positive and negative in what aspects at all, I mean

[0dense]

questionoftheday asks: Did religion ever play an important part in your life? Was it a positive or negative experience?

My answer: So I'm working on my final papers, right, and we've been put into small groups in the seminar, to keep us accountable to one another. And seeing as this is a wednesday course, ash wednesday was a bit of a giveaway that I'm practicing catholic. So fast forward to the last week, as we've been defending our topics and progress, and someone asked if it's weird that I'm also writing a paper that includes criticizing the influence of religion. To which I had to answer, would you rather that people within organized religion weren't alert to and critical of its actions? 
I mean, technically my paper's aimed at discussing the panopticon, and religion is just a case study for it. but it remains to be said; passive adherence is far more concerning to me than engaging in a discourse. Even if it's uncomfortable, as the endogenous population, I think it's on us to hash out what we're a part of. 
also there's the many differences between branches of christianity, and the responsibilities we have according to identities either within the society at large or the faith affiliation, but I don't mean to be writing my entire paper here so I'll leave my musings on my own topic at this. 

Comments

[aboxthecolourofheartache]

It's always BIZARRE to me when people assume that faith and critical engagement are mutually exclusive. I'm a lapsed Catholic myself (vague downward saunter, not an out-and-out break), and admittedly the local church was Not Keen on thinking outside the box. In the end, that's what pushed me away. Maybe I might have stayed if I had been raised in a community where I was encouraged to ask questions about the contradictions or the nuts and bolts of ritual. (Doesn't help that my mum had a knock down drag out spat with a religious education teacher for being a sexist scum bucket.)

[0dense]

it's so weird yeah!! Like, I always thought that truly constructive criticism was an act of investment in the case at hand, right? Like wanting something to be the best version of itself takes effort from all parties involved, so pointing out flaws in good faith is productive, isn't it??

THAT SAID yeah the church has a Plethora of issues; my current place in the campus ministry is 'cantor for mass who is also making aggressive eye contact with leadership while adding more queer buttons to my jacket' like, meet me in the Pit, good father, you wanna Go??
yeah dude, there are absolutely some very bad eggs out there, I totally get it, I'm super sorry you got a bunch of that sort :(