Muslim prayer rooms in Catholic schools?
Just the latest preposterous suggestion from the bishops in England.
Actually, it’s not so much the suggestion of creating a prayer room — I’ve no problem with teachers pointing students to an unused classroom between periods — as it is the suggestion that wudhu should also be accommodated that I have a problem with. Pointing a student to an empty room is one thing; installing bidets and foot baths is quite another thing, and it’s absurd that the bishops would be suggesting such a thing.
A Catholic school is, first and foremost, Catholic, is it not? Catholics can be good sports and afford other religions the use of space (the Catholic chapel where I attend Mass is also used by a small Lutheran community once a month)…but in a passive way. Installing foot baths and bidets goes above and beyond that sort of base accommodation. While not quite as severe an act as, say, orienting a chapel so that the tabernacle does not face Mecca, it still entails setting aside space within a Catholic institution for objects that are a direct component of non-Catholic (and therefore, from the Catholic perspective, false) worship practices.
Space is one thing. Ritual tools and components are quite another thing entirely, and substantially more problematic, doctrinally speaking. It’s hard to believe that this proposal ever got tabled…
…I say that, however, having not yet considered the reasoning behind the proposal:
But the bishops – who acknowledge 30 per cent of pupils at their schools hold a non-Christian faith – want to answer critics who say religious schools sow division.
When did division become a bad thing? If I say that I am Catholic, am I not, by definition, dividing myself from those who are not Catholic? Am I not communicating that, in my understanding, there exists at least one division in the world: those who are Catholic as opposed to those who are not? And if I declare that a school is a Catholic school, is that not a divisive declaration to begin with, for am I not declaring that the school, in addition to being Catholic, is expressly and explicitly not, say, an Islamic school?
Of course I am, and of course I’m being divisive.
Why is this a bad thing? Why must this be avoided? Why must critics who complain and whinge about divisiveness be heeded by religious authorities, since division is at the very core of making a religious declaration of any kind (and thank God for that!)?
Gah…I’m beginning to understand what Rachel Lucas is getting at by having an entire content category entitled “Britain Surrenders.”
I started blogging back in 2004 -- in May, if the Wayback Machine is to be believed. Not that I remember the exact day. To be honest, I didn't take it that seriously then; it was a fun distraction, but nothing more.
That all changed, I think, once the Danish cartoons were published, and the assault on the right to freedom of expression became very visible. With the recent issues in Canada concerning the "human rights" commissions, the gravity of the matter has only increased, and my interest in blogging has increased right along with it.
I used to blog at a domain called Time Immortal, but it seemed to be the right time for a change -- there's been a lot of that in my life of late. Hence this blog: a fresh start, and proof positive that I won't shut up even if I get shut down once in a while.
