I promised myself at the start of this blog that I would never: succumb to fighting other blogs, blog about school and issues arising in the student body, and talk about what I had to eat that day.
However, due to a blog post going around school, I feel it's my call to refute an argument I have a hard time agreeing with.
Although Marcellino's point cradles some very poignant issues, (yeah I used his name, whatever) the way he may have went about it with the blame was wrong. We are not to stereotype, judge, blame, or shun anyone. No matter what their lifestyle is, how extremely obnoxious they are, how immature they are, we are never to put anyone down or say they do not belong somewhere. The athletes at this school, ALTHOUGH can be judgmental, rude, annoying and not as religious as you would have hoped, they are all welcome here. I have seen first hand some of the ___ players making fun of kids during lunch. YES I feel like I am in a middle school when I see this and I don't want to be around them. HOWEVER, they aren't 'ruining' the school.
This is a Catholic institution, and although some may be harboring bad feelings about how the athletics SEEM to be taking away from the Catholic vocation of the school, they aren't at all. You're judgment is.
Now, automatically creating assumptions about how the athletes and "partiers" at this school go out, get 'drunk', smoke POT (who calls it that, really now...) and has sex with God knows who, is a completely false JUDGMENT. Haven't we as Catholics learned that by now...we are NOT called to judge?? THATS NOT OUR ROLE. It's God's. Not ours.
We can stay away from people who we don't think would be beneficial to us, but we should never EVER make someone feel unwelcome.
Just to break the mold, let me say that my boyfriend is an athlete, I go to confessions and church and struggle with a lot of issues EVEN THOUGH THAT SHOULDN'T matter so don't judge me, my best friends are what you call the 'partiers' yet, some of my really close group of friends are in the 'pretentious lit crowd' sitting under the outside of the cafe, where I occasionally sit a couple times a week to get my educational fill, and I go the pub and drink with my professors. So what does this mean?
1) I rule, because I'm friends with a lot of different people...
2) It makes YOU more childish and 'high schoolish' blogging and judging people you don't know, and
3) Maybe we should all grow up a bit and just learn to break our molds.
You never know where anyone is coming from, and just because they play a sport does NOT mean that they are douche bags.
Amen.
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I cannot agree more. This is one of the reasons why Catholicism is criticized by people. We Catholics are the first ones to preach about not judging, but sadly people (a lot of them catholics) cannot wait to judge someone they don't know, covering it with "it's just an observation" or "i'll pray for them". I pray for many people, especially my enemies, but when I say that I will pray for someone is because I know it must be difficult to be in that position. I hate it when people say it in a "i'm better than you" tone.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that boy had good intentions, BUT the means do not justify the end. One must be PRUDENT. As the great latin culture says "El Escandalo es el Pecado" (Scandal is what leads you to sin)
overall, good post baby girl :)
Well, the fact you felt so compelled to break all of your rules in order to argue with me makes me feel pretty awesome. I would like to know though, what makes you feel like I was judging any of the individuals here? Was it that I said the football team ought to be cut?
ReplyDeleteYou should feel awesome. No, it wasn't because you said they should be cut, although that's pretty harsh, it's that you made assumptions that people at this school are getting drunk, doing drugs and having sex with whomever. This is not the case with most people, I just wanted to bring your attention to that.
ReplyDeleteYou know? I have no bad energy towards you, I'm just trying to show that judgments are wrong when you don't know the person.
Hahaha good to know. I don't believe that I said that athletes were all binge drinking orgy having meatheads in my blog post, but many people have that impression. I'm sorry I wasn't more clear.
ReplyDeleteI'm much more concerned about this:
"Being cool, in the high school social hierarchy, and in general, involves not caring. You don’t personally invest yourself in anything, especially not school function related."
Do you agree that this is one primary way of asserting dominance?
You are a very strong personality Allie, and you ought to know that you are a leader. Your style, your ballsy “no shit” attitude, your ability to engage and captivate even the most insipid conversation; all of these things contribute to your leadership capacity and girls look up to you for them. So, you are a powerful person. That is to say that you can almost determine what is socially acceptable and what is not within the group that you influence. Just a few people like you can have a very profound effect on any social setting. I’d like to point one thing out though; these are positive character traits, but not necessarily good in themselves. What you do with them determines whether you’ll be a leader or just another queen bee. My point about the athletes is much the same. The sports environment—and I’m talking about the glorified sports—fosters all of those same sorts of characteristics because of the extreme and competitive nature. The issue is that the competition carries over. Many athletes have natural leadership ability. However, the sports culture carries with it, more often than not, a mentality of dominance for the sake of dominance and the hatred for any perceived weakness. When these are mixed in with confidence, charisma, and social ability, they produce the characteristic alpha male. You said yourself that these guys openly mock people in the cafeteria and that it’s annoying. I’m saying that it’s not just annoying. It’s detrimental to any social environment. The alpha male, especially many of them together, have the ability to impress their reality upon those around them. As a school, we aren’t prepared to handle even ten guys like that, much less seventy.
On the other hand, if these leadership characteristics were harnessed; if they were used to lead men and women toward Christ, they would be similarly effective.
I want to see Ave continue to have a positive effect on those who come with even the darkest most broken backgrounds, as it does now. Ave Maria cannot do that if it’s the same as any other secularized Catholic school. Sports at Ave have an important part to play in the coming years. With Athletics have a positive role in forming an environment that facilitates growth? Or will it simply be a force of secularization? I don’t think that question is too extreme or too judgmental to raise.