Sometimes I feel like I'm neglecting some terribly important parental duty by not insisting the children be "trained" into a faith. As I said, I do think it's important, but I also think it's a decision one must come to based on reason and desire for such... too many times I've seen people I know grow up to reject the faith of their upbringing, probably because it was more or less forced upon the person. In my own way, it's due to its very importance that for now I just leave it alone.
I remember before my confirmation when I was twelve, one of the things our priest did was to take us, every week, to a different church to experience their services and ways of worship--he told us that before we chose to confirm our belief in Catholicism, we needed to be certain it was what we wanted--he emphasized how important a decision that it was. I think this went over most of my peers' heads, but being born old, this had a profound impact on me--the fact that he wanted us to make this choice not because our parents wanted us to, but because we wanted to. I thought that was the right way to handle such a decision.
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Date: 2008-05-13 12:03 am (UTC)Sometimes I feel like I'm neglecting some terribly important parental duty by not insisting the children be "trained" into a faith. As I said, I do think it's important, but I also think it's a decision one must come to based on reason and desire for such... too many times I've seen people I know grow up to reject the faith of their upbringing, probably because it was more or less forced upon the person. In my own way, it's due to its very importance that for now I just leave it alone.
I remember before my confirmation when I was twelve, one of the things our priest did was to take us, every week, to a different church to experience their services and ways of worship--he told us that before we chose to confirm our belief in Catholicism, we needed to be certain it was what we wanted--he emphasized how important a decision that it was. I think this went over most of my peers' heads, but being born old, this had a profound impact on me--the fact that he wanted us to make this choice not because our parents wanted us to, but because we wanted to. I thought that was the right way to handle such a decision.