Posted on 07/11/2010 12:05:34 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
"On behalf of the Catholic Church in El Salvador and society in general, we ask Mr. President to use his executive power to veto the decree referred to upholding the rule of law and democracy of our Salvadoran society"
The Episcopal Conference of El Salvador (CEDES) demanded on Sunday the president Mauricio Funes veto a legislative decree that compels us to read the Bible in schools, believing that "violates" the "religious freedom" enshrined in the Constitution.
The CEDES Funes makes the call under in the coming days must be punished, veto or observe the legislative decree 411 which provides read the Bible in classrooms to combat violence.
The education of children in the faith, according to the bishops, "is a right and duty" of parents, aided by ministers of religion.
"We are interested in reading the Bible, but not as imposing liability in the schools, hopefully becoming more read the Bible is more understood, more practiced," says the shepherd.
(Excerpt) Read more at translate.google.com ...
“Apparently the Catholic church is afraid people will hear the true Word without their baggage added onto it.”
Something I am coming to understand is a “tradition” in that church.
A religiously neutral education is **impossible**. All schools must choose between either a godless worldview or a God-centered one. Neither are religiously neutral in content or consequences. Therefore government schools should be BANNED!
Solution: Begin the process of privatizing universal K-12 education. Get government OUT of the education business. It is impossible to be religiously neutral.
I agree. Government run education is an invention of communism. Public schools should be privatized and all parents should choose where their children are educated. That creates a true subsidiary relationship that government should have.
Last sentence of article: “Este domingo, el arzobispo de San Salvador, José Luis Escobar, rechazó la posición de pastores evangélicos que acusan a la iglesia católica de temer a la lectura de la Biblia porque no la alienta entre sus feligreses.”
This Sunday, the archbishop of San Salvador, José Luis Escobar, rejected the position of evangelical pastors who accuse the Catholic Church of fearing the reading of the Bible because it does not encourage it among its parishioners.
Obviously not all “protestants” were against the new law requiring (only) reading of the Bible.
Parties that are officially atheist cannot, of course, vote for such a law. This doesn’t mean that a law mandating Bible readings selected by the state as part of a larger government policy initiative is a good idea for believers.
**OF COURSE Salvadoran Catholics have a perfectly good Spanish Bible (a number of versions) available to them. I own one, myself, “Latinoamerica, Edicion Pastoral.” Half the people in our Spanish charismatic prayer/Bible study group are Salvadoran. They know their Bible quite well.**
Thanks so much — and a lot of other posters thank you too.
I agree.
And in the bigger picture, the insinuation of government into ever more areas of life that should be the private preserve of individuals, families, congregations and communities is something that all conservatives should oppose.
Many are following in your footsteps, too, Ben.
Welcome home to you and to all who are on their way! I know that they are out there reading threads, because I get notes and questions from them. Big smile...........................
Why then is the Catholic Church against it? Is this Catholic organization representative of the Catholic Church in El Salvador?
You’re welcome. I sympathize with the government of El Salvador. Crime and violence, especially gangs, are a serious problem in El Salvador, and of course among Salvadorans in the US as well. However, having students read, perhaps, the Sermon on the Mount - with no discussion, no examples, no effort to apply the words to the problem of violence in their society - seems likely to be of little effect. Maybe they’d learn a new vocabulary word.
It’s almost magical thinking ... *just* listening to a few words from the Bible is expected to address a serious societal issue.
I agree. There is no such thing as “values free” or “religion free” education. The default position now, pretending to be neutral, is aggressive atheism with subsequent hedonism, marxism, etc - all based on atheism.
I’m not opposed to government schools in the sense of very local community government - town, or sections of town. Blocks. But no fedgov or entire state controlled schools, no no no.
Not all Protestant churches have caved on these matters. Not by a long shot. To say “educate yourself” on that shows ignorance, or a desire to do away with the truth.
“Because it opens the door for mandatory reading of the Koran too. “
Not necessarily.
It could; but also, it could be the best weapon against Al Qaeda we’ve seen in a long time.
What one officially teaches is one things; what they effectually convey is another. As long a church does not actually Biblically discipline (1Cor. 4:21; 5:9-13; Rm. 16:17; 2Thes. 3:6,14,15; 1Tim. 1:20; 6:5; 2Jn. 1:10) those who promote immorality, from Kerry to Pelosi to the commoners in the pews, but treat them as members, then it effectively is a liberal church, as that is what predominates wherever it reigns for long, in contrast to its evangelical adversaries, even in their present condition. .Differences Between Denominations
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Evangelicals versus Catholics, from various formal studies, spanning 1992 to 2009 (see sources here).
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http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/RevealingStatistics.html#5
“State imposition of any religious practice is unsuitable. “
Firstly, the American public schools had Bible reading for decades, many decades. My pastor grew up in a Maine public school where the Bible was read every day, and they all stood and recited the Lord’s Prayer.
Secondly, the state imposes religious practice every day. Everything they teach has a religious component in one way or another. The ABSENCE of Scripture is in itself a state imposition of religious teaching. It teaches that we can all get along without the Bible just fine; that it has no impact on anything we learn; and that we are the final arbiters of truth, right and wrong.
So, the school will always impose religion. The question is, which religion?
Even the Unitarian (a religion that effectively denied Christ and the Divine authority of the Bible, but, unlike its later form, at that time overall upheld general Biblical morality) “Father of the Common School,” Horace Mann (May 4, 1796 — August 02, 1859), who became Massachusetts Secretary of Education in 1837, not only understood the impossibility of separating education from religious moral beliefs, but held that it was lawful to teach the truths of the general Christian faith, asserting that the “laws of Massachusetts required the teaching of the basic moral doctrines of Christianity.” Mann, who supported prohibition of alcohol and intemperance, slavery and lotteries, (http://www.famousamericans.net/horacemann) dreaded “intellectual eminence when separated from virtue”, that education, if taught without moral responsibilities, would produce more evil than it inherited. (William Jeynes, “American educational history: school, society, and the common good,” p. 149, 150)
Mann evidenced that he rightly understood that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment did not prohibit officially favoring the general, common Christian faith and its morality, but that it forbade official sanction of one particular sect by distinctively favoring its doctrinal distinctions, stating that “it may not be easy theoretically, to draw the line between those views of religious truth and of Christian faith which is common to all, and may, therefore, with propriety be inculcated in schools, and those which, being peculiar to individual sects, are therefore by law excluded; still it is believed that no practical difficulty occurs in the conduct of our schools in this regard.” (Stephen V. Monsma, J. Christopher Soper, “The Challenge of Pluralism: Church and State in Five Democracies”, The Unites States, cp. 2, p. 21) To critics who were alarmed at the concept of secular schools, he assured that his system “inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals on the basis of religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible...,” but he did exhort that Bible reading be without comment to discourage sectarian bickering. (Mann, Twelfth Annual Report for 1848 of the Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts. Reprinted in Blau 183-84.
Considered second to Mann in his schooling endeavor was Henry Barnard, who was raised in a deeply religious family, and who saw his involvement in education “as part of the providence of God”. Like the majority of Americans, he believed that democracy and education went together in “the cause of truth—the cause of justice — the cause of liberty— the cause of patriotism — the cause of religion.” (Jeynes, p. 154)
By 1890, schools nationwide saw 95 percent of children between the ages of five and thirteen enrolled for at least a few months out of the year, though less than 5 percent of adolescents went to high school, and even fewer entered college. In addition, while there existed thousands of local schools, nearly one thousand colleges and universities (or varying quality), and scores of normal schools which trained teachers, a nationwide educational “system” had yet to be realized by the end of the 1800’s. Education was largely locally managed, as the federal bureau of education, while collecting information about the condition of education, possessed no control over local schools. Education agencies on the state level were small, and its few employees had little or no power over local school districts. School systems in large cities could also function with little oversight, such as in Baltimore, where the public schools in 1890 employed only two superintendents for the entire district of 1,200 teachers. Despite this, public schools across America were notably similar, with children learning both the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the basics of good behavior – the latter being enforced when necessary by corporal punishment. Schools were important community institutions, and reflected the values of of parents and churches, such as honesty, industry, patriot-ism, responsibility, respect for adults, and courtesy. Memorization, recitation, chants and rhymes were often used in teaching subjects, while solving mathematical problems in one’s head was promoted. This inculcation of basic education and self-discipline was purposed to promote good moral citizenry, people who would be honestly employed, and make wise and informed choices, and overall progress in an individualistic, competitive and democratic society, and who would contribute to the vitality of their community and country. (Diane Ravitch, “Left Back A Century of Failed School Reforms” Simon & Schuster)
As regards higher education, the overwhelming majority of the first private colleges of this country were founded as Christian institutions to teach the Gospel. (http://www.faithofourfathers.org/essays/ivyleague.html, “How Christians Started the Ivy League”) Harvard, Yale and Princeton are three examples. All three were established to teach young men to be pastors. The founders of Harvard College, established in 1636, professed that, “All knowledge without Christ was vain.” After requiring literacy in Latin, the second requirement in “Harvard Lawes” of 1642 was that “Every one shall consider the main end of his life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life. (Joh. 17:3) The overall religious nature of colleges and universities continued at least until the Civil War. Even State colleges had significant religious (most always Christian) components, such as mandatory religion courses and attendance at chapel services, while large numbers of their faculties had formal religious training. (Ringenberg, 1984; Marsden and Longfield, 1962; Ronald W. Fagan and Raymond G. DeVries, “The practice of sociology at Christian liberal arts colleges and universities”; The American Sociologist, June, 1994)
It is perceived by some that outlawing formal religion results in replacing it with a functional ideological equivalent. Secularity as a condition of a non-ecclesiastical state may be distinguished with secularism as an ideology, with key Supreme court decisions being used to infer state favor toward the nonreligious, resulting in a "religion-free education" which "indoctrinates" the young into viewing secularism as the only frame of reference.[45]
Paul G. Kussrow and Loren Vannest ask, Is a religiously neutral public school education an oxymoron?, and see notable Supreme court Establishment Clause decisions (such as Engel v. Vatale, l962) as in essence creating "a legal fiction--a myth of religious neutrality." They argue that "Philosophy and religion blur when dealing with these basics, such as truth, while pointing to the ultimate questions and answers in life," and that, "Any discussion of a secular-religious distinction is self-refuting. For someone's values are always being advocated even in so called "neutral" settings."
Removing formal God (and morality) based religion from the public schools is seen to have the effect of supplanting it with Secular Humanism. This in turn promotes pantheism, the worship of nature with its evolutionary hypothesis, and the rejection of moral absolutes (especially those of the Bible), resulting in a dangerous ever-morphing morality and decline of beneficial traditional morality.[46]
In support of this understanding, declarations by humanists such as John J. Dunphy, are often invoked:
I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith...These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach,...The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism...[47]
Kussrow and Vannest argue that "since atheism is a religion under the establishment clause, (Malnak v. Yogi, l977), given the above facts, secular humanism must be considered a religion for the purposes of the First Amendment (Gove v. Mead School District, l985)", noting that "the American Humanist Association even has a religious tax exemption status approved by the Federal government."[48] In United States v. Kauten (2d Cir. 1943), conscientious objector status was granted to Mathias Kauten, not due to his belief in God, but on the basis of his “religious conscience.”[49]
Other evidence indicates that U.S. courts have moved from a generally substantive definition of religion, in which the religion affirms a transcendent deity, to a functional definition of religion, which Secular Humanism has been defined by some courts to be. In the Torcaso v. Watkins case in 1961, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Maryland notary public who was disqualified from office because he would not declare a belief in God. The Court argued that theistic religions could not be favored by the Court over non-theistic religions.
In the light of such, James Davison Hunter argues that,
To be legally consistent the courts will either have to articulate a constitutional double standard or apply the functional definition of religion to the no establishment clause just as they have to the free exercise [clause]. The latter would mean that secularistic faiths and ideologies would be rigorously prohibited from receiving even indirect support from the state, which needless to say would have enormous implications for public education.[50]See http://www.conservapedia.com/Separation_of_church_and_state
RE: “And in the bigger picture, the insinuation of government into ever more areas of life that should be the private preserve of individuals, families, congregations and communities is something that all conservatives should oppose.”
Yet the evidence of this thread is that many of the posters on this thread will welcome that as long as it offers them an opportunity to poke the Catholic Church in the eye. It really outs their actual agenda. Shows you how shallow they hold conservative values. Liberals at heart.
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