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| These are the images you find when you search "Social Studies" |
Some 11 years ago, I started teaching. My first set of classes included an eleventh grade Bible class and a seventh grade "social studies" course. The phrase "social studies"-- I explained recently to a visiting priest in our parish from Oxford -- is the American way of saying "history." I think "social studies" makes it sound more scientific as if history were merely the by-product of men sitting around a fire, smoking pipes and telling stories. I personally think social studies sounds like the work of a fiction novelist where some kind of large, puppet master is staring down upon society under a microscope studying us.
All that to say, about this time 10 years ago, I began my lesson on the history of the Separatist movement that eventually culminated in the Mayflower's journey across the Atlantic. The textbook I was forced to use for this seventh grade class was put together by Bob Jones University. If you are not already familiar, Bob Jones University is an anti-Catholic, fundamentalist school. In turn, their books have no citations (fundamentalist) and make every effort to put down the Church in favor of "simple Christianity" or "Bible believers" (anti-Catholic). This chapter was no exception. In fact, I let my students tear out an entire section of one chapter because it was so blatantly anti-Catholic. Although I was by no means Catholic at the time, I knew that such rhetoric had no place in a history book, and that polemics was not in the best interest of the normal development of a young mind. So in grandiose fashion, I allowed the students to march up to the front of the class and dispose of a part of their textbook in my trash can.
From that moment forward, of course, I was epic.
Once they all sat back down and gathered themselves from the exhilarating experience of book mutilation, we looked at the chapter again and to my surprise, the author allowed for one detail to slip through the cracks:
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| Catholic Squanto |
By MONKS!
Facts conveniently left out:
1. A Protestant sold him into slavery
2. The Monks were Catholic
3. Squanto was Catholic
The Bob Jones University propaganda machine contributed a seed toward the conversion of Brent to Catholicism? Say, what?
I remember thinking to myself, "Self, isn't it weird that God is providentially using Catholic monks to help the establishment of the plymouth colony?"
I will confess that I did not run right out and beat the doors down of the nearest Cathedral and convert. Nope. However, what did happen in my heart was the gentle acknowledgment that God seemed to be using Catholics, and when you formerly thought of Catholicism as "dead religion" that is a baby-step worth noting.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL! GO TO MASS AND START YOUR DAY OF THANKSGIVING THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE!
