A Catholic-School Veteran Tells All

THANK GOD I went to Catholic school. There I learned to love God and love the church. Yes, I had a nun that rapped me on the head for something I didn't do in second grade, but as I recall, the kids that got in trouble caused trouble. What a concept. I loved my school. I sent my kids to Catholic schools and they loved their schools even more. It was the best years of my life.

Different perceptions, hell. What this is is a person taking advantage of the fact that they write for a living to effuse hypersensitive feelings publicly rather than in the privacy of their therapist's office, where this belongs.

I think anyone who could come on here and condone what actions were described in this article is dispicable. I'll allow a nun to hit my kid so long as I can punch her in the face when she's done.

Different perceptions, hell. What this is is a person taking advantage of the fact that they write for a living to effuse hypersensitive feelings publicly rather than in the privacy of their therapist's office, where this belongs.

They already are learning about it,but not from ''nuns''. From Ali-vs Frazer, and ''Big Time Wrestling'' we now descend into cage fighting and bare-fisted brawling, which kids seek to emulate, a sort of ''Fight Club'' mentality [ a film by itself that spawned beatings and fights all over the nation after its release]. The YOUTUBE generation has seen no end of videotaped beatings,disturbingly,including increasing numbers of even pre-teen girls. Even The Last Nun Standing will do nothing to stop this violent trend.

I have to wonder why the focus on just Catholic Schools. Yes I went to Catholic school but this kind of stuff went on throughout the school system public and private. Why do Catholics make such an appealing target?

Mr. Noonan,

What in the world brought this on? Good Lord, with everything going on in the world today and all that has transpired since the 50s and 60s, you have to go back and dredge up this ancient topic?

I'm a child of the same period you write of. I saw abuses, experienced injustice and didn't even hesitate to send my children to Catholic school. Why? Because it;s 2009 and that's where I live, not in 1964.

Who are you writing for? What's your point? Is it to not go to a Catholic school during the 1950s or 60s? OK, I won't.

Hey Newsweek! Having trouble coming up with relevant essay topics. Sheesh!

I hope these stories are in the past. I have taught about 10 years in a Catholic School. None of what was described in the article happens there. Students are most often given added chores for offenses against the rules.

This is not a Catholic school issue. We had corporal punishment in public school during that time period, as well. I remember we had two regulars who would get smacked. They did not get hit for talking in class - but for talking BACK in class. There is a difference. I remember one teacher in junior high, a big Italian-American guy from NYC, (we were in the Midwest) - he looked like somebody the mafia would use to "send a message", and this kid who would not shut up - wisecracking, interrupting - everybody was tired of it. Finally, the teacher said, "I don't want to hear another word." What does the kid do? In a loud, sing-songy voice, "Another wooord,, anoother word." Sometimes people are just asking for it.

But what about all those babies? If the church did away with Limbo in 2007, they must have done so on the sly and without making arrangements for all of those millions of babies who were in Limbo. Oh the humanity! Babies are people too!

That whole era was different. I went to public school, and corporal punishment was used - sparingly but still there. I think it was necessary to try to regain discipline. It wasn't the first resort. I remember one year where a kid stole my markers would not give them back. We had an art project due, so I told the teacher. He, of course, asked the kid to give back the markers. He loudly announced, "Make me!" to the teacher - he was asking for it. The teacher asked again that he give them back, and again defiantly "Make me!" - so he did. I still remember seeing the raised handprint on the back of his neck. Not pretty - but it was avoidable. That kid joined the Marines - I do wonder what happened to him. Hopefully he adjusted his attitude before they adjusted it for him. I think part of the problem today is that the students who are at the "make me" stage know the teachers are not allowed to - and so the learning environment suffers. Most of my friends who went to Catholic school seem to have gotten an excellent education.

This went on in every Catholic school across the nation. Although at times, I think the verbal abuse was worse than the physical. The humiliation and comments like "you will never amount to anything" stick with you forever. The worse attack I received was because I didn't brace myself and made a typing error in the 11th grade. Sister's pound on my back was so hard I was sure I would spit my lungs out. You learned to be seen and not heard. You learned that very few nuns were kind. I would not send my kids to Catholic schools. I could not bear that they would have to experience what I did.

The solution to being whacked often was, for me in the third grade, simple. I went into the church during the recess after a particularly bad set of whacks, blew out all the candles, got chased by nuns down the street (most of them carrying rulers, for more whacking--or maybe stabbing). Got home late that night, my father tells me that I protested too much and therefore need to become a Prostestant. Enrolled in the public school system and have been happy ever since. BTW, the chief priest was later arrested for the usual malfeasance, but being no alter boy, I was spared from all mental trauma beyond that coming from the regular whackings, most of which I deserved....

I had a nun punch me in the gut one day when my class was going to the cafeteria. You name a crime; child abuse, harboring illegal aliens, molestation, and there were priests and nuns that I had direct contact with that were charged with those crimes. I consider myself a "Recovering Catholic" and would never wish a Catholic eductation on my worst enemy. And don't even get me talking about having to go to an all "boys" Catholic high school. Nightmarish.

As a troublemaker from 1957 to 1962 I can identify with your experiences - mine culminated in getting having a short handled table broom brought down on my hand breaking two fingers. My father finally took a stand with the nuns and threatened to drag the next offender out in the parking lot and return the favor. Since he was a local police office the punishments slowed.

This is for all of the people who are calling those of us who You are such a good little Catholilc.

Here are three examples of whining for you that happened to me personally. One lay teacher at a Catholic primary school picked me up by the hair and swung me around until large clumps of my hair were left in his hands. I had been trying to evade a larger boy who was trying to hit me at the time. I weighed around 85 lbs at the time. On the occasion of my first communion, I didn't move fast enough for the priest who was administering it and he slapped me so hard my jaw swelled and two teeth were loosened. I was seven and probably weighed fifty pounds at the time. He also knocked me from a kneeling position onto a hard tile floor. In my freshman year of high school, I didn't answer two questions out of twenty on a take-home assignment and the monk who taught the class proceeded to hit me three times in the back of the head. Not love taps, but full swing blows to the back of my skull. He was around six foot three and weighed about 230 lbs. I was around 95 lbs at the time.

These are facts, and if you think I'm such a whiner, I'll get your name and address and come see if you think maybe I'm soft.

Unfortunately, I experienced the same discipline techniques in the grammar school I attended in a suburb of Chicago in the mid to late 50s. My older brother was also the victim of sarcasm and ridicule from his teacher (a Mercy nun) as an 8th grader. Each year she named someone in her homeroom 'Charlie Brown' and it wasn't meant as a compliment.

I was slapped by a 5th grade nun, and watched as a 3rd grade teacher, 5th grade and 8th grade teachers slapped countless young boys who were made to kneel down at her desk before her abuse began. All for the very same reasons as mentioned in the article. One of these young men, remarkably, went on to become a Chicago police detective.

For the life of me, I don't know how these episodes of physical abuse of girls and boys by priests, nuns, coaches, etc in Catholic elementary and secondary schools throughout the country during the 50s and 60s has gotten past the media, as it focuses on the sex abuse scandal of the Roman Catholic Church of the past decade. Is it entirely sex-obsessed? This was also a systemic problem for which little reckoning has taken place by individual women's religious orders, or individual arch/dioceses. The abuse that has occurred in the Catholic Church is very syptomatic of 'closed' societies.

I hope that Catholic schools have corrected themselves over time. I can say that none of my siblings who went to Catholic school have children in Catholic school today.

jnaobrn@

I didn't have to go to a Catholic school for violent punishment. I was attending a public school in northwestern Minnesota back in the 50s. My fifth-grade teacher, who happened to be a staunch Catholic and just so happened to have a sister who was a nun, punished me one day because I could not see what she had scribbled on the chalk board. I was sitting in the back of the classroom and, unbeknownst to me, almost blind in one eye. The teacher walked up to me and rapped me on my head with a wooden ruler several times. She also made us students learn how to the the Rosary!! I told my parents and my parents proceeded to complain to the school board. Needless to say, I got my eyes checked (had to get glasses) and the teacher's contract was not renewed. And this was in a public school!!