Religious Education

It's been a while since I bothered typing here. A combination of being flat out at work, not being able to prise either of my sons away from a pc at night and reading the book "Blind Faith" by Ben Elton has conspired to keep me silent. However, something has been bugging me recently and I find that trying to articulate things that bug me often help me to resolve them, at least partially, in my mind.

My wife is a Catholic, and went to a Catholic school. It has always been her wish that our boys go to a Catholic school. As it turned out, they now go to the same high school as she did.

To be honest, I have never had a lot of faith in Religion (note the capital), but I I could see no harm in my boys being taught the values from the Bible. To me, the teachings attributed to Jesus in the New Testament are insightful and uplifting. However, the mistake I made was thinking that the religious section of the curriculum would be these teachings, when in fact, from what I have seen, it consists mainly of teaching the workings of the Church and its dogma. To me, this is where organised Religion falls down and has made itself increasingly less relevant. Everything it teaches is underpinned by because God says so. While this probably worked its arse off in the Dark Ages on the back of the Inquisition, it seems to me that we have enough information available to us now that no one is going to take that at face value.

It is better, surely, to educate our young to respect each other because it is the right thing to do, because we would like to be respected, to teach them empathy above blind obedience. I may burn in hell for asking it, but does anyone with a modicum of education believe the Bible is a factual historical account? I am not advocating the dismissal of the Bible, for as I said earlier, there is a plentiful supply of good advice for life. What I do advocate is that the Church make itself more relevant. Go back to its roots. "Jesus died for your sins" means nothing to me. "Judge not, lest you be judged" does. And, yes, I see the irony.