It finally happened

My two oldest were exposed to the reality of being the Catholic minority in a Protestant saturated culture. The little angels found themselves eating proverbial hamburgers in a Hindu cow shrine yesterday. Blissfully unaware of themselves.

First off, let me say that I love having other Christian kids on the block for my kids to play with. The alternative could be bad. There are two/three solid Evangelical households on the block, and having some of our values overlap is quite refreshing. But eventually the distinctives clash. As they did yesterday.

Near my house there is a roadside memorial for a lady who drove off the road and hit a phone pole. She was a young mother who had too much to drink and should have called a cab. Sad stuff. Every now and then someone puts up a fresh picture on the pole or ties a balloon to it or something. Yesterday I noticed a new balloon and suggested to my 6 and 8 year old daughters to ride down there on their bikes and say the Night Prayer in memory of her. They did, and a little while later they went back, but this time the Baptist and non-denom neighbor kids went with them.

Uh, yeah. lets just say these kids were not impressed about praying for dead people. My 8 year old comes back to her good ol' dad (who is enjoying his pipe and a vodka tonic on the porch), and says "I don't get it, they keep saying that there is no such thing as purgatory and we shouldn't pray for the dead lady." My response was "Annabel, you know Protestants don't believe in Purgatory right, and get upset about praying for dead people right? Remember?"

She gave me a puzzled look. "Really?!"

I guess the topic had never come up in any of my Reformed theological training with her from our Protestant past. "She is really getting the whole "Catholic thing" down as second nature" I thought to myself. "Cool!"

After further debriefing, I found out that the neighbor lady had said "she is long gone, so there is no point in praying for her." Her son also informed my girls that all they needed to do was say the "salvation prayer" and they could be guaranteed to go to heaven.

By the way, didn't Protestants used to call that the sinners prayer? I suppose that is to offensive now. The Jesus salvation slot machine cant have any words like SIN associated with it, goodness no! We just want to pull the lever once and hit the jackpot. Anyhoo...
The 12 year old neighbor girl also informed my daughter that purgatory is not real because it is not in the bible. (BS, it is in the bible) And then she informed Annabel that she only believed things that are in the bible.  Her pre-teen description of sola scriptura of course... is not in the bible, but lets not look at the man behind the curtain kids, keep your heads down and repeat the mantra please. Repeat after me:

we only believe what is in the bible...we only believe what is in the bible...we only believe what is in the bible...

Will it become true if it is repeated a hundred more times? 500 years of Protestantism and counting. I think they will be repeating it for a while more. And if each denomination they have spawned only repeated it once, it would take another hundred years just to hear them.

So click your heals Dorothy, and repeat after me... there's no place like home...there's no place like home...there's no place like home...

My daughter was a bit rattled by the forcefulness and preachiness of the other kids, but she is a trooper. And next time this happens, she can ask them why they don't confess sins to a priest like Jesus says to in the bible.

Or why they disregard Tradition contrary to the bible.

I love, love, love that she is getting some practice defending the faith. That's my girl!