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My Wife and I are Atheists, but Our Daughter Wants to be Baptised Catholic
The Guardian (UK) ^ | 1/14/14 | James Harrington

Posted on 01/14/2014 8:25:45 PM PST by marshmallow

I'm proud of my daughter, but I can't deny that she stopped us in our religiously disinterested, bleeding-heart liberal tracks

For decades, god and religion have played no part in my life. I was baptised as a baby, but didn't make it as far as first communion. That may officially make me a Catholic in the broadest sense, but if it does, I'm one who's not so much "lapsed" as "stalled before I started".

Apart from morning assemblies and weekly hymn practices at primary school, followed by a couple of years of religious education classes at comprehensive (which I dropped as soon as exam options allowed), I have barely considered my immortal soul, much less the direction it may be heading when I die.

Over the years, when I bothered to think about it at all, I came to the conclusion that I prefer the scientific theory of life and the universe to the spiritual one. I'm most likely an atheist, but one leaning to the agnostic side of the spectrum. I know I'm a sceptic, in the true sense of the word. Or shallow. One of the two.

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: Catholic; General Discusssion; Skeptics/Seekers
KEYWORDS: catholic; faithandphilosophy; jamesharrington; romancatholicism
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To: vladimir998; Digger
Should we only post material that meets your ideological standards?

As someone who's been asked to do this on multiple occasions, you don't want to go there.

21 posted on 01/14/2014 8:55:34 PM PST by Alex Murphy ("the defacto Leader of the FR Calvinist Protestant Brigades")
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To: Digger

I don’t follow you. Explain.


22 posted on 01/14/2014 8:58:36 PM PST by Jack Hydrazine (Pubbies = national collectivists; Dems = international collectivists; me = independent conservative)
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To: the OlLine Rebel

You’ll be surprised at how many Muslims send their children to Catholic schools strictly for the quality of education.

Never heard of a conversion because the children know what dire consequences await them if they did.


23 posted on 01/14/2014 8:58:38 PM PST by 353FMG
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To: yldstrk
The daughter will lead the rest of them back home

She has as her mission to pray for her parents. They are very, very fortunate.

24 posted on 01/14/2014 8:59:59 PM PST by Slyfox (We want our pre-existing HEALTH INSURANCE back!)
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To: marshmallow

*8For me, it means regular trips to the presbytery for extra “Catholic lessons”. It means going to church for family mass on Sundays and not knowing when to sit or stand; **

Good for this dad. May the daughter bring him and her mother to the Catholic Church.


25 posted on 01/14/2014 9:00:58 PM PST by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: Digger

Catholicism is very conservative at it roots. It’s just that everyone does not know those roots.


26 posted on 01/14/2014 9:02:47 PM PST by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: Slyfox

They are indeed


27 posted on 01/14/2014 9:04:50 PM PST by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: PGR88

Good post! :-)


28 posted on 01/14/2014 9:14:08 PM PST by Bobalu (The true secret to genius is in creativity, not in technical mechanics - Richard Feynman)
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To: Friendofgeorge

Old Woody Allen joke.

A hypocrite is a guy who writes a book extolling atheism and then prays that it does well.


29 posted on 01/14/2014 9:16:43 PM PST by Bobalu (The true secret to genius is in creativity, not in technical mechanics - Richard Feynman)
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To: marshmallow

As C. S. Lewis might put it, an atheist couple who wants to pass atheism on to their children really cannot be too careful of their schooling.


30 posted on 01/14/2014 9:17:21 PM PST by RichInOC (2013-14 Tiber Swim Team)
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To: Salvation

When I was a confirmation teacher, back in the 90s, we had one girl sign herself up for confirmation. Her parents were indifferent about it, but didn’t stand in her way. When her younger brother was old enough, she brought him to class and they both ended up confirmed. I never met her parents. I wonder if they had the faintest idea what a remarkable daughter they had.


31 posted on 01/14/2014 9:18:55 PM PST by married21 ( As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.)
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To: PGR88

Great minds think alike. See post #9.


32 posted on 01/14/2014 9:23:22 PM PST by detective
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To: 353FMG
“You’ll be surprised at how many Muslims send their children to Catholic schools strictly for the quality of education.

Never heard of a conversion because the children know what dire consequences await them if they did.”

I helped out at a recent first communion in my parish. One of the boys receiving his first communion was named Mohammad.

I assume it was a conversion.

33 posted on 01/14/2014 9:30:20 PM PST by detective
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To: Bobalu
Old Woody Allen joke.

Woody IS a joke. Funny you would pick such a pervert to prove your point. What's next, you're going to quote the pedophile priests?

34 posted on 01/14/2014 10:03:29 PM PST by Veggie Todd (I don't always talk to Obama voters, but when I do I ask for Large Fries.)
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To: married21

Wow, what a story!


35 posted on 01/14/2014 10:06:57 PM PST by Salvation ("With God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26)
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To: marshmallow

There is a children’s book on this topic. I cannot remember the title.
It is about a teenaged girl who is expelled from a high dollar private because of something she didn’t do. The only school that will take her is a Catholic one that has a very strict dress and discipline code. She is upset at her secular, atheist parents for not standing up for her and making her go to that school. She decides that the best way to get back at them for putting her in Catholic school is to pretend to become religious which will mortify her parents. After a while she discovers that has stoped pretending.

It was a pretty well written book for teenagers


36 posted on 01/14/2014 10:10:47 PM PST by Fai Mao (Genius at Large)
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To: ifinnegan
there is no scientific theory of life and the universe

Wrong!

Here are the final words in both Darwin's "Origin of the Species" and its modern eye-opening update "Darwin's Ghost" by Steve Jones.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one, and that, whilst this planet has gone on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

37 posted on 01/14/2014 10:36:34 PM PST by OldNavyVet (Robert's revenge lies in our getting rid of Democrat control in House, Senate and Preisdent.)
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To: OldNavyVet

“...life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one...”

Quite a “scientific theory”.


38 posted on 01/14/2014 10:48:21 PM PST by ifinnegan
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>> Over the years, when I bothered to think about it at all, I came to the conclusion that I prefer the scientific theory of life and the universe to the spiritual one.

Atheists are idiots.


39 posted on 01/14/2014 10:54:09 PM PST by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist!)
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To: ifinnegan

exactly. Science is about what you can prove by experimentation. When you get into speculation, it’s then a religious thought...


40 posted on 01/14/2014 11:35:18 PM PST by Cronos (ObamaÂ’s dislike of Assad is not based on AssadÂ’s brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
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