bigdawg:
The problem is that these teens are going to be volunteering to help out at a non-Catholic VBS. Being run by Calvary Chapel, the bible school is not going to be teaching what the Catholic Church teaches. Are the teens supposed to be disruptive and start arguing/debating with the other staff during the course of the shool? This is not the right time, place or way to do apologetics. How would you like it if a Reformed Baptist volunteered at your parish to teach religious education or help out in the classes and during the class started defending their faith? Again, it’s not the right time or place to do such a thing.
Speaking for my own children, they are not that stupid. They know how to obey orders without taking it upon themselves to Fix The World and their superiors.
I have allowed them to be exposed to people from other faiths, so I am not concerned that if they go to another Church they will make nuisances of themselves or disrupt the other people’s plans. Being a Catholic through high school has afforded them ample opportunity to know how to Keep Their Personal Opinion to Themselves when it is prudent. They have helped when they didn’t have to with many people in many situations and of many beliefs, and never have I heard anything – directly or indirectly – except high praises for them.
You have to figure I give them a pretty hard time and challenge their behavior, their thoughts, and even their feelings. If they can put up with a psycho like me and still love me and obey me and be acclaimed by all who know them (and even people who just met them) as precious and brilliant and talented and friendly and helpful, then I figure that in my own mind, at least, I can speak with some authority on raising children. As my last pastor put it, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
I believe that the overwhelming majority of high school student know how to play the game without causing disputes better than their parents would even believe. If they are in a Catholic school, you can be assured they have some skills at Looking Right and Stifling Your Own Opinion.
If we are dealing with children that immature they haven’t learned yet how to conceal their personal opinions when prudent then they have been sheltered and they will have quite a culture shock when they get out and have to deal with people who not only disagree with them, but wield worldly power over them.
Important: Get them out of the closet and into the world while they are still living at home. Trust me, as a socially naive, sheltered Catholic myself I suggest you
DO NOT want their first experience with radically new points of view to be when they are away at college and out of your sight.
Repeat: Get them out of the closet and into the world while they are still living at home.
If the teens don’t say anything at all, it is likely that the staff of the shool will take this as acceptance of their teaching.
If they don’t say anything at all against the faith of their hosts, then it shows they had an upbringing that included Good Manners. Maybe since manners are so rare in adults these days they mistake not being a jerk for being Fully Mental Assenting.
That could also explain why Fully Mental Assenting people are so adamant about forcing everybody else to agree with what they say is what the Church says about the Truth.
Also, there is a strong possibility that the staff of the Bible School will be very aggressive in “evangelizing” the teens. Why put them in such a place? They can learn apologetics, if that’s what they are interested in, from many other resources without being in a potentially hostile evironment that could endanger their faith. In fact, if they are teens, maybe they should spend the time in intensive study learning their own faith before venturing into such a potentially hostile environment to do apologetics.
You are right that they might try to evangelize, but I suspect those they will be in close contact with are more directly interested in the smooth execution of their vbs.
If your teenager does not know enough about Catholicism by the time they are teens, to help discern the complex truths the other faith will be using them to teach little children, then you are seriously behind the curve and maybe a little different spice in their faith lives might zap it up a bit.
Would you refuse to let your teenager babysit for a family who attended this Church, using all the same arguments as have been in this thread? If your teenager gets a paying job at a place which has non-Catholics do these dangers still apply? What if they were offered a paying job to help them out?
It seems like we are afraid of Protestants or something. What do we have to worry about? If we walk in the truth then let’s learn how to discern the truth because unless we stay locked in a closet, we are going to be getting mixed bag of truth and lies our whole lives.
Alan
) and since I’ve always put my children in VBS, I would like you and others to know that I have never once at a VBS come across any anti-Catholic anything. At VBS’, they teach the basics. Why would they teach kids “call no man father” at a VBS? Ridiculous! Last year I enrolled my young son in the Presbyterian Church VBS, where we have gone for the past 5 years together as a family (before my conversion of course)–and what my son learned and made a beautiful little craft of was The Fruits of the Spirit. Gentleness, Patience, Love, Joy, Peace, Self-Control, etc. I still have it hanging in my bathroom, it’s so beautiful. Is this anti-Catholic?
It is hard being the only Catholic!