Another religious issue

Hi, everybody! Bear with me a long post on another religion drama.

At Lucas' Catholic school, every Friday first time, there is the religion class, which, of course, it's optional for the students. So my son doesn't attend it, also and especially because this year they're into First Communion classes until next year.

At first I took him to school straight to the second class time, but two weeks ago, one of the coordinators, a nun, asked him to be at school at the usual time and stay in the supervisor's office reading his book until Religion class was over. Hm... I didn't like it,  but I know the lady, and he wouldn't be by himself, after all, so I agreed to give it a try.

Last Friday, I waited with him, as usual, until the supervisor arrived and took him to his reading time, and I left to work. When, later in the afternoon, I arrived to take him home, the supervisor told me that one of the nuns (who's a teacher for the kindergarten classes), who didn't know about Lucas not attending the class, saw him waiting for the supervisor at the waiting room - who gods know why had to leave him alone to talk to the director - and wanted him to get into the classroom to join the others. The supervisor said it was something that happened "really fast" and that she "controlled the situation right in the moment it happened".

I only knew all the details on our way back home, when he told me exactly how the story went. When the nun approached him, he told her he wasn't catholic, and she immediately started lecturing him (grr...), went into her office, returned bringing a blank paper and a pen, and told him to write an essay about "Who God was in his life". That was only then that the supervisor arrived and explained Lucas' situation to the nun, who, according to Lucas, left really annoyed.

Lucas was so indignant he said he wanted to punched the nun's face. I laughed, because that was completely opposite to his nature and showed how upset he got about it. So on those 15 minutes' walk back home, I talked to him, instructed how he should behave in a next time. I reassured him that he was right in telling her that he wasn't catholic, that he had nothing to hide. I explained that he didn't need to go proclaiming to the four winds about being a pagan, but if the subject aroused, he had the same right as anyone else of telling which his religious path was.

I could hardly wait for Monday to come, so I could talk to the supervisor about it. I made it clear that I got really upset that so many wrong things happened in less than half-an-hour - from my son being left alone in a waiting room, to having been approached by a nun who wasn't even, at least, teaching to his grade level, not to mention the bullying at trying to force him to write an essay on a subject that, by the Constitution, is obviously a personal choice that can't be discussed that way. And not to mention that she aggressively approached an eight years old unattended child! Everything wrong. I was fuming.

She - who's in fact a very nice lady and always correct with me - just didn't know what to say to apologize. She said I was totally right (of course), and that she had already talked to the nun (who wasn't there - why people are never where they should be when I want to rip their faces off??) and that it wouldn't happen again. I told her that I knew it wasn't, because from that Friday on, I would take my son to school at the beginning of the second class, like before, and he wouldn't spend the first class time with her anymore. She couldn't do anything but agree with me, and keep apologizing until we said goodbye.

Man... Sometimes I also want to punch stuff, like that "I'm in the Band" song. I am so serious with Lucas about respecting others' choices, especially others' religious choices, that when something like this happen, is like discrediting all my words. Thank the gods, I also always explained to him that sometimes he would meet people who don't respect and understand that others may have a different opinion, and that is okay, he just needed to breathe deeply and be firm in his beliefs, avoiding, IF possible, useless arguments. That's what he did, he told me. When he noticed that she wouldn't let him speak and that the supervisor was arriving, he simply shut his mouth and ignored her. He's a good natured boy.

I would love, though, to see the nun's reaction if he wrote that his God had horns and goat feet. Chaos would be too kind a word to the mess it would be, lol

The moral is, being a mother (and father, in my case) is keeping eyes open and ears pricked all the time. Do whatever you want to me, but just-don't-touch-my-kid. My claws grow.