Nancy Kelly31 said:Which faith? Every faith... Each one belongs to the cultural circle in which a person was born, as that is naturally the most logical and acceptable path for them.
The difficulty with this topic is that the opposing viewpoints are both entirely logical. Finding any sort of consensus becomes quite difficult under those circumstances. ☕
Take this situation with the churches, for example. What kind of lesson would we actually be providing to small children in these massive buildings designed to hold hundreds of people, when twenty of them might get swallowed up by those enormous pews, feeling completely lost in the sheer scale of it all? Without whiteboards or chalk, without televisions or videos, without projectors or laptops, and without even the simple opportunity to cut, color, glue, or sit on the floor... Churches aren't designed as classrooms; they are places for prayer, meant for large congregations gathered at once. You can barely count the number of churches that possess adequate halls for religious education, and even then, they are mostly found in major cities. But life happens everywhere else too.
However, you all know this already. You are merely pretending that you don't. And that isn't the point. Personally, I would find it much more interesting to discuss how we might solve the issue of children not being enrolled in religious studies. But I see there is little appetite for that here. It is a shame... because many minds working together are inevitably wiser. Provided, of course, that those minds are willing to cooperate. As it stands... 🤷
😁😁😁😁😁
So, I guess what we're really talking about here is that faith acts as this kind of cosmic filler, stepping in to plug those empty spaces in our lives whenever they show up, though how it actually goes down usually depends on the specific cultural bubble you were raised in.
Maybe we can finally get a believer to weigh in and break down what kind of hollow, empty nonsense we're actually dealing with here. ☕
Science is science, plain and simple, mostly because it doesn't care about what cultural bubble you happen to be living in. I get that the Catholic Church is pretty good at pivoting when they need to, and now they’re out here trying to claim they’re "in sync with scientific progress" just to keep the Gen Z crowd from walking out the door, but honestly, give me a break.
Honestly, all you guys are doing is offering a little cushion for people whose egos are too massive to face the reality that they aren't going to be around forever. That's really all there is to it.
Think about it this way—take churches, for example. What kind of lesson are we actually teaching kids living in those massive urban high-rises or sprawling suburban cathedrals? You’ve got maybe twenty kids swallowed up by these giant wooden pews, looking totally lost in that massive, echoing space. There’s no whiteboard, no chalkboard, no TV or video screens, no projectors or laptops, and definitely no chance for them to just spread out on the floor with some crayons, glue, and construction paper. At the end of the day, a church isn't designed to be a classroom; it’s built for mass prayer where hundreds of people gather all at once. If you look for churches that actually have decent, dedicated Sunday school rooms, you can count them on one hand, and even then, they're mostly tucked away in big cities. But let's face it, life happens way beyond those four walls.
We actually used a projector back at our church to display all the lyrics for the hymns, so I’m pretty sure we could easily just bring in a whiteboard or even some old-school chalkboards if we wanted to go that route.
Actually, we ended up having our religion class over at the local parish hall instead.
Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I don't really know much about how church gear actually works or all the technical stuff they use behind the scenes. It feels like there are so many moving parts that it might actually be impossible to run a proper lesson or service most of the time.
So, I’ve been thinking about this, and it really makes you wonder why there isn't any instruction scheduled during the afternoon hours. It’s like, if the athletes are heading out to the field for practice and the little science nerds are busy in the chem lab, what’s stopping the kids from going to their religious studies at that same time? It seems like a missed opportunity for everything to just fall into place.
At the end of the day, isn't that basically how every other religion outside of Catholicism operates anyway?
I mean, I know for a fact that Jehovah's Witnesses get together and spend their time studying the Bible, so if they can manage to handle all that outside of school hours, why is everyone acting like it's such a huge deal? Are you guys seriously that terrified that nobody’s going to show up at your place in the afternoon?
By the way, can you actually tell me how long religious education has even been a thing in our schools? Like, what year did they officially bring it into the curriculum?
I’ve actually been sitting here thinking about how we might tackle the whole issue of kids not signing up for religious education classes, but it feels like nobody around here really wants to dive into that kind of conversation. It’s honestly a bit of a bummer, because I truly believe that if we could just put our heads together, we'd come up with much smarter solutions than anyone could find acting alone. Of course, that only works if everyone is actually willing to pull in the same direction and cooperate, you know? But without that teamwork, we're just spinning our wheels. 🤷
So, I mean, it all really started with a simple suggestion—if we’re facing this massive logistical nightmare where it’s basically impossible to schedule religion classes during that last period for the little kids and the first period for the older ones because we just don't have enough staff, then why aren't we actually hiring more people to fill those gaps?
If the main hurdle is finding enough religious instructors—and honestly, I bet theology students would be jumping for joy if they knew there were actual jobs waiting for them!—just remember that we already have priests and nuns stepping up to teach religion in schools all the time.
Is it really impossible to bring in more staff and structure things better so that choosing an elective doesn't just result in a bunch of kids sitting around doing nothing if they didn't sign up for it?
And can we please stop trying to sanctify the bread, the chairs, and the people inside government buildings? This is a secular nation, and parents from all walks of life—whether they believe in God or not—are sending their kids to these public institutions.
It’s like you can't help but have people see you through the lens of old political oppression, even if that couldn't be further from the truth about who you are today.