Catechesis in children

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Catechesis happens much too young in catholic raised kids.

First you are baptized before consent can be given, then communion is first taken around age 7, at an age too young to say "no". You are just starting school and making friends. You dont know what you believe at 7. You only know what you are told.

Around the preteen years, 12 or so, you go through confirmation, right at a time when your body is being flooded with hormones and everything is in turmoil. Ever parent a 12 year old? They are nothing I would call a rational decision maker.

Maybe thats the idea.

Of course that's the idea. Religions get them while they're young. That's why they've been so successful.

This reminds me of a time I was taken to a sunday school a couple of times as a child. We were given plasticine, and told to generally make "all God's creatures" or "the creation" or similar. We assumed this was a representation of the world, and my sibiling and I, around 7, immedietly began making tanks and fighter jets, simply because that's what we liked. When questioned we ended up coming up with the argument "they're in the world just like the animals are", as we were oblivious to the idea of the creation, and just liked playing with toy soldiers.

In retrospect this must have horrified them.

That's why I view forced religious instruction as abuse.
If the child cannot give consent, then it is abuse.

Catholics have it down to a tee. Take the ones that resist the indoctrination, and abuse them more. The more they resist, the more they're abused... Questioning, threaten them with hell. If they continue to question, then brainwash them into WANTING to believe... this creates the cognitive dissonance necessary to mess their minds right up (especially if you're an aspie, who has a harder time with such dissonance, which lead to the questioning in the first place)
Once the dissonance is in place their brains are just like plasticine, ready to be molded into self-defense mechanisms to deal with that dissonance, and under the tutelage of the right priest, they are ripe for all sorts of OTHER types of abuse... Which of course the priest, being properly trained in the real meaning of the words of the bible, knows is not wrong, because the child is hopelessly lost to Catholicism at this point... A Heathen, therefore is not even human, thus the proscriptions against such abuse do not apply to them. Thus such things as molestation can be justified in the priests' minds.
Thus such abuse in the church can be seen as a logical inevitability of the practices of other types of abuse to indoctrinate the young.

If "god" is not planted as a foundational belief, then, when alternative explanations for most things exist, the concept of a god would not spontaneously arise within the mind. It is only in the absence of sufficient explanatory tools for the processes of nature and our environment that an adult mind would conceive a god.

It does NOT however require religious parents or church-going to implant the fallacious notion of a god as a foundational belief. Our society is ripe with media that pre-assumes the existence of a god, a soul, an afterlife, and many other aspects which are dependent upon a god. Everyday expressions invoke god/soul/afterlife etc. Even the staunchest atheist is apt to say that a person has "passed on" when they die. Dawkins is right when he refers to it as a virus. And this virus knows full well that the younger it strikes and the more angles from which it strikes from, the more successful it will be.

I once read a church sign that said "The greatest gift you can give your child, is an exposure to the church" I found it quite sad, really, because the truth is that "the greatest gift you can give a church, is an exposure to your child"

Been through that, don't care anymore. =.= it was even a CLASS in the private college i went to when i was younger...

I agree with you, but the catholic church is not the worst, have a look at the Amish, they rightly claim an 85% retention rate of their children to their faith. An amazing statistic considering the privations of the Amish Lifestyle. So how is this achieved?

In a nutshell, they cloister and brainwash the child from and of the evils of the outside world. On their 16th birthday these kids are given TOTAL freedom from their communities laws and (with regard to parental consent) the laws of the land, eg they are allowed to drink, have sex, take drugs, etc, etc. This behavior is permitted anywhere IE within the community or away form it. The purpose of this removal of regulations is to give the kids the ability to choose either the outside world (separated from the community and any family present within it) or to accept the ways of the Amish and return to the fold.

So you take a repressed 16 year old and give them complete unfettered freedom and naturally they go NUTS. Then just as naturally the lessons of the evils of the outside world, its immorality, licentiousness, sinfulness etc. come flooding back. The lessons of what happens to people at the hands of a vengeful god when they behave in such an abominable manner haunt them, as does the thought of being separated from their family.

It is therefore hardly surprising that 85% of them come running s**t scared back into the loving arms of their brainwashers, and these bastards call this "Free Will"

Interesting and sad. Cause the Amish have as much problem with sexual abuse of children by the elders as the Catholics do, if not more.

It's intentional brainwashing by that non-profit organization (intentional Nazi-like brainwashing coming from the political headquarters in Rome, Italy) designed to keep a steady supply of collection plate donors attending religious services to keep the (selfish) theater actors known as ministers working and living in a good/grand lifestyle for their entire lives at the expense of the pewrenters. It's all a carefully crafted ruse run on pewrenters which more and more people are becoming aware of. When they do, they often switch religions to religions which value the idea of democracy (not an unelected male only king for life) and which are more in alignment with the Bible/the gospels, not the propaganda (fibs aka lies/a ruse) which tend to come from Rome on a daily basis through carefully drafted, phony press releases. There are no perfect churches (my view), however, there are some which are far more honest than others. Rome today - year 2010 - is a symbol for criminality and intentional fibbing/lying in its attempt to try to sustain a medieval church with false ideas (anti-women, anti-marriage, anti-western democracies). The religious science fiction book, Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan provides good, basic insights into all of this (my view). John Bunyan was an honest writer compared to the bunk which comes from Italy.

pgd, that raises the interesting question about metamorphosis of belief. It would be interesting to see an experiment done on migration in(and out) of religion.

Well, infant baptism certainly doesn't harm the infant. What difference does it make if he consents or not? It isn't like circumcision.

Catholics probably make too much of a deal around the "first communion", and about "communion" in general.

Confirmation is just about having a rudimentary introduction to the tenets of the religion. Age 12 is probably okay for that. It isn't really about "rational decision making", is it? What aspect of religion could even be regarded as "rational?"

It matters as it becomes part of your public identity. Even if you dont identify as such, there are people who see you as forever belonging. While you can jump through red tape and eventually extradite yourself from the Catholic Church, revoking a baptism is impossible in the eyes of Christian Churches. Same as Islam. Once a muslim, always a muslim, and die if you dont agree.

The assumption here is that once someone matures at the age of 18 or 25 or whatever they suddenly become wise and sensible and can male reasonable decisions. Look around. Admittedly very young children totally dependent on their parents are in an extremely poor condition to make independent decisions but the school system does little if anything to improve analytical skills. And independent informational sources are tightly controlled and the controls, as can be seen by nations clamping down on the internet, are only getting tighter. Humanity as a whole is not in a state to make logical reasonable decisions so it continues to starve amongst agricultural plenty, suffer curable diseases, inflict insane brutalities upon itself for no good reason. Getting older should help but it doesn't.

Cant argue with the man that knows better than anyone here.

+1 here.

I don't know about religious training is inherently abusive, though. I mean, sure, I had to be at church every time the doors where open when I was younger. And true, I attended church MUCH less often throughout my undergrad years in college. But it wasn't because I felt required church attendance (by my parents, not by the church) was abusive. If you say that requiring religious training for your children is abusive, then you might as well say that compulsory school attendance is also abusive.

Look at it from the point of view of a Christian child or teenager that actually believes in and enjoys his or her religious background and church life. The Bible says certain things are wrong, sexual immorality being among them. So sending that child/teenager to school exposes the child to being bullied, possibly for even being a Christian. Secular and ecumenical influences allow others to put sexual pressures upon Christians who believe that proper sex is only reserved for marriage. And if bullying is defined as simply as the mere criticism of even the idea of homosexuality, which is in no uncertain terms described by the Bible as wrong, then it is perfectly acceptable that Christian children/teenagers be punished (severely) for even breathing a word against it.

Can you see how such a view from a Christian perspective is that compulsory school attendance is also horribly abusive? What is the real difference?

The purposes of secular education and religious training are completely different, of course, and both are abusive in their own ways. I mean, you'd have to be living under a rock to not be aware of sexual abuse within the Catholic church. And while Columbine-like school disasters are never excusable, it's easy to understand why they happened and will likely happen again one day. Heck, when something like that happened close to home (referring to the Pearl, Mississippi incident), I wasn't surprised at all that it happened. In fact, it brought back a lot of bad memories from my private school experience. Part of me wished I could have gone back in time to my own and been the one holding the gun.

My whole point is that if you demand that parents give up imposing their religion on their children based upon any perceived mental abuse inherent to religious training, you might also as well abandon contemporary compulsory educational programs as well for the same reasons.

Former catholic here and I think you are completely wrong. My first communion was at 11 years old and my confirmation was at 15 years old. I was pretty damn smart and individual back then then and I could have said no but I really believed in those things but then.

All of my friends were at least 9 years old for communion and 14 years old for their confirmation. It is also not imposed by the church at all but by parents. The only time there is a real stone in your road is when you want to marry (by catholic church) THEN you have to do your first communion or confirmation. But I am guessing that people that are marrying are either stupid or old enough to decide for their own religion.

Nevertheless, it is a complete and total non-issue. Plenty of catholics like me have just gone away from the whole catholicism and christianism and theism without further issue. So what if I took a confirmation at 15? What is the church going to do to me when I leave? Excommunicate me? I am the one who doesn't want to participate in their BS anymore...


No, it does not matter. It does not matter at all. It is not more of an identity virus than it is to actually be raised by a christian/pagan/whatever. The programming and identity setting comes from the people who raise you and not from a bunch of water a priest threw at you when you were 1 years old...

Most atheists were baptized and they got over it... Really. The people in the churches may assume that you'll be staying forever a christian or muslim , but who cares about what those idiots think? The muslim extremists that would really kill you would kill you just for belonging to a different religion and not specifically for being baptized before you changed your religion.

It matters. It matters as taxation and public policy are determined by your unwitting(and uncaring) participation in the rosters of religious groups. When they say there are a billion and a half Catholics in the world, they are including you, atheist. I agree that the water means nothing. The symbolism of the water means a great deal to very influential masses of people.

If you were walking to the store for a loaf of bread and had to cross the street near an anti-gay protest right as a riot squad clashes with them, you might be assumed to be part of the crowd.