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organiclilac
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| Posted: July 07 2007 at 11:04am | IP Logged
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I am part of a wonderful co-op that is a year old. Our first year, it was primarily a co-op for Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, and this year we are making plans to add other activities as well. Now one of the moms wants to include a family that is not Catholic. In fact, I believe they are not even Christian. I do not know this family well. One of my only experiences with them was seeing the kids mock another family for their Christian beliefs. I seem to be the only one who is opposed to opening our group to non-Catholics. We are all in agreement that this is a Catholic co-op, and that the faith will permeate everything, so it makes no sense to me to admit a family that has no interest in the faith.
Am I overreacting?
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Tracy, wife to Shawn, mama to Samuel (4/01) and Joseph (11/11), and Thomas (2/15)
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Lisbet
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Well, to look at it another way, why would a non-Catholic family be interested in a Catholic co-op? They are obviously not completely opposed to Catholic Christian beliefs being taught to their children, which is a good thing. Maybe you could look at it as planting seeds? Sharing your faith? I say go for it!
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ann@home
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| Posted: July 07 2007 at 1:30pm | IP Logged
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Lisbet wrote:
| Well, to look at it another way, why would a non-Catholic family be interested in a Catholic co-op? They are obviously not completely opposed to Catholic Christian beliefs being taught to their children, which is a good thing. Maybe you could look at it as planting seeds? Sharing your faith? I say go for it! |
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Actually that is an excellent questions-WHY are they interested?
Perhaps the friend invited them without really thinking of the implications? Perhaps the new family doesn't really realize that the catholic beliefs will permeate the activities and they would be expected to respect these beleifs and participate to a point in the liturgical celebrations. I wonder if realizing all this they would still be interested?
If yes, then I would welcome them. If they said they were not interested in the catholic aspect and just wanted to join for the "fun stuff" then I might say it was not a good match.
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Ann, Full-time Mama of a 10yr old Lego master, 7yr old DIVA, 4yr old King of the Mountain and one more in June '09!
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organiclilac
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From what I know of this woman, my impression is that she is interested in the activities and academics, and that she wouldn't mind "exposing" her children to Catholicism, but she has no interest in converting. I think she sees it as an opportunity for diversity and tolerance for her children.
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Tracy, wife to Shawn, mama to Samuel (4/01) and Joseph (11/11), and Thomas (2/15)
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Martha
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organiclilac wrote:
| From what I know of this woman, my impression is that she is interested in the activities and academics, and that she wouldn't mind "exposing" her children to Catholicism, but she has no interest in converting. I think she sees it as an opportunity for diversity and tolerance for her children. |
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Personally? I'd lean towards "no" if teaching diversity is not the purpose of your coop. There are other things a person can do for that and given your previous description of her dd's remarks, it sounds like a recipe for strife to me.
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Erin
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I have been involved in non-Catholic and Catholic groups over the years. Now whenever we have invited lapsed Catholics or non-Catholics into our Catholic group it is with a clear mission statement of what we are about; providing a group to observe the liturgical year with our children, strengthing them in their Catholic faith, we are the majority, we welcome the lapsed Catholics, but they are the guests to be respectful of what we are doing. This can be a wonderful opportunity of witnessing our faith but first your group as a group needs to be clear as to the mission, purpose of your group. This lady needs to be clear that she AND her children are to be respectful guests.
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onemoretracy
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One of the co-ops I am in had a similar experience last summer. This prompted them us to organize and formalize the co-op. We had to write a mission statement that every member and potential member would sign.
Maybe this is an opportunity for your members to examine what they would like in a co-op and what you see as your purpose and mission. You can PM me and I can email you our mission statement to get ideas if you would like.
This issue of open enrollment vs. mission statement vs. invite only etc... has been a very touchy issue in many co-ops around here. My advice is also to pray about this and don't be afraid to openly sincerely and discuss this with the families currently involved in the co-op.
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Elena
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This issue broke up our wonderful homeschool group as well as our youth group. It seems one Protestant family had a kid at the youth group who said something that sounded a lot like sola fide. The mothers there didn't know how to counter it, and that lead to a schism between the families that wanted to be open to all but keep our Catholic identity and mission in order to be of good witness, and the moms who wanted to be exclusively Catholic.
Ithink the witness of Pope John Paul II is to be open but to keep your Catholic identity and focus (which would mean only Catholics in leadership). It's a hard issue. We still have many hurt feelings about it that may never heal.
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stacykay
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Tracy,
I have no wisdom here, only personal experience to share.
Our local group name shows our obviously Catholic identity. However, when we had a meeting with the topic of Apologetics and "keeping the kids Catholic," it caused unbelievable heartache and a major split in our group.
There was only one non-Catholic in attendance at this meeting, the topic of which had been planned at the beginning of the school year, and posted, too. Other Catholic moms in our group took exception to the topic (during the meeting,) as they didn't want the other mom to feel left out. It created a rather major argument with one set of moms feeling things were "too" Catholic, and other moms feeling things weren't faithful enough to Magisterium teaching.
Since then, for say 5 years, all who stayed with our group walked on eggshells. One didn't feel comfortable even discussing our Faith!
This past year, things are slowly improving, thanks in large part to newer on-fire Catholic homeschool moms and great local Catholic priests.
I guess I would lean to having something in writing that would clearly delineate where everyone stands in your group, with regards to Faith, and the expression of Faith within your group, meetings, and activities.
I will pray for you!
God Bless,
Stacy in MI
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Oney Jones
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I was going to suggest your group leaders write a mission statement if you hadn't already written one for your Catholic home school group. Then the group members can adopt the mission statement or not and you go from there.
I am not Catholic but I would certainly hope a Catholic home school group would NOT change it's plans, scheduled meeting topics and such just to suit me or to not make me "uncomfortable".
If you want to welcome non-Catholic families that is very generous of you; however, I think a reading of your mission statement at each meeting would be in order. It would be a simple and kind reminder to those who are non-Catholic that there will be some decidedly Catholic practices/observances and if they have a problem with that they are free to be elsewhere.
The enemy will work at whatever angle he can to cause strife in the lives of God's sons and daugthers.
To answer your question, no, I don't think you are overreacting.
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ElizLeone
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This is a tough question and one which caused great heart ache on both sides of the issue within our homeschool co-op in recent years. Similar to what a couple of you have expressed, we had parents who felt strongly that we should be "open and welcoming" to one and all, and others who felt that being "open and welcoming" to just anyone would necessarily water down our Catholic identity.
After much prayer and soul-searching, we (the leadership moms) agreed upon the following: We permit only those families who are raising their children Catholic. Thus, although the primary, teaching parent does not have to be Catholic, at least one spouse does, and the children must be raised Catholic.
Because of an unfortunate incident, we also now have every incoming family sign a statement saying they will respect the precepts of the Catholic Church and the mission of our group.
These are the stated policies. The unwritten policy is that we will also accept families who are actively studying the Faith for purposes of conversion to the Catholic Church. In other words, if someone is "on the path," be it actively through RCIA or by marriage, we wouldn't deny membership.
While this policy did not satisfy everyone absolutely, and there was clearly no way to do so, things have gone very smoothly under the new policy. We have seen no need to modify it. The policy seems fair, in that we are a Catholic homeschooling group with our mission statement reflecting our goal to support Catholics who educate their children at home.
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Theresa
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One of the things I love about my homeschool co-op is that we are not exclusive. We have moms and even a few Pastor's wives from all different religious backgrounds and we have never had a problem. What we do agree on is Jesus and our group is very close. I know talking to any of them that they love me and truly show the love of Christ to all there.
Having said this... if your co-op was designed to help and support mothers and children in the Catholic faith than I would think a mission statement would be a good idea.
Praying for wisdom in your situation.
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Theresa
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stacykay
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Adding on to what I wrote-
Our group is still open to anyone (Catholic or not) interested in homeschooling, and, even though it was identified as a Catholic home education support group before, we now have an even more definitive statement that the group is Catholic and that we should be able to be free to share different aspects of our Faith, not only for educating our children, but ourselves! 
There are many non-Catholic Christian homeschool groups in our area (in fact our Catholic group arose from some Catholic moms who met at one of the non-Catholic ones years ago.) There are also a couple of very large non-denominational co-ops in our area, so there are many places to go for interaction or support.
As a convert, I appreciate having a Catholic group, because I have learned so much more about the Church, and it has proven to be a great source of information and resources.
God Bless,
Stacy in MI
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Topic: let non-Catholics into our co-op?
