The state enforcing religious unity predated Constantine in the Roman Empire (possibly Republic as well). I vaguely remember some influence in Greece as well, but would have to go looking for examples.
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I think if the child had a choice in whether to attend or not attend, understood the implications of their choice, and died having not confessed their sin and done penance then a member of the Catholic clergy would say yes. If it was a baby or the kidâs parents wouldnât allow him/her to attend mass then itâs probably not a mortal sin⌠I assume you have to have some complicity. IANARC, just sharing my understanding.
I donât think so. I think thatâs the difference between mortal sins and venial sins. For a venial sin, such as missing mass on a regular weekend, what you say would be correct. But missing mass on a holy day of obligation⌠thatâs considered a mortal sin. And my understanding is that if you die after committing a mortal sin, having not gone through confession and penance, then I think you go straight to hell. Again, IANARC, but thatâs my understanding.
Well, Jesus gives us an out in that we can be forgiven for our sins if we ask for it⌠because he paid the price on our behalf. So yes and no⌠you do go to hell for mortal sins, but only if you have not confessed and done penance.
So, I kept a diary when I was in Japan in 1994, and here are a few things I wrote down at the time
https://www.marypat.org/japan/0702.txt
http://www.marypat.org/japan/0708.txt
- Japanese version of Jehovahâs Witnesses (may really be Jehovahâs
Witnesses)
- Soon after we finished drinking, I saw some people coming up the walk.
Well, okaasan went to talk to them telling them, thatâs okay⌠and she
came back and told me that these people were taihen Catholics (I think
Catholic = Christian) and evidently they went about door to door. She
said something about blood and not liking Shinto or Buddhist things â
I_think. Anyway I got the impression that these people are as welcome
as Jehovahâs Witnesses.
- No really religion â shinto, Zen, etc. but more of a cultural
identity that a religion it seems
- This one is kind of interesting. Actually, most people in the U.S.
are this way too â the religion here really doesnât seem like religion â
itâs like some Jews I know who participate in the culture & rituals but
are atheists â but itâs even more than that here â there are all sorts
of shrines everywhere and lots of festivals in which Buddhism or Shinto is
involved â but so much deals w/ people here - not really =any= gods to
speak of (Buddhism has no gods really and neither does Shinto) - Does one
need gods to have a religion? hmmmm.
Iâm going with, âyes, itâs abusive to threaten a child with an eternity of suffering of he doesnât go to church today.â If Japan has outlawed that, good for them.
To be clear, are you saying that it should be illegal for Roman Catholics to teach minors about holy days of obligation?
Is that just in Japan or everywhere in the world that it should be illegal?
Possibly? I donât know what âteaching minors about Catholic holy days of obligationâ actually entails, in practice.
I do think that telling your kid, âif you donât go to this church service, and you happen to get hit by a bus and die before you can repent of this sin and confess, you will burn in hell for eternityâ meets my definition of child abuse.
I didnât say âshould be illegalâ, i said âgood for Japanâ. The world isnât black and white. And Iâm 100% certain that it wonât be illegal in the US. But would i be upset to learn that a person i knew was doing that to their kid? Hell yes i would be. And i would certainly think less of them for it.
Well thatâs probably every Roman Catholic in the entire world whoâs even moderately observant then.
Iâm pretty sure Catholic kids are taught this stuff before their first communion (around age 7-8, I believe) and if not by first communion then certainly by confirmation (around age 12-13).
My mother left the Catholic Church when she was 17 and she is the one who explained to me the significance of a holy day of obligation (which came up when we were discussing Halloween, since it is the eve of a holy day of obligation). And my step-brothers explained to me the difference between mortal and venial sins when I was a young teenager⌠youngest stepbrother wasnât even a teenager at that point, but I donât recall the extent to which he was doing the explaining. Probably mostly the second-youngest who was no more than 13 at the time.
Iâll try to remember to ask my 7-year-old niece what she knows about holy days of obligation next time I see her. Sheâs going through first communion classes now and will take her first communion sometime in the spring.
How you are teaching it matters a great deal. If you say that in our family or our religion, we think that doing X is important, that is ok. If you say that doing X is required or else you will burn in hell, that is not ok.
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Iâm pretty sure the roman catholic church softened this stance quite a bit after vatican 2.
Well Roman Catholic theology is that if you die with an unconfessed mortal sin then you are going to hell and A, B, C and missing mass on a holy day of obligation are mortal sins.
(At least thatâs my understanding of the theology.)
So it sounds like you & Lucy are saying that they canât teach their theology to kids.
What are you basing this statement off of? My mother went through her classes before Vatican 2 (she says she still knows the mass in Latin better than in English) but my step-brothers were certainly after and theyâre the ones who told me that dying with an unconfessed mortal sin gets you a one-way ticket to hell.
Wikipedia seems to think that the current teaching started in the 16th century, which is well before Vatican 2, and they also say that dying with a mortal sin leads to eternal damnation.
I think the church has reduced the number of holy days of obligation though, and that might have been part of Vatican 2.
I mostly agree with Twig on how the RC teaches this - kids will learn probably prior to first communion about how not attending the church on certain days will land someone in hell. Now there is certainly an age appropriate way of introducing this and if a parent told their 6 year old they were going to hell for skipping Easter Mass then that sounds like it child abuse. As someone prepares for confirmation, I think it is fair for the church to include this in their preparations.
âit is important to go to church because we all want to be in heavenâ does not sound like an abusive statement.
I was trying to remember. i got curious about the churchâs views on this some years ago, and did some googling. nothing fancy.
Here for example:
it looks like itâs not since vatican 2, necessarily.
there are various âoutsâ that in principle leave open the possibility that non catholics will go to heaven. the out is a little different for protestants, but it exists too. one âoutâ i know about is that mortal sin has to be intentional. So if you donât know you are supposed to take mass, iâm not sure it can be a mortal sin. and if the government doesnât allow you to take mass, that probably gets you out of it too.
there is always this tension between grace as freely given, and the churchâs need for authority. they arenât going to emphasize ways in which confession and mass might be less necessary to parishioners.
itâs the same with abortion. official church position is that nobody knows when personhood begins, so to be safe there should be no abortions. but this doesnât seem to be what is taught to parishioners, because practicing priests have different needs than academic theologians.
Sure, so if youâre a practicing Catholic who is aware of the existence and significance of holy days of obligation then you must repent if you skip one.
[nitpick] I donât think Easter is a holy day of obligation. Christmas and Epiphany and Ascension Thursday are, but I donât think Easter is.[/nitpick]
Your point stands if you substitute in All Saints Day, however. Iâm not sure I agree (although it depends on the exact wording⌠if you donât include the âbutâ part about confessing and doing penance then itâs not even accurate Catholic theology), but I understand your point.
Absolutely. I think itâs an unfair infringement on freedom of religion⌠not just narrowly in a U.S. Constitution kind of way, but in a universal âfreedom of religion is a thing that ought to exist everywhereâ kind of way. It obviously falls afoul of the First Amendment and Iâm pretty sure that the ACLU would be all over that if anyone tried to enforce such a policy in the U.S. But that doesnât make it acceptable in Japan IMO. Japanese Catholics ought to be entitled to practice their religion too.
Japanese also believe in reincarnation. Not sure if that counts as a religion
Eastern and western religions are so different that we probably shouldnât even use the same word to refer to them.
/nitpick - Easter might not be on the list because it is always on a Sunday while the others are not, but I honestly do not recall a holy day of obligation having a different treatment than an ordinary Sunday, but anywaysâŚ
I know you are approaching this from the worst case scenario of how far a law can be taken, and that is always a useful discussion point to make, but again, that does not necessarily appear to be the intention of this specific law. The fundamental question I think still comes back to is if the state has an obligation to protect children from extreme religious practices. We seem to have a mix of laws across states here in the US. If I were to guess, we likely also have more extreme practices in the US that are viewed as common and the religious will fight to protect, compared to Japan.
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Yup.
Very minimal interest in a theological discussion about Catholic rituals and rites. Not relevant. I assume even twig would endorse laws against endangering children, even if the act was claimed to be a religious expression - snake handling, female genital mutation, etc.
Where to draw the line? THis is always a problem with writing laws that donât grant the jurists any leeway to use common sense. A very common feature in the US, where people freak out about letting others excercise judgement. Perhaps Japan assumes that jurists can apply principles to specific cases, rather than rote prescription. A cultural difference.
Iâm not sure why handling a non-venomous snake would be a problem unless it was a very large snake where the actual bite would cause a problem. Venomous would depend on the specifics. Iâm not very familiar with the use of snakes in religious rituals, but I am definitely a fan of snakes.
Genital mutilation is very obviously abusive and not in remotely the same category.
Lucy appears to think that RC teaching is abusive though, praising the interpretation that it would become illegal to teach children about holy days of obligation.
Maybe the Japanese courts will agree with that interpretation, maybe they wonât but if the legislature leaves that question to the courts then they did a terrible job writing the law. Teaching about holy days of obligation, while not my religious belief, is not abusive IMO, and should not be illegal.