How many DUers support the teaching of Catholicism in the public schools (or any religion)? [View All]

[IndianaGreen]

It is only a matter of time before another genius in the State Department starts accusing Venezuela of being a dictatorship, so to preempt that, let's state that the mandatory teaching of Catholicism in the public schools is being done away. The Bolivarian Revolution has this Jeffersonian notion that public education should be secular. The main reason the reactionary Venezuelan Catholic Church is agitating against the new education law is because it challenges its preeminence, a privileged position the Church has enjoyed since the Conquista.

An education bill signed into law in mid-August by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will remove religious education from the nation's schools, said Caracas Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino. Government critics called the law's rapid approval process -- it was passed by the National Assembly and signed into law in the same week -- unconstitutional and said that the government did not consider outside opinions. One clause of the new law, which covers all levels of education and both public and private institutions, requires education to have a "lay character ... in all circumstances" and leaves religious education to families. The cardinal said the new law "does not take Urosa's God out of the schools, but takes out religion, a right which is in the constitution."

http://www.thebostonpilot.com/Briefs.asp?ID=5538

In recent months, powerful opposition groups, including the association of rectors of Venezuela's major public and private universities, all major opposition parties, much of the privately owned media, some teachers unions, and the Catholic Church waged a vicious media campaign against the law, in some cases asserting that the law will bring the country a step closer to totalitarianism.

Opponents alleged that the law is anti-democratic because it was not subject to enough public consultation. They also said it threatens religious education and the family, and politicizes the classroom. In June, radio commentators falsely reported that two articles in the law would permit the state to take children between the ages of 3 and 20 away from their parents for socialist indoctrination.

In response to the allegations, Education Minister Hector Navarro fervently denounced the lie that the state will be permitted to sequester children, and repeatedly pointed out that the procedures taken by the National Assembly for the discussion and passage of the law were fully in line with the national constitution.

The Minister said the opposition's claims are not only incorrect, they "form part of a campaign that seeks to generate fear in the population."

Also in response to the allegations, several National Assembly legislators and some less intense opponents of the law cited numerous articles in the law which support the role of the family as part of the educational community, establish that religious education must be carried out privately and not in public schools, and expressly prohibit political propaganda in the classroom.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4722

On edit:

As it is true in far too many Latin American countries, Catholicism is the official religion.

Here is the relevant LBN thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4027776&mesg_id=4027776