Would some people "fake" a calling for the sake of a job?

Three's a difference between having to participate in something and having to be exposed to others participating in it. It may be outrageous that the Catholic church patronises more than 90% of the national schools in Ireland but, if it is, that's not because children whose parents don't want them to make communion or conformation find themselves in a school where most children do make communion or confirmation. It's reasonable to demand that your children shouldn't have to participate; wholly unreasononable to demand that the event not take place, with the result that no child can participate. This thread is full of people criticising the parents who choose to have their childen participate, but they have as much right to make a choice in the matter as do the parents who choose not to.

If you make choices for your children which only a minority of parents make, then your children will notice that they are doing things differently fro most other children. You need to raise resilient children — perhaps you need to be come a bit more resilient yourself — to understand that living in a diverse world where you have to deal with being in a minority on certain issues, and where you have to be aware that you are doing things differently from other people, is not an asssault on your rights.

I haven't said that children from minority traditions have to be more resilient than children from the majority tradition. We should all aim to foster resilience in our children; it's an important life skill. But children from minority traditions are going to have a particular need of it precisely because they are part of a minority and so differ from the group. (This isn't just true of children from minority religious traditions; children from ethnic or cultural minorities, children who have disabilities, children who are growing up gay or non-binary; they're all going to have to deal with being out of step with the mainstream of their peer groups, which is always a problem for kids. Hence the importance of resilience.)

The complaint repeatedly made in this thread is that the majority of parents in these schools do in fact have their children participate in these ceremonies. That's a choice they are perfectly entitled to make; they have the same right to choose as the parents who make the opposite choice. For that reason, complaining about their choice is pointless, and arguing that they shouldn't have the choice because, if they do, the secular parents are forced to make a choice which puts their kids outside the mainstream is indefensible.

Surprised you couldn’t find it. You literally replied to @Peregrinus when he pointed out it was untrue.

Last sentence below;

Thats a best a gross misrepresentation. At worst well…🙄

I have not claimed or debated that the bread is actually anything other than a bland snack. Where are these posts you claim are debating that?

I pointed out the church’s claim, as the is their stance. That is not the same as suggesting it has any standing in reality.

I bit surprised I had to explain that.

Close, but not quite.

In the Catholic view, the consecrated bread and wine do not not consist of Jesus's meat, bones, nerves etc. In this language all the physical characteristics of a thing are "accidents", not "substance". That's not just limited to superficially observable things like colour, shape, texture, etc. It includes everything that's empirically observable, right down to the molecular structure and below. All of those things are accidents.

Consecration leaves the accidents of a thing unchanged. Consecrated wine is, in physical terms, wine; consecrated bread is physically bread; there are no muscles, bones, nerves, etc. The same atoms of hydrogen, carbon, etc are still present, arranged in the same way, and interacting with the rest of tjhe material universe in the way they always did. The claim that Jesus is really present in the eucharist is not a claim that his meat, bones, nerves, etc are present.

The problem is not so much that the terms are vague as that they are outdated. This Aristotelian distinction between substance and accidents was state-of-the-art philosophical thinking in the late medieval/early modern period, which is why it was the language used (by both sides) in the Protestant reformation to argue about the nature of the eucharist. But it was superseded very shortly afterwards, and for several centuries now nobody has used this language to talk about anything at all except the rather arcane question of transsubstantiation. Is it any wonder it's widely misunderstood?

Tl;dr: the Catholic church's claims about the substance of the eucharist are not claims about physical substance; they are claims about metaphysical substance. This is commonly called the real presence because, of course, Christians believe that metaphysical realities are, well, real. Contemporary atheist materialists generally do not believe that there can be a metaphysical reality, so they default to thinking that "real" must mean "physically real", and "substance" must mean "physical substance".

If there is no school choice in an area, and some parents don't want their child involved in the religious education in the available schools, surely its not beyond the wit of BOM's and principals to facilitate everyone without the need for children to be removed from classes several times during the week. If schools are free to set and alter their own timetable, why can't religion be the last class on a particular day/s for those children who want to participate in the religious ethos of the school? The children not participating could leave before the class starts and would not see or watch or take part in religious instruction any way.

Parent pick-up would be staggered so there may be less congestion at finishing time, teachers would still do the same hours, no children would be taken out of class during the day. Until there are more non-denominational schools all over the country, could something like that work?

Yeah, Being a catholic in Ireland in 2024 for the vast majority of people who tick that box on the census is more about 'fitting in' than it is about any of the specific beliefs in the catholic catechism.

There is very little agreement in what people are supposed to believe, and even some disagreement on what catholics are supposed to do (should catholics go to confession, how often? Should catholics have sex before marriage, should catholics use contraception, how often should they go to mass, when can they receive communion? etc etc

And if you ask 5 catholics 5 questions about what they actually believe about 5 central catholic doctrines, you're likely to get 25 different answers.

1. Papal Infallibility and the Authority of the Pope
2. Sacraments - Ask them how many Sacraments there are and to name them
3. Salvation - How can a catholic receive salvation - (is it by faith alone, or do they do need to do good works, receive the sacraments etc)
4. Saints (and Mary) - Should we pray to the saints for guidance etc, Was Mary really immaculately concepted and a virgin mother?
5. Transubstantiation - Is the communion symbolic, or is it the actual miraculous transformation into the actual body and blood of Jesus by the priest during the sacrament of Eucharist

Bonus questions

1. What's the deal with Limbo/Purgatory and what happens to unbaptised souls (Bonus question)
2. Whats the deal with the soul, when is a soul first present in a human? Fertilisation, implantation, gestation, birth? some other point?

Absolutely nothing wrong with taking the limited opportunities for education that were available in 1950s Ireland. For many people, they were few and far between.

For a very long time in this country there were few choices available to people who were not from wealthy families.

My wife's father was educated up to seminary level by the Brothers too, he left before taking any vows but there are lots of things he never talked about while he was alive, and one of them was his time as a young teenaged boy, when he was taken from his family for life with the church. I suspect there were lots of things that happened to him there that haunted him for the rest of his life.

His sister is still alive, she became a Nun, and is still a nun in her 90s now, retired. She had a very different kind of life to what she would have had if she had taken the option of marrying a local man and raising his children, she travelled the world as a missionary and later became a mother superior in her order. I'm pretty sure she does have faith in God to this day, but she's not particularly dogmatic about it, at least not to her family and people she knows outside of her religious life.

Even the tiny number of schools that were built by the RC church out of their own pockets, those schools wouldn't still operate if it wasn't for the fact that almost all of the upkeep and running costs are paid for by the state. Owning the building that a school operates from shouldn't give you the right to decide what gets taught in that school

In my kids school, our children weren't allowed to do their homework while the other kids did religion because that was considered to be unfair to the other kids...

They weren't being taught anything, and weren't allowed to learn anything on their own. All they were allowed to do was colouring in or read one of their own books....

@Mellor Thankfully parents no longer need to produce a baptism certificate / pretend to be catholic to get their child into an RC "ethos" school.

@[Deleted User] right but the church runs as many schools because they built/bought them when our government wouldn’t!

Almost all of the school buildings still in use today would have been built in the 20th/21st century and were substantially, if not completely, funded by the State. Teachers' salaries have always been, since the 19th century. So yes, even up until about ten years ago the State was buying a site, building a school, and then handing control of it over to a church with no financial contribution from that church whatsoever.

You totally missed it? Even though you replied to with a scenario in post #38. Hmmm...

Again, the Christians religions have different views. No side goes with "it's just a wafer". So you notion that holding that view would see you painted as secretly of the other tradition up north makes no sense, as I've pointed out. The religious differences, play no part in the troubles. Causation, co-relation, etc

His post clarified the claimed metaphysical change. His clarification doesn't reinforce what you said. Nobody has, that I have seen, claimed that the transubstantiation is actually happening. Saying that I or anyone was saying that is a but disingenuous. Discussing the churches view does not mean that anyone here holds that view.

They might makes sense insolation to come out and say that it means "representational". But that was a option 400 years ago, and the RCC are not know for changing their view.

Where did I say that it ever did mean representational? I mean, I've repeatedly pointed out that representational/symbolic wasn't the view.

I was quoting the previous poster, who used that word. I'm pointing out that the church could have said that, but they actively went an entirely different way, and they are more than a little stubborn.

I'm not suggesting they should come out and say that. I was replying to the poster that asked "why don't they just say it's representational".

...and I said they the catholic church is stubborn - a stand alone statement. Nothing about "because they won't change their belief" tacked on. I'd have thought you were above a silly strawman like that. 😏

we aren't short of examples of that stubbornness.

@Mellor the RCC are not know for changing their view

They no longer maintain that it is heresy to state that the earth revolves around the sun. Give 'em time 😊

It was pretty much backwards logic. Saying X was an effect of Y doesn’t imply it’s also a cause. Poor comprehension or an intentional strawman are two obvious explanations - I figure the latter was more likely.

The RCC is stubborn. That is a fact in itself. It would be easy imo to update interpretations without loosing the intent at its core. But doesn’t affect me either way.

FWIW I don’t think “buts that’s not their belief” argument gets very far. These “beliefs” are what people are told to believe. Those instructions can and do change, albeit with extreme delay.