no clue as to that. In fact, they expressed some surprise on being told.

I was speaking in a broader sense.
Did your children know what you believed about treating others? How they should act in public? What foods were good / bad for them? Whether it was OK to smoke? Drink? Drive after drinking? How to treat a man/woman they were dating?

I was only suggesting that no matter what banner one might describe the teaching under…religious or cultural…every child is inculcated by their parents. It is impossible not to be.

Peace
James

 

[Aloysium]

I think the meme might be aimed at the fundamentalists.

You may be onto something - meant for fundamentalists by fundamentalists.

We teach our children to give of themselves. To look after their siblings and respect their elders. We demonstrate by our behaviour what it means to be decent people. We pray together, go to mass together, contribute our time and money to our community. we encourage curiosity and learning, placing emphasis on doing our best. That’s what parents do.

 

[casslean]

Would it have been better to have been brought up as a Muslim or a Hindu rather than you making up your own mind?

It seems as if inculcating a child with any belief system is wrong…unless it happens to be the one that you currently believe.

It would have been better to be brought up with ANY belief system than to be left with nothing. Let’s be clear. This isn’t letting a child “make up their own mind”. It’s failing to provide them with a foundation upon which they can make up their own mind.

Children can choose to question that foundation once they learn other beliefs and other systems, but without one, it’s a very difficult road.

 

[Wampa]

It would have been better to be brought up with ANY belief system than to be left with nothing. Let’s be clear. This isn’t letting a child “make up their own mind”. It’s failing to provide them with a foundation upon which they can make up their own mind.

Children can choose to question that foundation once they learn other beliefs and other systems, but without one, it’s a very difficult road.

You can articulate my thoughts better than I can! I was trying to put my experience into words re that question and you did it for me. I spent a lot of time wandering in the wilderness as a young adult because I had no foundation. I would have loved to have been exposed to a system of morality before I hit age 17 or so. Without that, secular society (at least in the U.S.) fills the gap and not for the better in my case.

 

[zz912]

We don’t let children make up their mind about math. We don’t let children make up their own opinion about the law of gravity. And we don’t let children wander around ignorant of God. That’s just cruel.

The entire meme is predicated on the false and contradictory belief that all truth is relative.

 

[Bradski]

You can articulate my thoughts better than I can! I was trying to put my experience into words re that question and you did it for me. I spent a lot of time wandering in the wilderness as a young adult because I had no foundation. I would have loved to have been exposed to a system of morality before I hit age 17 or so.

You parents didn’t teach you what constitutes morality? Someone mentioned earlier that we do, and should, tell our children how to be worthwhile members of society. How to treat others. How to show respect. How to be considerate. What constitutes fairness and justice.

All parents should be doing this whatever their belief system. Whatever their religion. Whether they believe in a god or not. This is a given. And shame on anyone who claims that you need a particular religion to be a moral member of society.

So this is not about what we teach our children. It’s about giving them the opportunity to decide, when they are old enough, IF religion is necessary to lead a good life and IF there is a god, and if so, which religion is the correct one. Rather than making the decision for them, which, in almost all cases, results in that child following their parents religion through the course of their lives.

How about we teach children about all religions and then let them follow what they feel is right. If Catholocism is the best path to salvation, then think of all those potential Muslms and Hindus that will answer the call.

Nah, best get them early. Before the age of reason. Fill the font, quickly.

 

[simpleas]

You parents didn’t teach you what constitutes morality? Someone mentioned earlier that we do, and should, tell our children how to be worthwhile members of society. How to treat others. How to show respect. How to be considerate. What constitutes fairness and justice.

All parents should be doing this whatever their belief system. Whatever their religion. Whether they believe in a god or not. This is a given. And shame on anyone who claims that you need a particular religion to be a moral member of society.

So this is not about what we teach our children. It’s about giving them the opportunity to decide, when they are old enough, IF religion is necessary to lead a good life and IF there is a god, and if so, which religion is the correct one. Rather than making the decision for them, which, in almost all cases, results in that child following their parents religion through the course of their lives.

How about we teach children about all religions and then let them follow what they feel is right. If Catholocism is the best path to salvation, then think of all those potential Muslms and Hindus that will answer the call.

Nah, best get them early. Before the age of reason. Fill the font, quickly.

You are probably aware that in times past and maybe even now, the teaching was that if a baby died without Baptism, then they were destined for hell. I’m not sure how much the Catholic church emphasized this or if it was more of a protestant belief, but the point is there is a fear that that could happen.
Here in the UK, it’s a sad fact, but some parents have their children baptised just so they can get into a Catholic school, they have no real intention of molding their child in the faith, as the numbers that attend Church are no where near the numbers they should be.

But like I said, the meme seems to be aimed at the fundamentalists, the ones who would control their kids in a way that doesn’t allow much room for freedom of thought.
Most every Catholic I have known of at some point made up their own mind whether to keep practising the faith or not, there may have been some unnecessary force/guilt in some places, but I think we have moved on since then.

 

[Bradski]

You are probably aware that in times past and maybe even now, the teaching was that if a baby died without Baptism, then they were destined for hell. I’m not sure how much the Catholic church emphasized this or if it was more of a protestant belief, but the point is there is a fear that that could happen.
Here in the UK, it’s a sad fact, but some parents have their children baptised just so they can get into a Catholic school, they have no real intention of molding their child in the faith, as the numbers that attend Church are no where near the numbers they should be.

But like I said, the meme seems to be aimed at the fundamentalists, the ones who would control their kids in a way that doesn’t allow much room for freedom of thought.
Most every Catholic I have known of at some point made up their own mind whether to keep practising the faith or not, there may have been some unnecessary force/guilt in some places, but I think we have moved on since then.

I think it’s safe to assume that no-one believes that about babies. Can you imagine anyone actually believing it and not mentioning it in so many posts? ‘I baptised my child to make sure she didn’t suffer eternal torment’. Seems like the Number One reason with daylight second.

And I personally know people who had their child baptised in the Catholic faith to ensure acceptance into a Catholic school. Abhorrent in my view. A simple ceremony certainly didn’t make that child ‘a Catholic child’. But it seems that if the parents are actually Catholic, then it does.

Personally, in that case, I would class the kid as a child of Catholic parents.

 

[Aloysium]

. . . How about we teach children about all religions and then let them follow what they feel is right. If Catholocism is the best path to salvation, then think of all those potential Muslms and Hindus that will answer the call.

Nah, best get them early. Before the age of reason. Fill the font, quickly.

Religion has to do with transcendence, building the connection that is damaged within our human nature, to the Divine. Clearly we want to give our kids the best breaks. Just as we would send them to the best schools within our financial capacity, we provide them with the truth as best we know it. As Catholics we’ve been blessed with the Church, a one stop solution to all our spiritual needs. To do anything but raise the children, with whose care we’ve been entrusted, in the faith is to do them a great disservice.

With respect to other religions, like knowledge about quantum mechanics is pretty much useless but reasonably important to a person’s development and overall understanding of the world, so too is some familiarity with other approaches to the ultimate Reality. On a more practical level, it helps to understand and respect our neighbours from different cultures and areas of the globe. It provides insight into the diversity of our human nature.

It took me sixty years to get that Catholicism is the best path to salvation. Whether others, my kids included, believe me or not, gotta spread the word. But, ultimately it is God who guides us from where we are, back to Him; a tortuous road for most is my impression.

 

[Mintaka]

St. Augustine pointed out long ago that parents refusing to teach a child their own religion “until old enough to decide” (or back then, “until the Holy Spirit teaches the child Himself” was the fad) was just as abusive as refusing to speak until a child could pick his own language (or was spontaneously taught by the Holy Spirit). You end up with a kid deliberately deprived of a basic human need for a basic kind of human knowledge. If humans didn’t need parental teaching and guidance, we would all be born able to fend for ourselves. But we are not.

Deprivation is abuse.

As for Baptism, of course people still baptize babies to make sure they aren’t stuck in Limbo (not Hell, btw) or otherwise incommoded eternally. It isn’t preached as much, because priests want to emphasize that we can trust the mercy of God embracing aborted babies, as well as kids who didn’t get baptized before death.

But if you have to choose between not knowing a child’s eternal fate (even if you trust things will be okay in the end), and having surety by getting a kid baptized before emergencies can happen, of course you should take the certainty option!

But even if you could know ahead of time that your child will survive to the age of reason and become a perfect reasoner who precociously understands all human philosophy and religion, and can accept the Gospel on his own…Of course you want your child to be protected from demons! Of course you want your child to grow up as a member of Christ’s Body! Of course you would want him to have the gift of faith, hope, and love from before the time he can even remember!

Even before I could read (and I learned to read early, partly by following my parents’ fingers in the book as they ran them along the hymns and readings), I enjoyed my childhood in the Church. It gave me strength and perspective. And of course, early knowledge that suicide and murder were sins kept me from suicide or murder attempts in early childhood, so that was a blessing. (Yeah, even little kids can be very cruel. Kindergarten was hard on me, my ankle nearly got broken by another girl in grade school, and things didn’t get any better until high school.)

So yes, I think Baptism is a lot more like vaccination than “a branding iron.” A rational Christian parent does not leave a child unprotected and unprovided for.

But to return to the underlying point…

Just as any decent human parent teaches his child his language and basic human skills as best he knows them, and as early as the child can safely and usefully absorb the information, any decent human parent teaches his child what he knows and believes about religion and philosophy. To do otherwise is to abuse the child and skip out on a basic parental duty. If a parent is an atheist, I expect that he will teach the child atheism and whatever ethics he has accumulated. If the parent is of some pagan faith, I expect that. If parents of different beliefs have an agreement to teach one faith and not the other, they should make that decision early and stick to it; but judges should not get into it.

 

[casslean]

You parents didn’t teach you what constitutes morality? Someone mentioned earlier that we do, and should, tell our children how to be worthwhile members of society. How to treat others. How to show respect. How to be considerate. What constitutes fairness and justice.

What about teaching them hope when everything around them looks hopeless? Teaching them faith and trust when that society that they’ve tried so hard to be “worthwhile members” of kicks them hile they are down? What about teaching them that when humans - who are invariably fallible and flawed and will make mistakes - when humans hurt them, it doesn’t matter because their is a source of everlasting love that they can turn to?

Our faith gives much more than a moral code. It’s knowing that, no matter what, there is a loving Father who is there for us. It is knowing that there is never any reason to be without hope. It is knowing that you are never, ever alone, no matter what those around you have done.

Raise your children to ask questions, and let them know they have the right to disagree with you - but give them a foundation.

 

[PRmerger]

And I personally know people who had their child baptised in the Catholic faith to ensure acceptance into a Catholic school. Abhorrent in my view.

Dismaying. But abhorrent? Not so much. Let’s save that word for something that’s a bit more noxious.

A simple ceremony certainly didn’t make that child ‘a Catholic child’.

This demonstrates an astonishingly impoverished understanding of baptism.

Simple ceremony? Meh.

And, yes, baptism did make that child a Catholic child. It changed the universe, my friend.

Changed. The. Universe.

 

[Wampa]

You parents didn’t teach you what constitutes morality? Someone mentioned earlier that we do, and should, tell our children how to be worthwhile members of society. How to treat others. How to show respect. How to be considerate. What constitutes fairness and justice.

The way you define it, yes, they taught me that kind of baseline secular morality. I was talking about levels of morality above that, a higher threshold of how to act, so to speak.

But rather than go on, I will leave it there. I decided long ago not to have pointless arguments with atheists on this site. Having been a rather militant one myself until age 25, I at one time believed everything I’ve seen you say here over the years. I made the exact same arguments once. But now I’ve had experiences that showed me truths beyond that. And I know that nothing I can say will impact you, because the points I would make now would not have convinced me then either, before I experienced it myself. I’m just letting you know why I won’t be responding to your pointed questions, so don’t bother asking me. It certainly would be a waste of your time and mine. Peace be with you, Bradski.

 

[Bradski]

It took me sixty years to get that Catholicism is the best path to salvation. Whether others, my kids included, believe me or not, gotta spread the word. But, ultimately it is God who guides us from where we are, back to Him; a tortuous road for most is my impression.

So it took you 60 years to become a Catholic. And some would claim that children a few week old are already there.

Look, I can perfectly understand a parent telling their child what they believe and why they believe it. By all means give them guidance. But for heaven’s sake, if it takes an intelligent man decades to reach such an important decision, how do you expect children to be able to class themselves as belonging to a particular belief system before they even understand the comcepts?

 

[PRmerger]

So it took you 60 years to become a Catholic. And some would claim that children a few week old are already there.

That’s because Catholicism is a multifaceted thing.

You become a Catholic by virtue of your baptism. You become a Catholic when you embrace the faith.

Both/And.

 

[simpleas]

I think it’s safe to assume that no-one believes that about babies. Can you imagine anyone actually believing it and not mentioning it in so many posts? ‘I baptised my child to make sure she didn’t suffer eternal torment’. Seems like the Number One reason with daylight second.

And I personally know people who had their child baptised in the Catholic faith to ensure acceptance into a Catholic school. Abhorrent in my view. A simple ceremony certainly didn’t make that child ‘a Catholic child’. But it seems that if the parents are actually Catholic, then it does.

Personally, in that case, I would class the kid as a child of Catholic parents.

Not now maybe, although a priest did tell us of a mother and father who decided to allow their son to make up his own mind regarding practising a faith when he reached the age of reason, but unfortunately the child died around the age of ten, and as his mother had been brought up Catholic, she then went into a panic that her son was lost forever, in hell. The priest had to try and convince her that this was not true, and to trust in Gods mercy.

I did say times past, but I think somethings remain in the human memory :

From wikipedia :

The Ecumenical Council of Florence (1442) spoke of baptism as necessary even for children and required that they be baptised soon after birth.[23] This had earlier been affirmed at the local Council of Carthage in 417. The Council of Florence also stated that those who die in original sin alone go to hell, but with unequal pains as those in actual mortal sin.[24] John Wycliffe’s attack on the necessity of infant baptism was condemned by another general council, the Council of Constance.[25] The Council of Trent in 1547 explicitly stated that baptism (or desire for baptism) was the means by which one is transferred "from that state wherein man is born a child of the first Adam, to the state of grace, and of the adoption of the sons of God, through the second Adam, Jesus Christ, our Saviour.[26]

Through the 18th and 19th centuries, individual theologians (Bianchi in 1768, H. Klee in 1835, Caron in 1855, H. Schell in 1893) continued to formulate theories of how children who died unbaptised might still be saved. By 1952 a theologian such as Ludwig Ott could, in a widely used and well-regarded manual, openly teach the possibility that children who die unbaptised might be saved for heaven.[27] He also told about Thomas Cajetan, a major 16th-century theologian, that suggested infants dying in the womb before birth, and so before ordinary sacramental baptism could be administered, might be saved through their mother’s wish for their baptism. In its 1980 instruction on children’s baptism the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated that “with regard to children who die without having received baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as indeed she does in the funeral rite established for them”,[28]:13 leaving all theories as to their fate, including Limbo, as viable possibilities. And in 1984, when Joseph Ratzinger, then Cardinal Prefect of that Congregation, stated that he rejected the claim that children who die unbaptised cannot attain salvation, he was speaking for many academic theologians of his training and background.

You can see how thought/teaching has changed. I for one was never taught anyone unbaptised will burn in eternal fire, I was taught about limbo.

Some Catholics do believe in hell, but for those who choose it.

 

[PRmerger]

Some Catholics do believe in hell, but for those who choose it.

ALL Catholics should believe in hell.

Just like they should believe that Jesus is divine.

Saying “some Catholics do believe in hell…” is like saying, “some Catholics do believe in Jesus’ divinity”.

No…ALL Catholics should believe in hell, all Catholics should believe Jesus is divine, all Catholics should believe in the Trinity, etc etc etc