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Originally posted by Griff
Now its my turn to see from the other side. I just spent a couple days with an atheist friend who has in the past been pretty adamant about hating religion.
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I'm curious Griff...does your friend not believe in GOD (as most of us would consider it) or A god?
The reason I ask is that I suspect that many people (and not referring to your friend here) who call themselves atheists are not truly atheists. I suspect that most people believe in some sort of higher power...being spirits, a pagan god, whatever.
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Sycamore- Could you explain a little bit more about being a non-Catholic in a parochial school? Seems like you should have an interesting take on the system.
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Remember now...
I was "raised" Catholic.
Most of the non-Catholic kids that went to my high school (a school of 1000 students) were Lutheran--I'd say there were 40-50 total in the school...most of them in my class (1994). Many of them went to the Lutheran grade school that was a mere 4 blocks away. Their parents were generally mellow on the religious tip and a) Didn't want the kids to have to go out to the suburbs to the closest Lutheran high school and b) Didn't want to shell out an extra $1000 a year to go there. If you were non-Catholic, you generally paid an extra $400 to go to my school. (My first year, tuition was about $1900. $2300 for non-Catholics.)
The only real difference that they had to put up with was the slight difference in religious ideals--and the fact that our Bible has 5 extra books. (Am I right on that Griff? The Catholic Bible has 5 extra books? Or is it the King James that has the extra books? Don't remember.) And by the time you start taking religion in high school, it's more about social justice, human sexuality, etc. Most of them took it in stride, and did rather well...it was also nice because you had different perspectives to reflect upon.
They took the whole experience well. There was good-natured ribbing between us and the non-Catholic, such as:
NC: "You put up with this shit for what? 9 years now?"
C: "Look, our parents don't have to shell out as much money as yours do."
The cool thing about going to Catholic high school is how you identify yourself. Rather than saying what neighborhood you were from, you identified yourself by parish. (Saying my own parish--Resurrection of Our Lord--was strange, because only a handful from my little school went to DuBourg.) But you generally knew where the schools were (mainly because you played against them in CYC or competed against them in speech meets).
Parallels: My neighborhood here in Philadelphia and my old neighborhood in St. Louis are frighteningly similar. Back home, I lived within short walking distances of 2 Catholic parishes...and could easily drive to 2 more. Here in Philadelphia, I live within walking distance of 3 parishes...and a short drive to a fourth.