case: (Default)
Case ([personal profile] case) wrote in [community profile] fandomsecrets2013-02-16 04:17 pm

[ SECRET POST #2237 ]


⌈ Secret Post #2237 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 113 secrets from Secret Submission Post #319.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Re: GC Challenge Post! Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

(Anonymous) 2013-02-17 01:04 am (UTC)(link)
NAYRT (in fact, the anon below that you discussed Spreadsheet!Anon with)

As another former Catholic who kind of identifies with the idea of apostasy, it's not a nose-tweaking or rebellious thing for me. It's more that I feel that my religious upbringing was something that was done to me before I had any say about the issue, or had the faculties to really examine what I was being taught, and it caused me no little anxiety before I eventually came to the realization of my atheism. To complicate matters further for me, my mother taught catechism classes when I was younger, and I used to help her in the classroom as an older child -- which, in retrospect, feels like I was supporting and participating in something that I now resent having been done to me, and contributing to an organization that I now have strong disagreements with. As such, opposition to the religion of my childhood has become a part of my current religious (or non-religious) identity.

Re: GC Challenge Post! Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

(Anonymous) 2013-02-17 01:11 am (UTC)(link)
Anon to Whom the Anon to Whom You Were Replying Was Replying ;)

I think that feeling of Catholicism being something that was done to you is something I feel very strongly too. Perhaps someday I'll feel rid of Catholicism entirely, but for now it still informs my religious stance.

Re: GC Challenge Post! Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

(Anonymous) 2013-02-17 01:28 am (UTC)(link)
OP

(Quick question, "catechism classes" = Bible lessons classes? The Wikipedia page is ... extraordinarily obtuse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catechism)

Thank you for providing a counterpoint! In the spirit of IDIC and all that! :-)

With everything that has been in the news, do you think if maybe your religion was not as systematically ... uhhh problematic (I am not sure how to word that respectfully and still get the point across) as it was, you would not feel that it had "been done to you"? Or is it that you had no choice at all?

I guess I can see where that would be disenfranchising; I never had that, since we were expected to, once we reached pre-teen / teenage years, look into our faith and really study it for ourselves, and prove it (or not ... though the "or not" bit was not as easy as I am making it sound) and then decide whether or not we were going to continue to follow the path.

At least, that was the theory. In actual fact, it was like we had a choice, but it was a choice between a very bad thing, and the only right thing. Not that I'm saying that that was the right way to frame it (it wasn't and that was why we had the problems we did) ... but I can see where you and the other ex-Catholic anon upthread would be very disempowered by having your fate decided for you, with no free will to make your own choices. :-(

FWIW, I'm sorry?
inkdust: (Default)

Re: GC Challenge Post! Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

[personal profile] inkdust 2013-02-17 01:32 am (UTC)(link)
As far as I'm aware from a "recovering Catholic" mother, catechism classes are very specifically Catholic Bible classes, as much about conventional teachings and rules of the Church as the actual text.

Re: GC Challenge Post! Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

(Anonymous) 2013-02-17 01:40 am (UTC)(link)
NAYRT

The Catechism is a set of questions and answers learned by rote - a sort of FAQ of the faith. Ususally it's something that you learn to parrot off before you even understand what half of the words mean.

Linky - http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

Re: GC Challenge Post! Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

(Anonymous) 2013-02-17 01:45 am (UTC)(link)
OP

Thank you! Now why couldn't the Wiki page have said that??

Re: GC Challenge Post! Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

(Anonymous) 2013-02-17 01:55 am (UTC)(link)
(Yes, catechism classes = Sunday school/religious education.)

I think... I think that all the moral complaints I have against the Catholic Church certainly contribute to the degree to which I wish to divorce myself from it now, but even if the religion itself was entirely benign, it was still an experience to which I was very much a passive recipient. While my family wasn't incredibly conservative or hard-line about their religion, there also wasn't really much of any awareness or acknowledgement that there were other religious positions available. For instance, I didn't discover that there was any such thing as atheism/not-beliving-in-God-at-all until I got the internet when I was in my teens. My only knowledge or exposure to other religious views for much of my early life was that Jewish people didn't believe Jesus was the Messiah, and some vague notion that Protestants were Christian, but not Catholic. My family's religious beliefs were treated as objectively true in sort of a passively un-self-aware kind of way, as if the notion that they could be otherwise had never entered their minds. So in a very real sense, I feel that I wasn't provided with any other options, in that I was not informed that other options existed. Even when I had doubts or unanswered questions in my childhood, they didn't really go anywhere, because I didn't know there was anywhere else those doubts could take me.

So to sum up, while the moral complaints I have regarding the Catholic Church make me more displeased that Catholicism was imposed on me in childhood, those moral issues don't really factor into my feeling that it was something "done to me."

And thanks. :)

Re: GC Challenge Post! Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

(Anonymous) 2013-02-17 02:11 am (UTC)(link)
OP

I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, but I think that mindset, of there-are-no-other-religions-out-there-but-ours isn't necessarily endemic to Catholics.

There are also some religions that do teach about other world religions (like mine), but they teach about them from the viewpoint of, "this is what the people of this world believe now but that's all going to go away in a little while." (Protip: A little while is a lot longer than it seems, apparently.)