Too Catholic

We often get stories about Catholic schools and how they have deviated from the faith in what I call Catholic Identity Theft. So it is not often you see a story with a headline "College too Catholic." In fact this is the first one I have ever seen.

STUDENTS at Bexley's first sixth form college are in revolt because they claim their Roman Catholic college is too Catholic.

Nearly a third of the students at St Luke's College, Chislehurst Road, Sidcup, have protested to headteacher Maria Williams, likening practices at the college to "fanatical religious cults".

The 16 to 18-year-olds claim they are forced to attend "evangelical talks" expressing puritanical views on subjects such as chastity and homosexuality.

They say they were made to walk around the school field carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary singing hymns and have been hauled into the principal's office for holding hands off college premises and told they were a "disgrace".

I can't believe I enrolled at a Catholic school and then actually had to be involved in a procession. Unbelievably they even try to preach the Gospel to us and the truths of the Catholic faith. I mean a Catholic schools being Catholic is not what we signed up for. Why can't our school be like so many other Catholic schools, I mean it's not fair!

Another student said: "Although we accepted by going to a Catholic college we would be signing up to the Catholic ethos, we had no idea we were also joining an institution which embraced many values present within many fanatical religous cults.

One of their complaints is about a mandatory talk given at the school by Barbara McGuigan. She is the host of EWTN's Open Line on Tuesdays and founder of Voice of Virtue International. I listen to her shows and she is wonderfully pro-life, a good speaker, and able to talk on the issue with clarity and charity. I guess these truths were just too much for some students.