I am about convinced that the not so stated purpose of education in this country is to do one of two things:
1. Indoctrinate
2. Generate worker bees

I can tell this most obviously in political discussion. Basically most people are able to spit out talking points for the Democrat, Republican and in some cases the Libertarian or some other third party.

The idea, it seems, is that that one party has given us a coherent block of thinking that makes it safe for us to ignore what the ignoramuses on other sides of an issue are thinking. I find it even more interesting that these are the same folks who like to accuse Catholics of bowing their every whim to the thoughts of one man, the Pope. That, however, is not reality. There are FEW truths which Catholics must believe, at least in comparison the the number of "truths" spelled out by the average political party on issues most important to a country.

Catholics cannot deny things like:
The Trinity
The Presence of Christ in the Eucharist
There IS a hell
Abortion is ALWAYS wrong

My point is that those who criticize Catholic thought, and especially the idea of dogma, are quick to adopt zombie like zeal in following a party line point for point in whatever political party they are a part of. After all, people who think like they do cannot be all that bad and their word can be trusted without thought. Besides, they were taught that way. In school developing your political identity WAS important. It had very little to do with truth. In college I had a political science professor tell our class that "I don't care what you believe, but it is important to know WHY you believe it?" The idea is that you would choose your side and craft your worldview according to those principles. In adopting the talking points of a political identity a person is surrendering their thought to an ideology that covers far more of lifes questions than the ones answered by the Church.

Of course the problem with all of this is that there IS TRUTH. Its not about trusting your gut and then finding out why you are right about a myridad of, honestly, mostly insignificant issues. It is, in my experience about finding out how wrong you are. A wise man once told me that "if there is one thing that you can be certain of, it is that you are wrong about something". Almost every conversion to Catholicism I have read involved a person having to shed numerous CORE beliefs. You are torn between what you want to believe and the evidence that points to a sobering conclusion that it is necessary to become something you either used to hate or are deathly afraid to become. I am not Catholic because I like being right about a whole bunch of things. I am Catholic because I was humbled in the face of all of my errors.

But all of those errors, once corrected, pointed back to a few truths that have been preserved and carried down through the centuries. I surrender to those few things because I have found it reasonsable to do so. One of the biggest things I give up was being right about being a member of a particular political party. Like I have seen pointed out numerous times recently, "right now they are with us" but who knows what tomorrow holds.