A very interesting article was posted to our daily Angelus News today. Everyone should read this one...
As Catholics the idea of Thanksgiving is in our DNA... it is an integral part of the Mass, and it calls to how we celebrate everything... with a Mass followed by a feast!
I have to admit, however, that I've got some mixed feelings on this article. Dr. Golder is quite correct in stating that "modern secular society would like to expunge the very notion of religion from our history," but she does continue to recognize that "the fabric of American life is tied up with religious life, thought and expression." How do we reconcile these two seemingly competing ideals?
It is true that secular society goes out of its way to sanitize God and religiosity from our common experience, particularly with holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas who's roots are religious. Not only that, secular society has always been openly hostile to organized religion and people of particular religious faiths (Jews. Catholics. and Muslims in particular).
While no one can condone hostility toward those who are religious (or are of a particular religious faith), I do agree that we need to walk a fine line when it comes to teaching religious meaning in a secular forum, like in our public schools.
For the record... I am against prayer in public schools. I believe the First Amendment protects our public schools from any such displays of religious devotion. That same First Amendment, however, also gives me the freedom to send my children to Catholic schools, where our faith is expressed and realized in everything they do. It's my choice. It's my sacrifice. If I want to give my children a religious education, I choose to send them to Catholic schools, or at the very least, to the parish religious education program. Secular schools have no business in this domain, and I will fight for their right to stay out of it.
On the other hand, from a purely historical perspective, we can't completely "expunge," as Dr. Golder says, religion from our history. It is an integral part of who we are as a people and a nation. So I do believe that our public schools do need to make an effort to "explain" the religious history of our holidays and celebrations, and I believe this can be done without teaching them religion, and approaching the topic in a fair, factual, and unbiased manner. If I can learn about other religious faiths in my Catholic high school comparative religion class, then certainly teaching about religion without teaching religion certainly is possible.
Ah but if it were that simple! Having worked for a public school system for a few years I learned of the many challenges they must deal with on this level... for example, in an article I read recently how a parent is suing their school district because their child's history lessons included topics related to Islam. "How dare," they say," they teach my child about being a Muslim." Well, first, that's not what they were doing. And second, what's wrong with teaching them about Islam? It's a legitimate academic inquiry that ties into much of world history.
I'll tell you why... fear. These parents, devout evangelical Christians, were afraid that the school's teaching about Islam would somehow turn them away from their on faith. And I get that. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago that we Catholics were barred from attending any non-Catholic religious services or houses of worship. It was a mortal sin! Thankfully, through the intervention of the Holy Spirit and the Second Vatican Council, we realized that we have nothing to fear but fear itself (thank you FDR). In fact, it has been my experience as a Catholic and and adult catechist, that most people raised Catholic who take the opportunity to learn about and experience another faith tradition find themselves enriched and coming back to embrace their own Catholic faith more fully.
But alas... even when our public schools try to be academic and unbiased when it comes to religion, they still end up getting attacked... so their only response is to fully expunge religiosity from everything. Because of fear. Fear of being sued. Fear of creating undue strife among parents and families... because these parents also fear of the unknown (or rather, what the themselves don't know). Fear of knowledge itself, which when you get right down to it, is Fear of Freedom.
So you see... we have a long way to go... but at least I'm Thankful to God that I was born in a country that allows me the freedom both to praise him and to question how our society deals with that. Happy Thanksgiving!
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