As I said, I generally agree. As a Catholic, I find on FR plenty of articles from Orthodox, Protestant, Mormon, or Jewish perspectives with which I agree. They don’t touch on issues upon which our various confessions diverge.
Persons of any religious confession who practice Catholic morality are less objectionable than people who profess Catholicism, and don’t. These are rare, however. Few besides faithful Catholics reject artificial birth control or divorce.
Most subjects aren’t susceptible to the details of religious confession. However, we’re told that the school experience isn’t just about the teaching of academic subjects. If parents want Catholicism in the school, they’re going to have a hard time getting it, either because the teachers profess Catholicism but don’t really believe it, or because they sincerely profess a non-Catholic faith.
I sympathize with everyone trying to deal with this. Our choice, for the last twenty years and ongoing, was to homeschool. This was not only because of our religious commitment, but because I’m am deeply, viscerally opposed to SCHOOL, regardless of who is teaching or what they’re teaching. Thus far, none of our children has gone to school until they started community college at 17 or 18.
yes you have a point about contraception and divorce...
I was thinking of living an honest, moral life and including the abortion problem.
most other professional traditions do not teach against contraception, I realize. And while most teach against divorce, most also are more ‘liberal’ with those parishioners who do, nevertheless, find it necessary to break up their marriages.
so you raise a couple good “distinctives” .. that make RCC morality different in some visible manner from most, or many other Biblical faith traditions.
Still, I find myself agreeing with you that a good moral person of any Biblical profession is preferable in the classroom to a supposed-Catholic who does not believe or follow core moral teachings, and/or overtly teaches against them.
It is a tough situation these days. Many Protestant and Jewish parents send their kids to RCC schools.. .NOT because they want them to come out ‘good little catholics’ but because they DO want them to receive good moral training. This has been a hallmark of RCC parochial schools and one that is worth noting and respecting in that it reveals a (traditionally-) major strength, substantial asset, of the RCC education system. These parents mostly do NOT want their kids to become Catholic... but they respect the Catholic education system (as it has been, anyway) so much for its moral instruction that they send their kids to parochial schools despite their being Catholic (is one way of putting it, I think, from their perspective). It appears that this moral instruction for the children is at risk in parochial schools nowadays, at least in SF where there are a number of teachers openly opposed to providing this for the children. The new arch-Bishop appears to be trying to truly follow Jesus’s example of bringing life or salvation to the dead.....we will see. Home schooling must be tough but surely is better than sending the kids to many public schools (and some parochial schools, alas) nowadays!
Good for you!