Introducing: The Opinionated Homeschooler

Constant readers may recall the guest postings on the new Pope by Sharon, which I enjoyed very much. As I have also had the pleasure of reading many a cogent and entertaining missive from Sharon on many discussion groups, I knew she would be an awesome blogger, and so suggested she consider it. She did, and as usual had a great idea in addition to just blogging for the sake of it (comme moi): She would use it as a dual-purpose lesson discussion forum for her circle of home schoolers, focusing on Roman Catholic information.

Since that's the theme, I wanted to be able to properly introduce it, and so asked what kind of Catholic she was. See, all religions have many types (denominations/sects) within them who consider themselves part of the larger group (and who almost always think of the other types in their groups as misguided members, or not even members at all).

Frinstance, I consider myself a mainstream* Protestant, mostly of a Lutheran/Presbyterian bent. By "mainstream" I mean primarily "not fundamentalist", but someone who believes that the Gospels contain the true and literal story of Jesus Christ (with some leeway allowed for the typical amount of disparities found between the stories of eyewitnesses). By "but," (in the last sentence) rather than "and", I mean that many fundamentalists try to paint the Christian world as "us and them" - them often being other Christians - and they try to float the lie that if you don't believe their version of the faith, you don't believe at all, and therefore aren't Christian. Now, there are groups who call themselves Christian, but then qualify it by saying Jesus was just a great teacher, and not really God in the flesh and so on. And there are other groups who call themselves Christian, but really follow a charismatic leader that said only THEY have the true understanding of Christ and everyone before has gotten it wrong (including, presumably, the Apostles). These last two groups aren't really considered Christians by the rest of us Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox. See, you've gotta believe that Jesus was what he claimed he was to really consider yourself part of the body.

Anyway, Sharon considered the question, and said in a nutshell that she was just Catholic.

That works for me, so, here it is: The "just Catholic, thanks" Opinionated Homeschooler.

Do enjoy!