Remembrances

     Yes, yes: I’ve been lackadaisical about keeping this place hopping. So you’re not hopping. And this is my fault? You can’t hop on your own? C’mon! I expect more from a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch! But let’s leave that to the side.

     I’m cursed with an unusually retentive memory. Immediate events often prompt reminiscences about times and events of many years ago. I’ve been reliving one this morning. You might find it interesting. If you don’t, well, them’s the breaks.

     When I was a young boy, I went to a Catholic grammar school: Saint Catherine of Alexandria in Blauvelt, New York. The teachers were habited Dominican nuns. The classes were very large: typically about fifty students in each. But they were orderly, at least compared to what goes on in primary school classrooms today. Disruptors were punished immediately and often harshly.

     The town I lived in was overwhelmingly Catholic. Whether or not they attended Saint Catherine’s, the kids were raised in the Catholic faith. We saw one another at Mass, and now and then at Saturday Confessions. We talked about what we’d been taught about God, Jesus, and the faith. And we assumed that that was the way it was everywhere.

     But we grew up. As there was no nearby Catholic high school, we went from Saint Catherine’s to a “public” high school that drew its students from a larger area. Suddenly we found ourselves among Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and the occasional Mormon or Jew. It was disorienting, even a little upsetting. Could people that differ so greatly in their most fundamental beliefs get along?

     Sometimes we didn’t. Sometimes there were arguments. Some of those arguments were not resolved gracefully… or peacefully. And that was before the arrival in our district of any blacks or Hispanics.

     Fundamental differences beget conflicts that are hard to resolve. Yes, the great majority of us had been raised Christian, but there were cracks, fault lines that could give rise to trouble. It took a while for me to puzzle out why.

     Each of us had been taught that anyone who disagrees with us on religious matters is simply wrong. Even dangerously so. He had to be corrected, brought to the light, before matters got really serious.

     You see, we had not been taught a “faith.” We had been presented with “fact.” Anyone who dared to question any of it was severely dealt with.

     I’ve been musing over that recently. In various other settings, I’ve advanced my opinion that religious indoctrination of the young is a bad idea. The conflicts I remember from those early exposures to youngsters raised in other denominations are among my reasons.

     Indoctrination is all you can do to a young mind. He has hasn’t yet learned the rules of reason and evidence. He hasn’t yet grasped the critical distinction between the propositions of faith – any faith – and the propositions of spatiotemporal experience. So if you want him to accept religious teaching, you have to pound him with it relentlessly, make it so that it becomes omnipresent, inescapable. Sort of like God.

     Religious instruction of the young is characterized by repetition and memorization, just like the multiplication tables. The term catechism captures the essence of it. The teacher asks questions from a standard list; the students are expected to memorize the correct answers and repeat them when demanded. The treatment that the dismissive or indifferent ones get is supposed to inform the others that religion is a serious business.

     And it is, Gentle Reader. Just think about the religious wars of earlier days. A lot of people died in those wars. There’s an exchange from Richard Lester’s movie The Four Musketeers that’s apposite:

     Porthos: You know, it strikes me that we would be better employed wringing Milady's pretty neck than shooting these poor devils of Protestants. I mean, what are we killing them for? Because they sing psalms in French and we sing them in Latin?
     Aramis: Porthos, have you no education? What do you think religious wars are all about?

     The young indoctrinee quickly comes to understand that he’d better toe the line. Remember the questions and their answers. Give the answers when demanded. Go to church on Sunday and make sure you’re seen. Don’t forget the donation envelope with your name and address printed on it.

     It’s ultimately counterproductive. The inherent, coercive mindlessness of it is why so many kids reared in a religious faith abandon it completely once they’ve reached their majorities. It gives rise to conflicts that might otherwise be avoided.

     I’ve been talking about religious indoctrination and the resulting conflicts, but really, the same argument applies to indoctrination of any kind. The subject matter can be racial, ethnic, social, anthropological, political, even aesthetic. Hard positions on arguable matters create hard feelings.

     We often think we “know” things. Far more often we only believe them. They remain arguable, susceptible to exception, even refutation. Oftentimes we learn that to our sorrow, by alienating others whose good will had previously been ours.

     Once we’ve shuffled off this mortal coil, we’ll have all the answers and all the certainty we’ll ever need. I can wait. What about you?

     Just a few early-morning thoughts.