I noticed I had been mentioned in a few posts on this thread regarding my beliefs etc. Here's a brief synopsis.
I was born a Protestant and baptised in the Church of Scotland and brought up going to the local Baptist Sunday school, just because it was closer than the Church of Scotland which my mum and dad belonged to. I continued going to the Baptist Church because I knew everyone there.
I have to explain that the part of the world I come from has problems of a sectarian nature and RCC and Protestants were discouraged from mixing at all. However, I didn't pay any attention to that and attended Mass with various RCC friends just to keep them company. When my mum found out she enlisted my grandfather to put a stop to it. All he said was "Well, at least she's going somewhere".
I was confirmed in the Church of Scotland when I was twenty, after a few years of being an atheist.
About three years ago I converted to the RCC. There were various reasons, but I asked many, many questions before I took that step. I found to my surprise that our local priest, who was also Dean of the Diocese, was in favour of married priests, women priests and all sorts of things that the RCC was supposedly against. He had alter GIRLS passing out the sacraments and many older members of the church were aghast.
Our Archbishop was also in favour of changes to the priesthood and shortly after being appointed a Cardinal, he repeated these ideas. He was contacted by the Vatican and forced to retract his comments. Sadly he did and my respect for him decreased. He was toeing the party line because now he was in the higher echelons.
My experience has been that the priests on the ground and the congregations of the RCC are much more liberally minded that the Vatican, the Cardinals etc. I have seen no evidence of suppressing children's questions and they are encouraged to voice their doubts. Not only that, but sometimes the answer is "We don't know", rather than some made-up story or goddidit.
In addition, the RCC in this area makes an effort to acknowledge festivals of other religions. They also do not claim to be the only way to God, but have a truly catholic outlook (note the small c), completely inclusive.
I don't deny that the RCC has in the past and probably still does in some places, try to indoctrinate children, but from what I've seen it's a pointless exercise. I'd be more worried if they tried to indoctrinate teenagers or young adults.
Hope this isn't too far off topic.
Oh, and Schraff, the horse made it through the grass sickness!!! She's one of the few to ever survive it!
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