Catholic priest's advice to a fourteen-year-old girl

Dec 14, 2009 11:04

My character is a fourteen-year-old girl who migrated to Australia with her family from Singapore when she was six. Her family were Hindus way back when, but have been Catholic for generations. She attends a Catholic girls' high school, where she is bullied by other girls for being what they consider overly religious: volunteering to sing a hymn ( Read more... )

~bullying, ~religion: christianity: catholicism

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Comments 31

psychopeg December 14 2009, 03:46:28 UTC
I'm not sure she'd bring it up during reconciliation at all, unless she had sinned as a result of it--like, "I'm having hateful thoughts" or similar. Since they're familiar, I could see her asking him for advice when he was in his office or after Mass.

here's a sort of "confession template" that might be helpful.

How the priest responds is going to be based a lot on what kind of person he is and what their relationship's like. The Bible's very long and has lots of quotable stories. A few that spring to mind:

-Jesus saying to turn the other cheek if she's thinking of getting violent about it
-here's a collection of Bible quotes about persecution

For further googling, maybe try adding search terms "persecution" and "advice" or "advice catholic persecution" (hopefully not how-to?).

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dustthouart December 14 2009, 04:16:38 UTC
What you're talking about is more properly spiritual direction than reconciliation. "I confess that I am being bullied" doesn't really work. You could get around this by having her say something like "I wanted to punch someone in the face twice," and since this is uncharacteristic for her, have the priest ask what caused her to feel that way; she could say that someone made fun of her for being religious, and that could prompt the advice.

It's quite possible to make appointments with priests for spiritual direction. In general, in a situation where there are other people waiting to confess, the priest tends to keep the advice on the short side, and might encourage the penitent to make an appointment to talk more in private.

My guess is that he would not only make reference to certain scripture passages about being mocked for one's faith, but also quite possibly refer to one of the many patron saints of people ridiculed for their piety. (Yes, we Catholics really do have saints for everything.) In particular I can imagine him telling ( ... )

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chilipeppasbaby December 14 2009, 04:56:47 UTC
She doesn't have a heavy accent by any means, just traces of an accent, that happen to show up more if she's around her family. The more racist kids at her school run with this and insist that she "talks weird." At one point, someone informs her that everyone makes fun of the way she talks behind her back. Exasperated, she says, "Still? For heaven's sakes, I came here when I was six. I've lost most of my accent since then. You'd think they'd try and find some new material ( ... )

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melyanna December 14 2009, 15:49:13 UTC
It might be less a matter of an accent than peculiar phrases. I'm from the southern US but live in the north now. I have no trace of southern accent but there are still southern phrases that I use which, ten years after moving here, catch people off-guard.

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londubh December 14 2009, 05:14:51 UTC
I definitely agree that there is definitely more of a tendency towards counselling post VII. I imagine they'd probably cite something mentioned above as support for comforting words.

I would mention that that basically anybody who went through seminary in the past 40 years was post-Vatican 2, so that means if they're younger than 60, they're almost guaranteed to be post V2, though different seminaries fully encorporated Vatican 2's reforms at different stages and to different degrees.

Also, since this is "little_details," a catholic priest would not say he missed a parishioner at services last Sunday, but that he missed them at Mass. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of what sort of service that a catholic priest would call "services." Church, maybe, but to me (raised catholic), "services" is very much a protestant term.

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rosaleendhu December 14 2009, 06:06:55 UTC
I have to admit that the idea of her being bullied for being religious at a Catholic school strikes me as a little odd. I'm currently subbing at an all-girls Catholic school, and some of the really religious kids are also the most admired and popular. It may be a school-based culture thing though.

Several people have already suggested the appropriate beatitude. There's also "Love your enemies" and "turn the other cheek." There's something about never feeling anger towards ones brothers. Anger is a sin, if I remember correctly, so the priest would probably encourage her to forgive and pray for them.

If he's the sort to assign a particular prayer, The Lord's Prayer talks about forgiveness, and the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi also talks about peace and forgiveness. She's likely to know both of those.

Um... if you want more details let me know, and I can pull out the textbook I've been teaching from. (Since I'm a mere sub, I don't have the verses and such memorized, but this is a major theme of the chapter I just covered.)

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chilipeppasbaby December 14 2009, 06:46:29 UTC
The book's pretty much based on my years at a Catholic girls' school. I wasn't particularly religious (what with being raised in an atheist family), but I had friends who were, so including this character is sort of my way of acknowledging what they went through. You might have been surprised at how disdainfully certain girls at my school spoke of religion in general. Religious Education class, for example, was widely considered to be a useless class with no pertinence whatsoever to real life. Girls who participated enthusiastically or even professed to enjoy the class would have been considered deluded, childish or deeply weird. There were frequent jokes about religion being used as a way to control us, so religious girls were considered to be spineless, weak-willed people who believed whatever they were told. Some of the jokes people made were very cruel, and it was hard for religious girls because saying, "Hey, that's my faith you're talking about!" got you branded as a "Jesus freak."

In which country is the school you're subbing

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rosaleendhu December 14 2009, 14:33:28 UTC
I have to admit that religion classes are pretty easy, at least until senior year, at this school. Also, a lot of the students are in the clubs that run prayer services and organize charity work. They're amazingly sincere about it.

I'm in the US, specificly in southern CA. Huge Latino population, so Catholicism is practically a local culture, and they're all about getting passionate about things. Maybe it is a regional thing. Now I'm really curious about your story!

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lilacsigil December 14 2009, 07:59:27 UTC
I went to a religious school in Australia (it was the only school in my area that offered foreign languages!), and the few seriously religious kids were often bullied for it. So it may well be a difference from school to school, or it may be that a lot of Australians get really uncomfortable with anyone who is too passionate about anything, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. I'm an atheist, but my best friend was from a fundamentalist Christian family, and she was constantly bullied for it because she was so open and sincere about her faith, and volunteered things like in the OP's post.

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icefalcon December 14 2009, 07:53:27 UTC
Just a question - did your Catholic school actually have regular lunch time masses? I'm asking because where I am, they just wouldn't have enough priests to cover that kind of mass load. The parish in which I live now has to share a priest with another parish simply because there was no one to replace the previous priest. Perhaps a prayer group? Also, I feel just a little hesitant over the idea religious bullying going on towards a Catholic at a Catholic school... I say this of course without having read your story, it may be perfectly explained within the text, but just letting you know that's something that I'd be questioning. A lot of the people attending Catholic schools have, even if they don't believe, gone through the motions of a Catholic upbringing, with regular progression through the sacraments. Most of those outward signs include church groups, regular mass attendance and the like. Religious bullying also seems like something that teachers at a Catholic high school would have come down heavily on (they certainly would have ( ... )

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chilipeppasbaby December 14 2009, 11:11:59 UTC
Um... depends what you mean by "regular lunchtime Masses." I seem to recall that there was a Mass every Thursday lunchtime at my school, and that every girl was required to attend at least once a semester - is that highly unusual for a Catholic school?

Mary Mackillop might work pretty well, actually, because as I recall, the teachers at my old school were crazy about her. I think we watched the dramatisation of her life on video about once a year... Thanks for your help. :)

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