I always look forward to Sarah Carey’s column in the Sunday Times. Even more so I look forward to reading the full version on her blog. She wrote an excellent piece a couple of weeks back on how non-believing Irish parents are being forced to have their children baptised etc. You can read it here in all its unedited glory.
She points out that the majority of our primary schools are owned and managed by the catholic church. Religious education is part and parcel of the curriculum. Parents can opt to have their children excused from these lessons but come first communion time these children want to participate, simply because the other children are. Children usually have one burning wish – to be like all the other children, she wrote.
This is something which has been nagging at me for a long time now. I have friends who took their daughter to Euro Disney the week her classmates were having their first communion. They felt she had to be distracted from the peer pressure. She is an extremely bright individual and now that she’s older she is nonplussed that her pals are in confirmation mode.
Other friends, a Lutheran and a non-practising catholic, have had their kids baptised in a catholic church, partly to placate the paternal grandmother, but mainly, as they explained, to mark the occasion of the arrival of these new family members.
In both cases there was an occasion to be marked. The latter is obvious, the former less so. First communion is usually at the age of 7. This is when a baby becomes child. They know right from wrong at this stage. Again, at 12, confirmation time, another change takes place. They become teenagers. They reach puberty.
There are rites of passage here. All societies down through the ages have had these. A boy’s first hunt. A girl’s first period. More rites than you could shake an anthropologist at. Modern western society has some subtle ones too. First drink. First car. First sexual experience. Yet there isn’t a modern rite to mark passing from infancy to childhood and then through puberty. Perhaps first communion and confirmation fill this void. Perhaps there is a subconscious need in us all to mark these milestones and both parents and their young sense this. Perhaps my friends were marking an occasion by taking their daughter on her first foreign holiday rather than just avoiding peer pressure.
Sarah hit the nail on the head in her article. I’m just giving it another tap and hoping I’m not splitting the timber.
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You’re not splitting the timber. As one of those weak-willed fools who baptised her young wan so as not to kill her grandmother, your post makes a lot of sense.
I have a friend who doesn’t believe in any of that either,but then her old lad babtised the child in the kitchen sink when she was out one Saturday Night. You just can’t win against grandparents. No point trying.
When the pendulum swings you will have less kids, than not, making their First Communion - and then the kids wanting to be like most kids will want not to make their First Communion and what will the parents who give into every preference of kids do then?
Over here in the US circumcision has a similar impact, though the kid’s preference is anticipated years in advance rather than consulted at the cutting. Most parents I know here who say they have no desire to get their son circumcised, and that they have no religious or health reasons to do it, nevertheless do it for fear of their child being different in the changing rooms in school.
All these rites of passage have been largely secularized through alcohol much like Paddy’s Day, but ideally a modern nation probably needs other ways to offer its people fitting mechanisms for marking all these significant moments of human development. Or else we’ll keep piggy-backing and hijacking all the frills of a church we don’t believe in - much the same way the church appropriated the previous set of non-Christian frills for its own devices.
You’ve certainly made me laugh this morning.
Sweary - Everyone falls into that trap. Even the strong among us will wilt with the fear of having to commit grannyicide.
FMC - That was a bit dishonest of him. But you’re right - When I told my mum I didn’t believe and was refusing to go through the motions she just said that’s okay. I’ll believe for you. You can’t win with the old stock.
Eolaí - I didn’t know schmuck harvesting was so prevalent in the US. That’s amazing. Anyway, what could replace the church’s rites of passage? A primary school graduation?
Oh, and glad I made you laugh. I was crying this morning - doing edits on stuff when my ISP decided to pull the plug for maintenance. Lost loads. My fault for not making an offline backup.
I strongly suspect a large part of our having to have the girls baptised was because my mother wanted a new hat. we did it though and it was great. All my pals used it as an excuse to come back to Lewis for a long weekend (we had it done in our church there when we were over on a holiday). We all got blootered that weekend like we were teenagers again and revisited all our old haunts together. It was smashing. Since then, I’ve been godmammy to 2 of my pals’ children - we’re all in breeding mode right now - and we used both occasions as excuses for thoroughly good knees-ups. Who said Generation X would make lousy, shallow parents??