What Advice Would You Give?
It seems like an odd twist of synchronicity that shortly after the victory of a Wiccan family who were punished by the courts for sending their child to a Catholic school we get an advice column dealing with a Pagan woman’s concerns about sending her child to a Catholic school.
Cary Tennis, Salon’s resident advice columnist fields a host of worries from a Pagan woman in a religiously mixed marriage (he is a Catholic) who is about to put their child into a Catholic school.
“I envision the first time my happy, bright, articulate child comes home and tells me that his teacher said Mommy is WRONG about Jesus, or worse that Mommy is crazy or bad or going to hell. I dread being the volunteer at the bake sale that every other mother avoids, I dread the moment when I just stop participating in my wonderful child’s school life because it is just too painful and too depressing. I don’t want to start a war over the soul of my 5-year-old, but I feel backed into a corner. I also feel guilty and foolish. It is after all a Catholic school — what did I expect? And I fear that I am putting too much pressure on a small, perfect being just making his way in the world.”
Cary’s advice?
“My dream for your child, and for your situation, would be if you could somehow get across to your child that these teachers are good people, and that you trust them, and that while he’s in their care, what they say goes. Try to keep it simple. Make him feel protected and confident that he knows the rules. Don’t confuse him by contesting what he’s being taught in school.”
He also admonishes her to be more tolerant of Catholics. It seems to me his advice is leaning towards “let the kid become Catholic and don’t challenge the Church teachings, it will only confuse him”. An answer that doesn’t seem to really address the complexity of this situation. So, what advice would you give? If you think you have a better answer maybe you should send it in to Salon.
4 responses so far
Here’s what I sent:
Quote:
“My dream for your child, and for your situation, would be if you could somehow get across to your child that these teachers are good people, and that you trust them, and that while he’s in their care, what they say goes. Try to keep it simple. Make him feel protected and confident that he knows the rules. Don’t confuse him by contesting what he’s being taught in school.”
So Cary?s advice is basically that Mom should shut up and keep her weirdness to herself while her child is indoctrinated into a system that brands her a sinner bound for hell? What an utter crock of shit.
That Mother should insist that her child not be educated in a Catholic school. Ever. For any reason.
If she?s really Pagan, and not just playing at it, she needs to get that child into a positive, open environment, and that will not include a Catholic schooling in this lifetime. If hubby can?t deal, take the kid and split ? a child is too precious to subject it to the life of hatred for others and self-loathing that will come of indoctrination to Catholicism. Her first loyalties as a Pagan are to that kid, herself and her Goddess.
Morgaine Swann, H.Ps.
Morgan – I agree until the point where you say, “Take the child and split.” He’s the daddy’s child, too. What if he were to do the same, if she “couldn’t deal”?
As well-intentioned as the mother’s motives might be for it, I don’t think that kidnapping is the answer here. For one thing, it’s becoming harder and harder to hide child abductors in our society, and for another, the child might miss out on the opportunity for a positive, open environment if he knew that his mom took him away.
I’m not sure about the mom’s situation, or the homeschooling laws in Louisiana but that might be an option; if the public schools are as bad as she describes, there might be an opportunity for a co-op school.
I didn’t mean for her to kidnap the kid – I meant for her to leave the guy if he can’t deal with her being Pagan. That’s her child, from her body – I don’t believe men should have any say at all in how a woman raises her child unless she chooses to let it be so. In this case, he is making demands that harm the child and the child’s relationship to the mother. That is not acceptable under any circumstances.
Why is it, whenever you post something, someone always has to take it in the most extreme way possible? I assume I’m talking to reasonable people – maybe I shouldn’t .
And let me add, that the position about Catholic schools being any safer or any better than other schools is usually ridiculous. I’ve known people who were educated in Catholic schools, if you can call that education, and believe me, they didn’t get their money’s worth.
A friend recently sent me a link to this column, which I thought was fascinating. I’m always a little bemused by people who pat themselves on the back
for being EVER so much more tolerant and open-minded than Christians,
and then bolster their claims with statements like: “I think of
Christianity (as a movement, not a belief) as a plague on humankind.
The current incarnation of Christianity in our country seems to me to
be ignorant, small-minded, bigoted and hypocritical.”
Painting with a bit of a broad brush, perhaps?
Similar to you, my biggest question after reading this column was why the woman who wrote in would be willing to remain in a place that she thinks is full of
“darkness and superstition,” where she feels like 90 percent of the
people surrounding her are “small-minded, guilt-ridden, jump-for-Jesus
automatons,” and where the only alternatives to religious schools are
total crap? Is this wonderful husband of hers, who is supposedly her
“true soul mate,” so preoccupied with his own business that he is
willing to make her live in such a hellhole? Or is it actually a
perfectly reasonable (albeit heavily religious) community, and she is
just incapable of respecting and getting along with people whose views
happen to be different than her own?
My sense is that instead of dissecting the beliefs of everyone else in
the community, the person whose beliefs she really needs to be
contemplating are her husband’s. It’s as if this woman has based her
whole world view on the idea that what she believes is vastly superior
to Christianity, and hasn’t reconciled herself to the fact that she
MARRIED a Christian. It’s too disturbing to her to be disgusted by
her own husbands’ views, so she’s redirecting all of her disgust at
the community and the school. In my experience, it’s very difficult (even traumatic) for people who pride themselves on being tolerant to come face-to-face
with their own intolerance, especially when their intolerance is for the views of people they have chosen to love and defend.