non-religious family sending my 2 dd's to a catholic school please enlighten me

[muma3]

i have been having problems with my dd1 and have just got her into a new school . my problem is , is that we arent religious and i know nothing about roman catholics. my dd2 will also be going and i dont think she has grasped religions and beliefs at all yet.
i believe that dd1 is very strong minded and believes in jesus and god and has learnt alot from her previous school but i would apprieciate it if someone could inform me about this religion?
im very interested

Rhubarb, who is a catholic, was being very enlightening about many catholic doctrinal points here

I'm not sure you actually have to do anything. The whole point of Catholic education is that they do all this stuff.
You will have to do some work on her sex education of course, and her notion of how you decide what is real will not work too well, but I think you'll find that a few episodes of Father Ted, and you'll know as much as most of the parents. Lay Catholics aren't supposed to understand it, the church fought for years agains the notion of the Bible being in a language that plebs could read.

If you really are interested about understanding what Catholicism is all I can recommend "Catholicism for Dummies" - it is very factual and extremely easy to read and not at all proselytising (although nevertheless very sound from a catholic doctrinal pov). I would recommend you get the facts if you are interested straight from the horses mouth so to speak and make your own mind up about what you think. There is a lot of sh*te spouted about catholicism normally based on ignorance so at least get the pure unspun facts first ......

this is a particularly good book which explains very sensibly a lot of Catholic doctrine and how it may affect children and so on.
The oter thing I would suggest is having a word with the parish priest where the school is (you would need to phone to make an appointment probably).
I am a governor at a Catholic school and, if your school is anything like ours, there will be a lot of non-church going catholics who know very little about it all as well so I wouldn't worry too much about your DD not fitting in or knowing what was going on. Her teacher should be able to explain the prayers and traditions to here as well.
Good luck

My DS goes to a Roman Catholic school, although the school like to stress their Christian ethos ahead of being RC.

His curriculum for this year is very RCC focussed - rather a lot of catechism. I have spoken with the chaplain about this and she assures me that it is informational only. DS does do a lot of RS prep at home, and from what I see he applying the principles he learnt for Common Entrance - to see both sides of the issue, and to form his own opinion based on the evidence.

Being an rs teacher i Have worked in private/state/rc and non denom. schools.
A school is advised to teach all major world religions including Atheism and Humanism. I understand the RC syllabus is heavily weighted toward RC doctrine, as one would expect; and will probably only offer the RC GCSE course at ks4.
It is not necessary to be a Catholic and to fully understand RC teachings, most RC's dont.
The GCSE will require the pupil to understand the basic RC response to things like war, marriage, divorce etc. aswell as expect them to know the parables.....At a school with a GOOD RS dept. the pupil should be confident in atleast 2 major religions as it helps to compare and contrast.It will also help the pupil with their own questions on belief.
The GCSE and A level are more 'morally' based these days which is great. Regardless of the ethos of the school, it really helps kids to 'make sense' of things if they understand that the world is composed of people with a huge variety of beliefs and non-beliefs. And that the belief system they experience day in day out is not the only one.
Even at the RC schools I have encouraged my pupils to be above all things a philosopher, I dont mind what a person believes as long as they have a good reason for believing it!