Day 7: Religion and Culture
My husband and I are Catholic. We were both raised by Catholic parents and attended Catholic schools from Kindergarten through high school. We were married in a Catholic church. In both of our families, our ancestors were overwhelmingly Catholic going back even into the 1800s and 1700s.
We are raising our children to be Catholic, although they will not be attending Catholic schools. We live in an excellent public school district and, frankly, I don't agree with some things that the Catholic Church teaches, so I don't want my kids to be inundated with it. We do take them to Mass regularly, and at home, we usually just emphasize 'Do unto others...' as our main behavioral life philosophy. They will attend our parish's religious education program and receive the sacraments, but if, as adults, they decide to join a different Christian denomination or even a different faith, I would support them with that.
My extended family has retained one tradition that our Polish Catholic ancestors brought over. Every Christmas Eve, we pass around and share Oplatki, which is basically just a flat and stiff white wafer that you eat. Each person gets a small portion and then you go around the room, break off a tiny bit from another person's wafer, say some sort of 'blessing' to them, and then eat it.
No comments:
Post a Comment