#catholic school

[carm3n-carm3n]

gonna get through this school year by romanticizing 👍

[jadedgirlxo]

Made by me

[one-time-i-dreamt]

My parents sent me away to a very strict all-girls catholic school and a virus spread through the school that turned all the girls into massive werewolves and they started mauling all the teachers.

[thedeerestdoll]

me in a few days because school is almost beginning 🤧

[aunti-christ-ine]

[coldcoffee18]

Catholic school girl

[motherdaughterholyspirit]

Jesus can always reject his father

But he cannot escape his mother's blood

[adeerling]

back to school season

[allthingstv]

❤️Michelle Mallon

🧡Orla Mccool

💚James Maguire

🩵Erin Quinn

💜Claire Devlin

[betterbooktitles]

What makes a Jesuit boys’ school so entertaining is the irreverence in the face of certain damnation. There were adult authority figures, some imbued with the ability to forgive Mortal Sin, telling us we were going to Hell if we didn’t take our morality seriously. In response, we laughed and cracked jokes. We laughed so hard, in part, because the stakes were so high. If you could mock the Most Important Question, you could likely laugh off anything.

Humor was what opened me up to the idea that I didn’t share the values of the men teaching me to be a “good” person. Humor also taught me that I didn’t have to accept any of it.

The first time I heard shade thrown at the Theology department was during my freshman year when my favorite teacher sitting in a room in the fourth floor English department, in an entirely separate building from the Theology and History classrooms asked “what movie are they showing you over there this week?” It was true that for half the year, Theology teachers showed movies 40 minutes at a time to make important philosophical points. They screened The Matrix, Life is Beautiful (watched in tandem with our reading of Man’s Search for Meaning), and, my personal favorite The Shawshank Redemption which they showed to us in the summer before 9th grade to let us know what Jesuit school would resemble: something close to surviving solitary confinement. If you had music in your mind, you might make it out. I don’t doubt the efficacy of showing these movies to us to teach moral lessons. It was a better strategy than trying to force teenagers to read. I had never heard anyone mock the department, though, especially not another teacher.

To be clear, this scrutiny, at least of the lay teachers in the Theology department was justified. They fed us one-sided anti-intellectual drivel that had almost nothing to do with Catholic Dogma. Instead of learning about a biblical text, we spent hours listening to a guy tell us evolution was “just a theory,” that being gay was a choice, and that abortion was wrong in any instance (whatever your personal beliefs, understand that it’s kind of hard to hear both sides of that argument at an all-male school where the adult men were the authority on ethics). Then they showed us clips from Fox News of Terri Schiavo and told us the “correct” Christian response to the news.

One day, again in my freshman year when I was scared to question anything because of an inordinate fear that I could be thrown out of school at any moment, our Theology teacher pressed play on The Emperor’s Club (a 2002 Kevin Kline movie about a boy’s prep school that served in our teacher’s mind as some ethic antithesis to the more beloved (and frankly more entertaining) Dead Poets Society). A student in the back row raised his hand, and our teacher paused the movie. We sat in the dark room and rolled our eyes. Make this quick, buddy. We’ve got a movie to watch here!

“Jeff?” our teacher said, lifting his eyebrows.

“Yes, I was wondering about the prayer we read before class today,” Jeff said. He was a senior, a bit portly which was only noticeable because many kids did not bother buying new dress shirts every year. Once the stress of school forced you to eat your feelings four years in a row, you wound up with a gut putting pressure on your old shirts’ buttons. “It says in the prayer…” Jeff continued, “that Jesus descended into Hell. What’s that about?” 

“Well,” our teacher said, looking excited to finally talk about religion instead of answering some weird kid’s question about the ethics of having sex with aliens should they ever land on Earth, “according to scripture, we know the gates of Heaven were closed for a time, so when Jesus died he descended into hell first to free other righteous souls…”

“Yeah, a quick follow-up on that,” Jeff said, sounding interested, “does anyone believe this shit?” 

The cackles that erupted in the room nearly overwhelmed our teacher’s angry tirade. Jeff was sent to the Vice Principal’s office to await his judgment. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment you were allowed not only to question those teaching us about religion but you were allowed to reject the faith altogether. 

From there, every argument began to collapse, mostly through funny moments:

A teacher tried to tell us IVF was wrong because “you have to jerk off into a cup. It’s not right.” One kid announced: “I’ve done weirder!” Guffaws. Cheers.

Another teacher claimed gay sex was always wrong because the sex itself was not ‘open to creating human life,’ to which a brave gay student volunteered “Oh, I’m open to it. I’ll keep trying and let you know if there’s a miracle.” Applause. 

When a teacher said video games could be considered a sin if they distract you from work, someone, half-asleep in the front row, let out a loud “Ah, shut up!” that made us all giggle.

My fellow students weren’t playing the game, arguing with the teacher on his terms, using logic. They were dismissing the arguments flippantly, and no adult could reply unless they were funny themselves. 

Read the rest here.

[angelthoughts]

why can’t you want me like all boys do? they stare at me while i stare at you…

[carm3n-carm3n]

𖧞 ఌ ✧ 💒 ✧ ఌ 𖧞

[jadedgirlxo]

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was the only girl in an all-boys Catholic school, scared shitless and accused of murder.

[hypertic]

as a lesbian I kinda feel like I was robbed of the teenage experience

like being approached by girls, making out with them at a parties and then gossiping about it at school with my friends; just common teenage romance I was led to believe i could have during high school.

I could (and I do) blame it on a lot of things: catholic school, pandemic teen, mental health problems and sheltered life; but it all really boils down to the fact that I’m a girl who likes girls.

I might never be approached by someone I like, because they assume I like guys (and I might never approach anyone for the same reason).

I wouldn’t gossip about it with friends, not back then, because what if they find it weird? what if they don’t want to be my friend anymore?

So yeah I do feel like I was robbed, but I was never meant to have that, no matter how badly I wanted it.

[cutenervousyoungthing]

seeing people romanticise private/catholic girls schools is so funny to me bc i wish mine was like cute skirts and cigarettes and gossip girl but no it was just ugly uniforms and sometimes people did ketamine