Posted on 02/05/2014 10:39:39 AM PST by NYer
Kicked out of school? I did that in parochial school.
Did you mean Church? If so, for what?
Oh, and I forgot to mention the time I said “swine” because the teacher was asking everyone to say a foreign word. It’s the only one I could think of (I was severely punished). By the way, punishement usually took the form of some kind of public humiliation. When I said strict, I wasn’t kidding.
I don’t understand what you mean about ‘join’. Are you saying they won’t let her join the RCIA program because she had a child out of wedlock? Or they wouldn’t let her join the Parish?
I don’t see how that can be. In my experience, a child out of wedlock isn’t a problem for belonging to a Parish. I had a niece who had a child out of wedlock, and she not only remained a Catholic, but had her baby baptized in the Church.
As I said, I don’t really know all the details, I just remember being told these things quite a few years ago. I actually shouldn’t have said anything at all, but now it seems I’ve set off a fire storm. I don’t know if the term was actually “join”, actually. It may have been something else. I just recall that the church wouldn’t let them do certain things, I don’t remember what.
OK, so it sounds like your niece wasn’t allowed to participate in the Sacraments, which makes sense, if she wasn’t Catholic. Anyone can attend Mass, but not everyone can receive Holy Communion, if they are not baptized Catholic, and have prepared for the reception of the Sacrament.
I’m not really into such details. I do consider myself a Catholic, however, because EVERYONE in my family and extended families are Catholic, going back to the first generation Russian immigrants. I do happen to disagree with some Catholic doctrine, namely how the same things are repeated mechanically with each mass, with little attempt to establish their real meaning. There is also a socialist-like liberalness about many Catholics, and the Church itself takes no stance against it, and in fact often in support of it.
The same things are repeated at each Mass, and if you get a good book explaining the Mass, you’ll understand why. Much of what happens, and many of the prayers, are based on Scripture, and some are based on those from the Shabbat service and the Passover Seder, which would have been important to the early Christians, as many were Jews. If you learn this history of the Mass, you’ll understand the beauty of the prayers, and saying them the same at each Mass will only deepen your appreciation for them.
I’m old and in the South. “Strict” meant strict in my school.
So if you mean kicked out of school...
If you mean kicked out of Church, well, I think you’re saying that didn’t happen.
I’m not demeaning your bad experiences in Catholic school; just making a couple of points:
It could be pretty darn rough in parochial schools also, and that’s quite different from being kicked out of Church.
The Church has been very good to me, so I apologize for my own bias.
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