Odds-and-Ends on a Winter's Day

My friend in the Theology Department felt compelled to reply to my post on Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. She wrote . . .

“In your article you address science vs. religion....evolution vs. intelligent design. I am confronted in the religion classroom every day by students who refuse to listen to anything other than what they have been taught in their bible-based churches. When I teach theology I teach from a pastoral position, not a doctrinal position. (Pastoral theology focuses on the logical, rational, personal, sociological and psychological reasons behind the doctrinal teaching.) And yet kids abandon all reason when it comes to religion, preferring, of course, to refer to bizarre understandings and beliefs because that makes religion mysterious rather than practical. Their thinking goes something like..."If God and religion is too mysterious to understand, then how can God expect me to follow it? God can't hold me accountable for things I don't understand."

If religion was taught to everyone from the pastoral position, then people would understand the Creation Story as a way for particular culture in a particular time to define itself, define the unknown, and define how the people in that culture should relate to one another. Instead, bible-based churches make the Creation Story a science lesson. Obviously, it can't be, because it disintegrates when held up to scientific scrutiny. Can we change the science of evolution? No. But we can learn to understand the Creation Story as a cultural foundational myth. My frustration with my teaching is that the more and more students we get from non-Catholic, non-churched families, the more resistance we face in the classroom. It gets incredibly stultifying after the numbers of bb kids increases, and the number of kinds from Catholic homes who received GOOD primary education shrinks to near nothing.”

Her point is well taken. In an effort to combat the lack of understanding created by the bible-based teaching many of our students get from their church, our priest on staff has recently made an appearance in biology classes to explain the Catholic churches view on the Theory of Evolution. I have been told that some of the Catholic students are surprised that there is no conflict between Catholic doctrine and Science.

On an unrelated note, the failing girl whose mother was so contentious (see A Tale of Two Parents, February 11th.) missed all of last week. No blocked driveway this time, just mono. The mother, who had not contacted me once this year before mid-quarter, emailed me twice last week asking for homework. One of the boys whose parents I had not heard back from is apparently leaving school at the end of the year. His mother got back to me 10 days after I contacted her to let me know that he was failing most of his classes, and she told me they were no longer willing to spend the $8000+’year to send him to a private school. At his local public school he can fail for free. This is a real tragedy for the boy, who is extraordinarily bright and could be in line for a scholarship to college if he would only turn in homework and work up to his ability.