stopping my kids going to a Catholic Church

[jennyslinger]

I know religion is contentious so I'd like to say up front that I am a confirmed atheist and my DH is a confirmed catholic. This is not about the rights or wrongs of believing in god.

DH wants DS and DD (when she's 4yo) to go to our local Cathocis church to attend sunday school and get involved with other church activities.

I have read so much over the last few years about the child abuse cover-up in the Catholic Church. For this reason I have told DH and his family that the kids will not be going.

DH says I am fussing over nothing.

I asked DH he knew a nursery had covered up child abuse would he be happy with the kids going. He says this is not the same.

Am I being unreasonable?

Ok...

I said straight away that your post wasn't shocking..I was being dramatic....

Re; talking bollox....I was being clairvoyant, you went on to talk 100% bollox...which is no problem, I have been know to talk it sometimes...

I Can't remember what your question was..?
..was it something like .."how can you justify belonging to a church that covers up child abuse"..?

It's hard sometimes, I suppose it's like muslims having to deal with people thinking they're all terrorists.....you just learn to ignore it.

I will never abandon the church...I have strong views on homosexuality and being a catholic means I am in an environment that suits me.

Since becoming a mum I have excelled at finding things to worry about. I recently found mysef awake in the small hours, worrying that when my toddler turns seventeen he may be in danger if driven about by friends who have only just passed their driving test. So I do recognise your capacity to find danger everywhere!
I would struggle to think of many safer places than a well attended Sunday School class though. Many churches now insist on all volunteers being police checked as a result of the crimes and subsequent cover-ups you refer to. Are you sure that your motivations are purely down to the fear of abuse?
My husband is an atheist and I am a (pretty hopeless by many standards) Christian. I'm happy that my husband does not object to me taking our child to church once a month or so. Going to my local C of E church was part of my childhood and it feels natural to take my child to church even though I had hardly been to any since leaving home 15 years ago. A Sunday service occupies such a small fraction of my child's waking hours that I can't see how it could be divisive to us as a family. My husband is always delighted to get the house to himself for a whole 90 minutes on these occasions. We all attended church together on Christmas Day and my husband's boredom was actually replaced by pride in his son's popularity and confidence with the members of the very diverse congregation.
If my husband "forbade" me from attending church with our son, I would feel both astonished and resentful. I hope you'll work something out soon.

Did you not discuss issues of religion before you had kids, and how you would bring up any potential children? My dh is Catholic and I am Orthodox Christian and my dd is being brought up a Roman Catholic and was baptised in the Church, I was happy about this and discussed it before we got married and had a dc.

It is wrong to tar everyone with the same brush, and I know that in our Catholic Church, child protection has gotten very stringent, everyone who helps there and is in contact with children has to be CRB checked like you would in school. Is this being used as an exucse as you really dont want them to be brought up Catholic?

Right....
My last tuppence.

1. Paedaphilia rates amongst priests are about the same, if not slightly lower than the general population.

- even in the general pop they are astonishingly high (c.5%)

1. You therefore need to be careful to always safeguard your children from potentially dubious scenarios.

• this includes reliance upon state mechanisms such as CRB checks and looking at the situations your children are likely to be in 1-1 with adults.

1. Sunday Schools do NOT involve 1-1 adult -child scenarios, there are a bunch of kids and a bunch of adults. So I can't quite see how your kids are likely to be at any risk.

1. So far as your concern about the Institution of the Church and its involvement in Child Abuse cover-ups is concerned, you frankly should have dealt with this sooner. When your child is Christened you vocalise your agreement to their being brought up as Catholics. You have done this. It is not enough of an excuse that you couldn't be bothered dealing with this at the same.

1. In any case, plenty of Institutions have done awful things across history. Surely the point is one of moving forward. As an active member of the Church community (even if you don't actively worship) you could help ensure this.

1. Frankly I think the amount of Catholic bashing that's going on here is ridiculous, and a complete irrelevance to the OP question.

at the time even (pt 4)

There are many historical reasons to dislike the catholic church I guess, paedophilia as a risk to your child isn't one.

Ok, if the ONLY think that is bothering you about the kids going to church is the risk of child abuse
(and I suspect there is a lot more to it than that, but as others have already said, that should have been thrashed out BEFORE your got them baptised...)
then ask to see a copy of the church's child protection policy.

I'm CofE, but the RC church will have something similar in place I'm sure. I'm the under-18s co-ordinator for my church (one of the responsibilities of this role is in ensuring processes to safeguard children are followed) & we use the same child protection processes/policies as schools etc. Everyone in contact with children is CRB'd, references are taken up, guidelines in place to minimise any 1-on-1 contact opportunities, etc. For Sunday school parents are welcome to stay until they are happy to leave their children (or as is more often the case, that the children are happy to be left), I could go on, but you get the picture.

No amount of processes or policies can of course guarantee 100% safety in any setting, and we also have robust processes in place if there is any suspicion/allegation of abuse. It would NOT get covered up. It is all taken very seriously indeed, and I wouldn't expect anything less TBH.

Yes what went on historically in the Roman Catholic church was awful, but it is a very different world today WRT child protection.

@ Daftpunk

Quote = "I have strong views on homosexuality and being a catholic means I am in an environment that suits me."

For a moment I nearly considered your comments then I saw you are a silly homophobic.

Can you see the irony of using 'daftpunk' as a account name - one of the strongest anti-homophobia electro/techno bands in popular culture.

I'm ticking off sooo many more reasons than I previously thought for keeping my kids away from Catholicism.

Why didn't you think of all these reasons before you casually took part in a sacrament that committed you to bringing them up as Catholics?

Yes I agree you should have discussed this before you had dcs. Your dp is their parent to and also has a say and you were happy to let them be baptised in the Catholic Church. Surely you should have known all this before going out with a Catholic and permitting them to be baptised in the church. Not all Catholics are anti homophobic btw, the Catholic church as I know from one of our priests homolies, is fine with people who are gay/lesbian but its the sex part that they are a bit iffy about, but then again so is Judaeism,Muslim,and other relitions not only the Catholic church!

Jenny you make spurious statements but fail to respond to serious points. Why is this?

While I agree that christening is a sacrament that should be respected (hence my decision not to christen my child, even though I was put under a world of pressure), in some cultures it is an incredibly difficult thing to avoid. I'm not saying this was the case here, but here in Ireland almost every child is christened and confirmed, including the children of people who don't go to mass from one year to the next. No-one calls those people hypocrites (although I certainly think they are). I was told by several people that if I didn't christen and confirm my child that they would be a social outcast! So it takes a bit of bottle to stand against that, I can easily understand why most people take the line of least resistance and christen, although I don't condone it.

Jenny, I see the point very clearly that you're making in your op and as an [atm] infrequent mass goer with a 12 year old son about to make his Confirmation I feel so fucking angry at the abuse, the cover-up, the code of silence, the pantomime of Bishops and Cardinals so removed from reality that they'd rather uphold their positions than do the right thing and resign and allow the church to be re-built free of their lies and warped mindsets.

I'm not interested in their hollow rhetoric and feel the abused need to have their voices listened to and their wishes adhered to when it comes to the fate of these men.

That may be true in Ireland Glastocat, but the OP is not in Ireland and is not, herself, a Catholic so would not have felt this pressure.

You may see it as god-forbidding sacrament to let my kids be baptised. I don't. It was just a party for the family - who I will repeat do not attend mass every week. We were drinking and dancing for far longer the we were in Church. Its what Irish people do (I've gathered - I'm not Irish, DH is).

I was baptized - it means less than nothing. Its just a ceremony that you do because granny and granddad want to wear their nice clothes.

We had two marriage ceremonies - a proper on in the registry office and then got a blessing to keep DH's family happy. I even told the priest I was a non-believer and all he asked was I baptized a Christian. I said yes - that was it. Marriage Blessings I think are like an acquisition strategy - like they are thinking 'maybe we might have caught one here'.

Actually the point isn't whether I (or OPs) feeling it's a 'god forbidding' sacrament.

The fact is that you made a binding agreement. You said you would do something and now you're going back on it. It's like saying that when you were giving false evidence you felt it was OK because 'you didn't believe in the courts jurisdiction'.

I find it incredibly sad that you feel it's OK to go through life essentially lying in this way when it suits you. And for what? A party?

If I were your DH I'd be seriously concerned about what other acts you may have gone through when 'you didn't really mean it'.

I guess that's where we don't see eye to eye.

The church is not like the law courts. The law courts tends not to have links with criminality, support homophobia, lie to cover up sex abuse, ask for a percentage of your wage in threat of being expelled (well taxes I suppose).

The fact that you even compare an organised religion that praises an imaginary overlord to a democratic law courts shows we are not talking about the same thing, with the same reverence.

I'll stick my neck out here and ask a bit of a silly question, as I have browsed some of the thread, but not read it all.

Why don't you allow them the experience of exposure to the Catholic religion and then allow them to choose for themselves when they are old enough to make an informed decision?

Also, would you take part in a Jewish ceremony or a muslim ceremony just because it was an excuse for a party? A Catholic baptism means you are committing to bringing your children up as a Catholic and people like you just demean it. Why didn't you just have a naming ceremony if all you wanted was a party?

Perhaps because her DH, the child's faher, wanted it, and she went along with it to please him?

Most non-religious people don't understand babtism vows.

father, even.

Argh, and baptism!

But you are actually asked straight out, as part of the ceremony, if you undertake to raise this child as a Catholic. What's to understand? That standing up in a Church and lying is wrong?

Don't we lie every day; when we wear push-up bras, do our make-up, wear high-heals shoes, tell DH that he's not fat. Letting your in-laws have a baptism is probably very low down in our daily white lies. Show me a woman who doesn't at some point everyday give in to keep the peace on things that don't matter.

Sorry - no time to read thread, but funnily enough was having a similar conversation today.

I would not send my children to a Catholic school because of the numerous stories on child abuse cover ups. If a national nursery brand had been in the news for a child abuse cover up I would not send them to any branch of that nursery brand.

Also is it true that Catholic schools teach that homosexuality is wrong?