BAPTISM OF BABIES IS CHIEFLY TO BLAME FOR THE RELIGIOUS ETHOS THAT GRIPS SCHOOLS

Catholic ethos is a way of making the whole school Catholic so that even outside of religion class religion is still directing and happening. The ethos is about enabling what they would call, "an integration of faith, life and culture." This is more than about the school but the wider culture as well. For the Catholic, there is no secular. Washing the carrots is offered to God so it is a religious act too in that respect.

Catholic schools require that pupils must be baptised. For a lot of Catholics, their main concern is to have the baby baptised as a prerequisite for having the child enrolled in a Catholic school later on. Instead of having the guts and the courage to insist that this rule is discriminatory the parents go along with it. If Catholic education is a good thing, it should be provided to children that may become Catholics and who have Catholic parents and not just to the baptised. The rule is a disgraceful attempt by Catholic bishops and priests to interfere in families and in what is none of their business. They resort to such tactics to force parents to make their babies members of the Church.

We force facts on children at school and since religion is just speculation we should not be forcing it on them. To teach a child religion is manipulating the child. It is taking advantage of the impressionable nature of the child.

Roman Catholicism refers to itself as the Catholic Church, that is the Church that is open to all people on earth and which anybody - however simple and uneducated - can see must be the true Church. Baptism is the way into the Church. By baptising your child, you are dedicating the child to these beliefs. They result in the child becoming suspicious of other religions. If it is so easy to see that the Catholic Church is the true Church then clearly Protestants and Muslims etc living among Catholics are deliberately blinding themselves. They are evil antichrists. Parents clearly do not have the right to indoctrinate their children into a religion like that. The child should not be baptised. Ecumenism is only a cynical pretence at solidarity and friendship between Roman Catholicism and other faiths. It counts for nothing but is a good proof that most if not all religion is about self-deception. No responsible parent wants that for their child.

Roman Catholicism says that parents have the right to decide to bring their child up as a Catholic and have the child baptised as an infant with a view to that.

Is this true?

It’s a trick of the clergy. It is not true that parents have a right to have their child baptised.

Even if parents have the right to decide they want their child baptised, it does not follow that anybody has the right to baptise the child. There is no reason to think that a priest has the right to baptise the child even with the parent's consent or at their request. The clergy are abusing babies by baptising them. They can't prove they are doing right.

The clergy certainly does not believe that Catholic parents, lapsed or practicing, have the right to raise their child as a Jew or a Satanist or a Witch or to have the baby initiated into one of those faiths. So just what label the clergy puts on you, that is if they decide you are Catholic, that supposedly gives you a right and or obligation to enter the baby into the Church and into its authority. The Church looks for special rights in this. It does not give you the right to enrol or enter your child in another faith. Talk of rights here is really about the Catholic Church getting special treatment.

It seems that parents only have the right to raise their children as Catholics whether they are Catholics themselves or not. The Church, however, refuses to baptise babies that will not be raised as Catholics. The Catholic Church will not baptise a baby brought by Presbyterian parents who intend to raise the child as a Presbyterian. The reason is that baptism in a Catholic Church confers membership in the Catholic Church on the baby and it is a betrayal of this to raise the child in a different faith. The Church dismisses the view that baptism heals the baby and therefore is good even if the parents don't want to raise the baby as Catholic. It is like forbidding a child to be vaccinated on the grounds that the parents will give an antidote for the vaccine when the child grows older! The Church is more concerned about getting the child to agree with Catholicism than helping the child. Baptism treats the children as things.

Lapsed or doubtful Catholics who fear the power of their religion and would work against it for their own ends are said to have the right to have their baby baptised. The Church says they have the obligation to ensure the child is baptised. So when you think having the baby baptised is possibly a bad idea for the Church might not be the true religion at all, the Church still urges you to have the child baptised and to believe you have this right. If that is the case, then surely Jews or some other faith that differs from Catholicism, has no right to initiate any child into a religion other than Catholicism. When Catholic rebels have no right to deny Catholic baptism to their babies, how could the sincerely wrong believer in Judaism etc have the right?

The Church says that error (that is what it calls any idea or opinion that disagrees with the Church) has no rights but people do. That you must oppose the errors but not hurt the people that make the errors or look down on them is her doctrine. It follows then that only people who believe in the right religion can have a right to have their children brought up in the religion.

Children need instruction in right and wrong. Stories about God flooding the world and his son rising from the dead are not going to do that. The focus should be on training the child. Religion cares more for orthodoxy than for morals. For example, Hitler was never excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church for what he did. If he had dared question the Godhead of Christ he would have been.

Rights are based on needs. A child needs to know that stealing is bad. A child does not need to "know" that Mary is the Mother of God. Most children in the world don’t know and most of those that do know don’t care who she is and are fine. Therefore there is no intrinsic right to indoctrinate or unduly influence a child. Encouraging the child to think for itself about religion and telling it about religion is fine. That lays down a boundary that should never be crossed. Telling the child for example about the Our Father prayer is okay but making the child learn it and say it is wrong.

In Ireland, the vast majority of tax payers are Catholics. The Church says that these taxes pay for the schools so the parents have a right to insist that the schools teach the Catholic religion as fact. But the fact remains that some other arrangement could be put in place for the indoctrination of children. It doesn't have to be state schools. This is obvious and secularists have shouted it out loudly and clearly. The priesthood is simply trying to manipulate. It is its own plot to brainwash and indoctrinate children that it is really concerned about and not the rights of parents. It does not follow from Catholics paying taxes that schools funded thereby must indoctrinate Catholicism. It does not follow that hospitals should only be run by the Church, priests and nuns and religious orders, when the hospitals are funded by Catholics. It does not follow that only Catholic nurses should be employed in hospitals that are funded in a Catholic state. It does not follow that pharmacists must take an oath not to supply contraception when they are employed by a health service that is funded by Catholics.

A child is a child. There is no such thing as a Catholic child, a Buddhist child or a Protestant child. Humanists and atheists do not label their children as humanist children or atheist children. Don’t abuse children by labelling them. Children accept everybody – don’t try to make them see other children as different or as members of an opposing faith. Even when faiths are not in open opposition, it is undeniable that when the Protestant minister instructs his flock he is hoping to keep them from the Catholic Church which would like to see them in its fold!

Children are human beings. Religionists are human beings before they are religionists. Any attempt to label a child, any attempt to call a child a genuine member of the Church, is simply a lie.


CATHOLIC EDUCATION ABUSES THE CHILD

We all put blind faith in something. The Church says that if we use blind faith, we should use it to accept her. We should use it to embrace her dogmas and interpretations of God. The safer side is the secular side because that is the side that gives people the rights they should have. Religion invents rights and so causes disagreement and conflict. Secularism simplifies things. It just worries about the laws of this world and the needs of this world.

Catholicism is an education in bigotry. It is bad for children. Following the teaching of St Paul an apostle authorised by Jesus to teach his gospel for him, the Church says that in Adam all men have sinned and are sentenced to death. Any person that dies, dies because of Adam's sin. Romans 5 in the Bible says that one man Adam brought sin into the world and death came with sin and all men die for all men have sinned. This accuses unbaptised babies of deserving the death penalty. This is extreme doctrine. It shows the full horror of the implications of baptism. It is heresy to lament the murder of an unbaptised baby on the basis that the baby didn't deserve it. If it is wrong to murder the baby, the reason is not because of the baby's innocence for it is a sinner. The death penalty is cancelled in baptism. But even then the fact remains that the baby deserves not to live but to die. When a law refuses to punish you, that does not mean you no longer deserve the punishment. Babies haven't sinned but Paul says that death reigns even over those who haven't broken a commandment like Adam. He does not mean death reigns over the innocent but he means that Adam sinned on behalf of such so they are justly punished by God for his sin.

Christianity lays the guilt of causing the death of Jesus Christ for their sins on children. It also says that all sin is very seriously bad and sins like sexual desire outside of marriage, tolerating abortion, doubting the faith, disrespecting the clergy are deserving of everlasting torment in Hell so to commit them will result in you getting just that if you die.

No matter how Catholic children turn out, one thing is for sure, a Catholic education is an education in bigotry. Rather than making suggestions about different forms of spirituality that might work for them the Church seeks to control spirituality. It interferes in something so private and personal.

Suppose we need to indoctrinate. We might indoctrinate our young children in geography or whatever. We have to do that. It's a necessary evil. Is it not a necessary evil to indoctrinate a child in religion? If it is, then it must be the case that it is a necessary evil to indoctrinate only in the true religion. Unless you are very sure your religion is true, and few claim to be even half sure, you are abusing your child by teaching her or him religion.

There is strictly speaking no such thing as indoctrinating a child in secularism. For the secularist, living as if no religion can be known to be true is more important than stating things such as that there is no God. The child can see that he or she can't jump over a cliff and expect a god to rescue her or him. There is no indoctrination in telling a child that different religions and different people have different views about what God is and if he exists at all and for her or him to make up their own mind. Religious instruction manipulates children. Secularism does not.