Why you shouldn’t have any regrets for opting out of faith formation

Next week will be my 17th wedding anniversary. It’s such an unremarkable anniversary that the suggested gifts for both traditional and modern are the same, as if it wasn’t even worth the effort of the modernists to think of something for a seventeenth year of bliss. I know that the years of our marriage and the seven years before make me feel luckier than anyone I know, and if this year we have to imagine that in the form of a piece of furniture, so be it. However, as wonderful as the last seventeen years have been, we both share one regret, and it took place on the very first day of our marriage.

We had the ceremony in a church.

Even back then, we weren’t religious, but we were younger and the laws at the time didn’t allow one to have a ceremony in a hotel or any venue that wasn’t a church or registry office. Choosing the latter, of course, was an option but the option of sitting in an office with a couple of people signing papers compared to the romance of walking up a long aisle in a pretty building with hundreds of friends and family joining together with music playing was one thing. However, equally as important was the fact that a wedding outside of a church was not going to be considered a proper wedding and there was a very high risk that it would be boycotted by families members. The risk was so high that we didn’t even ask. We would have been the first in the family not to have our wedding in a religious building. Rather than doing the right thing, we did the hypocritical thing.

It was a lovely ceremony and the priest brought together my Jewish heritage and Rozz’s Catholic heritage into the ceremony, even if neither of us had much of a link to either at that point but we went along with the charade. Because if its familiarity in some ways, we could reason it away as being more cultural than religious, but we can’t escape the reality, it was a religious service. We went along with it and we regret it. We’ve spoken about getting remarried properly but we’ve reasoned that there’s no point now. Sometimes you have to accept the decisions you made at the time and in the bigger picture, it was one day which hasn’t followed us through our seventeen years. However, we made the choice and it was wrong.

We didn’t baptise our child and while there were a few aunties that weren’t happy, of course the world didn’t end, and he is growing up to be a caring, empathic child with an independent mind, quiet confidence and admirable values. Not having a religion didn’t change that and even though he didn’t have a Communion, he was absolutely fine, our family were absolutely fine, and we have none of the regrets.

Despite the laws changing on marriage, which makes it much easier to get married outside of a religious building, the education system makes it very difficult to avoid taking part in religious services. Less than half of marriages take place in Catholic Churches in Ireland but the majority of children in Catholic schools do make their Communion. It’s a curious phenomenon.

There are a growing number of people who are not baptising their children and they have to navigate the Irish education system similarly to me. Like my family, they have decided that they cannot regret raising their child into a belief system that they have no association with. It isn’t a one day thing, baptising your child follows them for years, often their entire life.

However, I know how difficult this is for most families because 90% of primary schools in Ireland are under the control of the Catholic Church. This means that for two hours per week, the unbaptised child is likely sitting at the back of the class doodling, as a second-class citizen of their classroom. This is exacerbated further in second and sixth class when the sacraments of Communion and Confirmation take place, with large swathes of the school year are taken up with preparation. Children that are opted out of faith formation can be doodling for hours a day the closer it gets to “the big day,” where they are no more than invited guests to their own class party.

It would be somewhat acceptable if the majority of the families going to Catholic schools practiced their faith. However they don’t. The most recent census in Ireland showed that only about half the population of parent-age identify as Catholic. More concerning, if that’s the right word, only a small fraction of them attend church. Anecdotally, because it can only be anecdotal, huge numbers of parents who have no interest in religion still put their children through a process where they are indoctrinated into a faith that their parents have no interest in and are often appalled by. I could list dozens of people who publicly celebrate this obvious hypocricy.

My child doesn’t go to a Catholic school and there were moments around Communion time where I felt bad for him, especially when he saw the vulgar amounts of €50 notes flashing about the place. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for children and their families who go to Catholic schools and have to face the vulgar part of the sacraments every single day.

I’m sure, as a parent, you might feel regret that you didn’t just “go along to get along” when you know your child is a visitor at a big class party, for all intents and purposes. I’m sure it’s awful to know that in many cases, your child is the only child not in the class photo on the wall in the school because you decided that you weren’t going to join the flock. I’m sure that if your child gets a hard time from his classmates who tell him he is going to hell or that he is jinxed or cursed or that he didn’t have a big party or get loads of money and so on, that it must feel terrible. It’s relentless and it’s worse when you are also isolated in the chatter of parent WhatsApp groups because, while you might have the exact same level of belief as those that have gone with the flow, you are the pariah.

However, the point of this post is to let you know that I admire you greatly. I admire your strength, your ethics, your ability to do the right thing when it seems everyone else around is not. I admire how you raise your child to be authentic, to share the values that you believe in. I admire that you don’t join in the hyprocrisy even if it means the hypocrites look at you as if you’re doing something wrong. I admire you because I know you won’t have any regrets. You are doing something incredibly important that might not feel nice (or important,) but you are challenging the status quo, which is everything that those hypocrites allow to perpetuate by going along with the charade.

You are standing up against an organisation that treats women as second-class citizens, telling them that they have no bodily autonomy. You are standing up against an organisation that tells people that it is wrong for two people of the same sex to be in a loving relationship and that the way they express that love is wrong. You are standing up against an organisation that continues to hide information about children that their leaders sexually and physically abused. You are standing up against an organisation that at every juncture in Irish history has voted against human liberty, whether that’s divorce, abortion or a woman’s right to work after marriage. You are standing up, and it’s hard, but you are brave and heroic.

While I can understand why people go along to get along, the fewer people that do it, the less likely that it will continue. The vast majority of people believe that there is no reason for religion to be the most important aspect of choosing a school, (4% of parents choose a school based on its religious affiliation.) However, when these people don’t opt out of the religious indoctrination, they allow it to continue and it will do so until there are more people opting out than not.

I am glad that I have no regrets in not putting my child through a system which I didn’t believe, even if it meant he didn’t get a heap of money and a big class party. Obviously I exclude people who do believe in their faith when I say this. Many of them are as disgusted as I am by the vulgarity that ensues in the name of their god. I hope that those that are not invested in religion join the growing number of people that opt out of religion in schools because nothing will change if they don’t, and in my view, we will live to regret it.