Pope Francis has urged Vatican bureaucrats to avoid “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from understanding today’s reality
Pope Francis urged Vatican bureaucrats Thursday to avoid “rigid ideological positions” that prevent them from understanding today’s reality, an appeal made days after he formally allowed priests to bless same-sex couples in a radical change of Vatican policy.
Francis used his annual Christmas greeting to the Holy See hierarchy to encourage the cardinals, bishops and laypeople who run the Vatican to listen to one another and to others so they can evolve to truly offer service to the Catholic Church.
Speaking in the Hall of Blessings, Francis told them it was important to keep advancing and growing in their understanding of the truth. Fearfully sticking to rules may give the appearance of avoiding problems but only ends up hurting the service that the Vatican Curia is called to give the church, he said.
“Let us remain vigilant against rigid ideological positions that often, under the guise of good intentions, separate us from reality and prevent us from moving forward,"the pope said. "We are called instead to set out and journey, like the Magi, following the light that always desires to lead us on, at times along unexplored paths and new roads.”
Thanks for sharing your experience, stranger. This is one of the reasons I like Lemmy though I do still hang out on Reddit, more serious discussion, less memes and trolling. Well… unless you count the front page, I guess.
I can see the cliques issue being a big one especially if you were an outsider from a different community, and came in at the middle school level. That sounds brutal, honestly.
My daughter is lucky to be young and already have friends in the school, girls she grew up and went to daycare and earlier grades with. They still hang out on weekends and chat with their kid messenger app all the time, so that’s a foot in the door for sure. In the school she goes to now, there is already bullying and violence so I figure it can’t really be worse. On the upside I guess it’s already made her tough, we put her in Taekwondo after school and she took to it like a fish to water, she’s a little scrapper and her kicks are really mean for a 9yo girl. She already wants to integrate her boxing skills into an MMA style and they’re like no, you can’t spar like that with the other kids as they aren’t expecting a right hook!
The religion class issue sounds odd. It implies that those courses like CAD and coding are only available to those who give up the religious component? But those are premium courses that you would think they want their Catholic students to be able to take. Or am I misunderstanding the way it works?
I grew up with some guys and had some other friends who went to Catholic schools and it seems their opinions were similar to yours. Either they loved it and made friends for life, or they hated it and felt excluded from groups. Nothing in between. However even those who hated it said the same thing looking back, they were glad that they went there for the future opportunities it gave them.
The public school won’t allow an end of semester transfer out (probably because they lose the funding) so there’s plenty of time to confirm this is what I want for her before next school year, and I’m doing a lot of research and talking to a lot of people.
Yeah I can give more context for that. Memory is hazy, but we had our day split into 4 periods, which our classes were held. 2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon noon. For half the school year we take 4 classes, like English, Math, Chemistry Religion, and Gym. Then the other half of the school year we take another 4 classes like Civics, Physics, and two of our choice.
In Gr. 9 and Gr. 10 we only had the option to choose 1 extra course, I remember taking music. In Gr. 11 and Gr. 12 it was mostly chosen by us outside of the University track classes or the College track classes.
The issue is Religion was technically a “optional course” that we had to take. I was in Ontario when I was in school. According to the provincial law, you can’t force a student to take religion which is why we were never told. Or the option was selected for us.
The problem is that if a kid wants to take Physics, Chemistry and Biology, but also business and coding, they’d have to choose to not take one of them. Since the school will “encourage” them to take Religion, though I think with the right guidance councillor will help them find a way. Legally they can’t force them, but then why are they there, and you won’t graduate with a catholic school diploma.
I feel a lot of my issues stemmed from more of the staff encouraging the behaviours of cliques, rather than the students being naturally cliquey. Kids and kids and will do terrible things to each other. I feel it’s up to the adults in a situation to give a guiding hand.
Now I was given an out in my last year to back to public school. Not sure what it’s like where you are.