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CV NEWS FEED // An atheist mom whose young daughter fell in love with Catholicism at a Catholic school recently turned to the internet to ask advice on how to handle the situation.
The mother anonymously wrote to the advice column of Slate Magazine, a progressive online outlet, to seek help, explaining that she decided to put her daughter in kindergarten at a private Catholic school because of the high price of tuition at other private schools. She added that her daughter needs small class sizes, and the Catholic school she is currently at is “wonderful.”
“However, I majorly underestimated how much she would LOVE the Catholic teachings,” the mother wrote, later adding,” Lately … she has been asking really pointed questions about what I believe, and I’m not quite sure how to answer them. For example, the other day, she asked if I believed in Jesus, if I believed that Adam and Eve were real, and on and on.”
The mother said she doesn’t believe, but has tried to deflect questions by asking her daughter what she believes. The daughter, however, repeatedly asked her mother, “I want to know what you believe.”
“But any version of my not believing makes her upset,” the mother wrote, later adding, “I’m worried that if I’m evasive, she will feel misled when she is a little older. But if I’m honest or even ambiguous, she gets very concerned. She worries about the people she loves dying, and it’s hard for me to think of a way to answer that won’t make that worse. Is there a script? I’m lost!”
Slate responded by telling the mother that her daughter is “receiving incredibly mixed messages.”
“Unless something happens to change her mind about Catholicism, she will have to deal with these conflicting ideas as long as she’s at this school,” Slate added.
The magazine encouraged the mother to be honest with her daughter about her own personal beliefs and recommended that the mother tell her that “only she can determine what she believes in.”
Slate, which regularly leans towards Agnosticism and is unsympathetic to Catholic positions, added: “It would also be in her best interest for you to keep exposing her to other religions, even if she maintains that she is committed to the Catholic faith.”
