To think MIL being judgemental and over-bearing about DC's baptism.

[Rollergirl1]

DH and I are not religious. DH's parents are practising catholics and DH was heavily involved in the church until he was a teenager (was an alter boy). I was christened when young but haven't gone to church since i was little. We had a civil ceremony when we got married. DD is due to start school in Sep 2010 and I have started looking at local schools. The two best schools in our area by a mile are the two local catholic schools. So we are now getting DD (3) and DS (1) baptised. And we are getting them baptised at PIL's local church despite it being 200 miles away from where we live. The reason that we are doing this is because local churches expect you to go to church regularly before they will consider baptising. So this is purely down to laziness and convenience. MIL knows the exact reason we are doing this and knows that we are not religious. She is making a big deal of it, arranging marquee for after the ceremony and inviting all their side of the family, etc. And I am happy for her to do so because she is doing us a favour. One of the godparents (my best friend)is unable to make it as they have other plans for that date. I wouldn't dream of making her change them as she knows this is not a big thing for us and we are really only doing for reasons cited above. Also my Mum won't be able to make as she is having a knee replacement the week before and won't even be able to walk. And she is not religious and not catholic. And it is happening 200 miles away. But my MIL is now saying that if my best friend can't come than i should ask someone else to be the godparent and has firmly stated that she thinks my mum should be there. I'm now getting stressed as I really don't want to make a big deal of this as we are only doing for the reason of schools but then think am I being unreasonable as MIL doing us a favour by sorting this out for us?

I have been thinking about this, I think the Op is out for a response... if she wanted real views on MIL taking over the baptism she did not need to mention the school thing, just that it was more for MIL than anyone else as the op and her dh are not practicing IYSWIM. She must have known the school thing would detract from her actual question!

Therefore op, YABU for attention seeking

When your children are baptised YOU will have to make promises to God in front of the whole congregation and your children. You will be lying. Not a good example for your children.
And if you don't care about the lying then you certainly should not be allowed any where near the church.

I am surprised that some people still think that there is such a thing as a 'secular school' in this country.
I think you are being very hypocritical-I can see why. Unfortunately you can't have it both ways. You either be honest and truthful to your own beliefs, or you do it for the school place but then have to go along with MIL. You are after all making use of her-the priest knows that she is a regular and can assume that you are too. You would have a much harder job at home, suddenly finding religion. If you are set on the Catholic route then you have to put up with MIL.

YABVU

As a catholic, I find it really offensive that you can take this point of view. Your MIL is right to make a big thing of this day because in any practicing catholic's view, baptism is one of the seven sacraments and is extremely important. It is on the same level as getting married in a catholic church and you wouldn't expect people to just do that for the piece of paper would you?

As everyone else has said you are going to have to put a lot more into the school than you are assuming, at the very least attending mass on a weekly basis as well as holy days of obligation - you aren't going to get away with Easter and Christmas.

Would you take the same view if the local muslim school was the best one educationally?

(If I've repeated anyone's posts then I'm sorry, I read the first and last pages only and got so wound up I had to join in immediately

Quick! look busy ...Jesus is coming

LOL @ custardo

Rollergirl, just wondered who set the date for the christening - and at what points in time relatively did the christening date get set, your mum's operation, and the fact your friend wasn't going to be around.

I know it can be difficult to set a date that everyone can get to, recently my sister was trying to sort out a date for her dd's christening, having booked it a long time previously the vicar suddenly announced that he was off on holiday for a couple of weeks at that point and they would have to change it . Deciding the key people to have there were the vicar, themselves, god parents and grandparents, at one point it looked like it was going to push into late october because of various different commitments people had.

Luckily, they managed to find a date that only gave people short notice but most people were able to attend. I was one of the last to find out, when she rang to say the date was changing I said 'So long as it is any weekend apart from xxx' there was a silence at the other end of the phone as it was indeed that weekend. In the end we changed our plans (altho' dh was keen on sending me and ds2 off to the christening whilst he and ds1 did the stuff that we had already said we would do ) as she couldn't face waiting until the end of the autumn (not to mention they were having the party at home afterwards, easy in a big garden, not so easy to have a garden do in late oct!).

Guess this is a very long winded way of saying, who chose the date of the christening? If MIL chose it and went ahead without checking that everybody important to the ceremony could make it then she can't complain too much about people not coming.

You could always say to her that you don't think she is showing a very christian attitude if she is being unreasonable about things!

piscesmoon - I think people are slapdash with their terminology and just mean schools which aren't faith schools.

I'd like to see complete separation between church and state.

The faith school as the "nice middle class school" does not always hold true IME. My schools were not middle class. My church now isn't middle class (my children don't go to faith schools). I'm pretty sure the demographics for practising Roman Catholics are not predominantly middle class. It is an easy throw away answer to an interesting question.

I'm sure it isn't always necessarily true, but my point was one about parental perceptions.

I don't think they all do UnquietDad or you wouldn't get so many threads with people getting surprised that you have prayers and hymns at a non faith school.
MIL is doing OP a big favour so she isn't in a position to argue.

Its not a true 'faith' school without nuns. To pass the 'how Catholic is this school' test, look out for

2 nuns - a nice and a mean one ( they don't have to be called Cagney and Lacey)

the stations of the cross in the hall

a reward system based on Saints ( I was St. Dominics - fittingly)

Irish dancing class.

Fish on Friday

Mass on Friday

anything else is just playin' wit ya ass.

i swear bro, thou must do the catachism daily..daily y'all

All this talk of fakin' you iz chattin' shit innit - i might pop a cap in yer bad lyin', cheatin' ass

well look at the Ofsted reports for all of the church schools in your area - I'm sure you'll find that many parents perceptions are totally wrong

But that isn't the answer to the question at all. The RC schools I know do not have a large middle class population. If they are successful, it isn't because of the middle class aspirational parent thing. So I'm not sure how your point about parental perceptions answers the question.

Fallen madonna - what is the alternative answer?

Thats clearly Moses - or Jacob or Esau ( shit it could have been Mary Magdalen with a hangover on some mornings)

Having read the OP I just want to know why if she was all for starting to attend the local church and getting them baptised at the local church why not do that?It seems that this baptism is for the MIL as she is the catholic.

When I got my eldest baptised I had to get dispensation from my local parish priest who had me up for an interveiw for almost an hour where I had to justify why I wanted my daughter baptised out of the parish.Also the same with when I wanted to get married at my grandmothers church,which was to do with it being the family church before I moved and the fact grandmother was dying and she would have not been able to travel.The husband was not a catholic and he had to promise to bring up any children as catholics.We solved the problem of his non-belief as he converted a couple of years back and it took the best part of a year for the process.

Our local church gets awash with people the beginning of the year who want to get their child into the school so they start to come after christmas, they tend not to be seen after about march.If you want your child baptised in our church to get them into the school it takes 4 months of weekly classes before the priest will even look at booking a date for you.As this is the way there is a chance we will be losing the school as the catholic intake is dropping the nearest next school is not catholic and it means that I will have a 40 minute journey four times a day to take to school and when youngest child starts nursery it means doing the same journey 6 times.

If you are so set on your child going to the local catholic school go to your LOCAL catholic church and get it done there.

Roller, your principals are not worth a dime and you use people to get your own way. Glad you are not the mother of my grandchildren.

Does the fact your husband works for News International have any bearing on this thread?

oooOOOO

busted ????

("your" being OP not Fruitysunshine who got in the way just then)

Fab, can't to read my misquote

I don't know UQD. I said it's an interesting question - for me as a teacher as much as a parent and a church-goer. But just because there isn't a clear cut answer, doesn't mean that your analysis works.