I already stated I’m an atheist, and I’m against much of the Catholic doctrine. I’m just stating that any Catholic school I personally (or someone close to me) have been to has displaying no repressive actions. I’m sorry your experience has been different, but don’t paint every Catholic school with the same brush. I support Catholic schools because they attract the best students and a lot of respect. If the situation was reversed and secular schools had the same results, I’d support them more.
Nobody in this thread has defended the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality, not one single person. You are, frankly, screaming at the wall. We WERE trying to explain to an American poster how the separate school system works, until you hijacked the thread with your rantings.
I’m still curious as to the reason for your weird attack on tomndebb.
Valteron if this is intended to suggest, as** kushiel** concluded that those in this thread are “liberal, tolerant Catholics”, as **kushiel ** pointed out you are very much mistaken.
I am, in fact, a non-believer. And I’ll add FWIW given the possible reading of your comment, my religious background in my childhood was the United Church. I think one could say many things about the United Church (I still with fondness say, that it was about as disorganized as you could be and still call it an organized religion) but in my view you could not say that it is repressive and reactionary. Certainly that was not my experience of it.
I was totally weirded out by the idea of church schools being supported by the government when I came to Canada. But after thinking about it and seeing things like the ads the Catholic schools put up to try to get parents to send their kids there… I’m thinking it might actually be the best thing for the society as a whole. The Catholic schools have to conform to the pressure of the market rather than that of official doctrine, meaning that they have to stay pretty mainstream to keep getting lots of students. So not only are the REALLY Catholic kids, the ones whose parents would send them to Catholic school no matter what, getting an education that doesn’t conform so strictly to official church policy… they’re also getting to go to school with kids whose families are unashamedly NOT CATHOLIC.
Doesn’t mean I’m totally happy with the way it’s currently done, but I CAN see certain possible advantages.