I'm sorry, but I've made it clear several times that my giving up religion came well into my thirties. Saying that I prostituted myself was a rush to judgement before checking the facts. Completely unjustified and unnecessarily nasty to boot. The facts were eminently checkable. All he had to do was ask. But he didn't bother. A number of his recent posts have been similarly goading. It's hard to avoid the feeling that what I have to say makes him defensive. You'd have thought that a theologian ought to be far more inside his comfort zone than that when attacking the likes of me.

As for Catholic schools performing well, I didn't say that they haven't or couldn't. I'm trying to get you blokes to put at least a credit card between good achievement and catholicity. Neither of you at present seem to accept without demur that you can actually have one without the other, and that it often happens, and that it's actually better when it happens. I am primarily arguing against any religious indoctrination in schools at all, on the grounds that it is anti-educational and highly untruthful, not what schooling should be about. And I'm hanging on to the word indoctrination. I characterised Christian proselytisation in my long post above. I invite you to disagree with it point by point, not in some hazy generalities, or by telling me that it works for you, or that it reveals deeper truths (as if you need religion for that anyway. You don't). We are talking here about what you tell children to believe. I think that we should show them how to find out things for themselves, to be curious, and to question everything. Why not? You won't get that with an immutable Godly starting point.