Has your religious or cultural upbringing affect the rest of your life ?

It’s still using confession as the get out of jail free card you suggested.
It was wrong in the past, it’s wrong now.

Mollygo

I’m sure you cannoy blame a religion that makes it beleif's clear if some members choose to misconstrue them

Who’s blaming a religion?
I’m simply saying that confess and continue happens.
Presumably all those people, whether in the convent laundries, or the OZ children’s homes, or the aforementioned fighting, or just my erstwhile boss, used confess and continue, with their actions unprevented, by a priest who heard their confessions, over and over again without stopping or being able (seal of the confessional) to stop it happening.

The problem is Mollygo In the circumstances you mention and the culture of the period that extended well beyond the homes and the treatment of indigenous people is that this treatments was seen as acceptable and moral and often seen as 'helping' the people involved.

In the same way that in the past people, including children could be hanged for what we would consider trivial crimes. Read almost any Dickens novels and you will read about the appalling indifference and cruelty, which was accepted by people at that time and quite reasonable.

I often wonder what we do now that 100 years from now will be considered way beyond the pale - and it will not be the obvious injustices in our society. It will be the things we do now that we consider entirely laudable like sending children to large achools because bigger schools are able to offer a wider range of opportunitites.

It may be 100 years from now, all primary school will be limited to 100 pupils and secondary schools to 350 or 500 and our 1,000 plus pupils in a school will be considered barbaric.

I’m sure you cannoy blame a religion that makes it beleif's clear if some members choose to misconstrue them

Who’s blaming a religion?
I’m simply saying that confess and continue happens.
Presumably all those people, whether in the convent laundries, or the OZ children’s homes, or the aforementioned fighting, or just my erstwhile boss, used confess and continue, with their actions unprevented, by a priest who heard their confessions, over and over again without stopping or being able (seal of the confessional) to stop it happening.

Mollygo

The get out of jail free card of going to confession, then continuing to kill to which I referred is to do with the RC religion, regardless of history.

Whatever some catholics may say, the catholic church itself has always been absolutely clear in its teaching that absolution only follows a clear regret at having done somethingwrong and a determined desire and aim not to commit that sin again.

Any religion, philosophical belief or political theory, however clear it makes its tenets, will have members who then choose to distort them to their personal, family, political or national advantage. Look at the version of communism that was imposed on Russian after 1919, or China, or North Korea, look at the Taliban's interpretation of Islam's teachings or Iran's.

The same happens with Christian, particularly catholic beliefs.

I will always challenge people who misunderstand catholic teachings, whether deliberately or through ignorance. You cannoy blame a religion that makes it beleif's clear if some members choose to misconstrue them.

The get out of jail free card of going to confession, then continuing to kill to which I referred is to do with the RC religion, regardless of history.

The problems in Ireland had less to do with religion and much more to do with the native Irish (catholic) resenting losing their land and having their legal rights taken away by the English colonial administration and the land, almost entirely in Ulster, being given to (protestant) immigrants from the mainland, mostly Scots whose main purpose was to gradually take over all the land and impose an English (protestant)ascendancy.

Since the imgratnts and natives had matching colouring the only way they could be told apart was their religion and that the 'English' settlers usually had Scottish surnames.

M0nica, I’m not misunderstanding what you are saying, I’m simply pointing out, as you just did that his confession was a waste of time, his time, the priest’s time and his wife’s time.
At the time I was more shocked that the priest brought her back, more than once.

My boss, anlong with others, evidently saw confession as the get out of jail free card you describe. The fighting and killing that went on in Ireland reinforced that idea.

Mollygo

M0nica
to be absolved of your sins you need to be truly sorry for them and make an effort not to commit them again. It is not a 'get out of jail card'. More a 'must try harder'

So I was led to believe. But he went every week, and the bruises continued. Just before I stopped working there, she left him and didn’t come back.
We didn’t know where she went, but it certainly wasn’t to the local priest.

But going to confession doesn't grant absolution if the person concerned has no intention of stopping commiting the sin they confess.

What counts is what is going on in the mind and heart of the sinner, not what form of ritual the priest might say or perform.

If a domestically violent man confesses to the sin and then goes home and beats his wife up, he might as well not bother with confession since he clearly does not regret his sin and is making no effort not to commit it.

As I said confession is not a get out of jail free card.

Went to Sunday school and church and brought up with Christian values. Also part of a forces family so brought up with good values from that. However I feel it made me somewhat naive about the world and other people, only to find there are people out there with no morals or values who are good at lying!

M0nica
to be absolved of your sins you need to be truly sorry for them and make an effort not to commit them again. It is not a 'get out of jail card'. More a 'must try harder'

So I was led to believe. But he went every week, and the bruises continued. Just before I stopped working there, she left him and didn’t come back.
We didn’t know where she went, but it certainly wasn’t to the local priest.

Mollygo

TerriBull I read up about Margaret Clitheroe because the so named RC high school was next to our CofE St Hilda’s.
In my youth I envied the RC children who had somewhere to go to be absolved of their sins, but then in my late teens, I watched the wife of my abusive (to her) boss being brought back to him by the priest, when she’d gone to the church for help.
I thought how wrong that he could be absolved from his sin and carry on leaving her with bruises.

mollygro to be absolved of your sins you need to be truly sorry for them and make an effort not to commit them again. It is not a 'get out of jail card'. More a 'must try harder'

I was reared in a liberal Church of Scotland family and attended Scottish schools where most were the same as myself except for a few Jewish refugees.
The Catholic school was on our way where me and my chum dawdled back home from school. One day we ventured into the grounds from idle curiosity. We stood outside the heavy closed door of the church ,then a young lady came out, smiled at us and asked if we would like to come in. She showed us round the church which we much enjoyed and especially the pretty statue of Our Lady.
I am not a card- carrying Christian but throughout my life I have found each Catholic I have met ,even the stranger I talked to at a bus stop, to be kind, easy going, and welcoming The theology is not to my taste but there must be something about Catholic education that is good.

Interesting Mollygo!. Evidence of the way the patriarchy works within the church.

TerriBull I read up about Margaret Clitheroe because the so named RC high school was next to our CofE St Hilda’s.
In my youth I envied the RC children who had somewhere to go to be absolved of their sins, but then in my late teens, I watched the wife of my abusive (to her) boss being brought back to him by the priest, when she’d gone to the church for help.
I thought how wrong that he could be absolved from his sin and carry on leaving her with bruises.

It does seem there are an overwhelming number of disaffected Catholics on this thread, me being one. So many of these posts resonate, particularly about the Purgatory malarkey. I didn't bring my children up as Catholics simply because I think some of the church's teaching to young children terrorised many of us, and in retrospect I can't help feeling much of it was just made up nonsense to keep adherents compliant. Like me, one of my school friends also didn't have her children baptised and she said, so upset was her very Irish Catholic mother at the thought of a baby grandchild ending up in Purgatory she sneaked in with some holy water and baptised them herself.

It makes me smile now how many almost adult students have trigger warnings on so many things. Where were our trigger warnings? I can remember being very affected by some of the gruesome martydoms that were rolled out to us in graphic detail at junior school age with the implicit message always be prepared to die for your faith. In particular at one time we were studying English Martyrs in RE and some woman called Margaret Clitheroe up in York was pressed to death by heavy weights because she wouldn't renounce her Catholic religion. The nun who was taking this lesson implied, if we should find ourselves in this unfortunate position then we should be prepared to follow her example. In my head I was thinking "no way I'll just convert to CofE, God will understand". Much later I was to learn that the schism occurred because of the non acceptance of the Pope as head of the church by Protestants, and having read what licentious individuals Popes were at the time and how many presided over years of wrongs doings and corruption, well I can see that probably there was some sense in that. Though of course Henry VIII set up his church for the most vindictive of reasons. Knowing what I do now, I'm surprised, I still retain some of the vestiges of my Catholicism but as the saying goes "Once a Catholic!" reeled in too young, it's much better to take on a religion as an adult when one can make an informed choice.

I've no doubt it would have frightened me.
I was very nervous, and suggestive and sensitive a pain in the bum when I was little.

Exactly, Sasta - I was told by a few people that I would never go to heaven as I wasn't baptised. It never bothered me personally, but I can see how many would be very troubled by the notion.

OMG Celieanne86, ‘scus the pun. I used to have awful nightmares about purgatory. What a hateful vile thing to tell young children or anybody for that matter. It used to scare the life out of me. And I used to be upset about the people who were not baptised because that meant they would never get to heaven and would be in purgatory for eternity. I really used to worry about them. And all this when I was just 6 or 7 🤦🏻‍♀️.

My friend is Catholic; she said that apparently she has lived in sin for 50 years, even though she is legally married, because the man she married had a brief, disastrous first marriage and then divorced.
It doesn't bother her.

MissAdventure

Two posts, two opposing views regarding the guilt factor

Interesting init?

I'm Catholic.

Guilt if I sin by doing something my Bible tells me is wrong/sinful. No guilt not observing 'peoples rules' (things not written in my Bible).

The Pope is not in my Bible, he's human. My Priest is not in my Bible, he's human. Purgatory is not in my Bible. God judges - not humans.

The Pope is wise, prayerful - wonderful. Still human.

Two posts, two opposing views regarding the guilt factor

MissAdventure

Catholicism does seem to carry an awful lot of guilt with it, from what I've seen.

Yes MissAdventure it does when as a seven year old child you are taught by nuns and priests that if you commit a mortal sin eg tell a lie, be rude to parents or teacher, miss Sunday mass and Saturday confession then when you die you will not go to heaven but spend your time in purgatory to atone for your sins before you can be admitted to heaven. This has stayed with me all my life, it didn’t stop me sinning because life is like that but I do think about it 80 years later and if there is purgatory I will probably be in there, that’s Catholic guilt.

MissInterpreted

Every Catholic I've ever known has made a big thing of the whole guilt trip ethos.

Except me and almost every catholic I have ever known.

I know plenty of non - catholics who are constantly obsessed with guilt. It is a bit like being convinced that children get hyper if they eat a lot of sugar. It is all in the mind. There is no evidence that eating sugar makes children hyper, but parents are convinced it does so they see it.

People have been rabbitting on about catholics and guilt, even though it is nonsense, so catholics think they suffer from it. Some catholics do feel guilty, it doesn't follow that their religion caused it.

Catholicism does seem to carry an awful lot of guilt with it, from what I've seen.

Every Catholic I've ever known has made a big thing of the whole guilt trip ethos.