First communion - it's that time of year again in Poland!

PLN 300 is the going rate for guests, PLN 1000-1500 for godparents.

I went to 2 last weekend - one was a home do, all catering done by the family. Really tiring for the organizers, better for the guests. It's so much more enjoyable in a home with a garden.

The second one, the day after, was in a restaurant. It cost PLN 8000 to organize (I think about PLN 130 per head, but don't quote me on that). The parents had it easier, the guests had less fun though.

Most importantly, the kids were the centre of attention for the first part of the day and everyone behaved themselves (though I got necked by a granny sat on my lap - how did that happen??)

You got snogged by a granny?

That's a way better story than communion, come one give us more details.............

How disgusting. You should be quite ashamed of yourself for participating in something that the Church openly spoke out against - the commercialization of the First Communion.


Quite obviously an attempt by the parents to show off. Completely pointless, and goes against the whole idea of the First Communion.

Delph can rage against the machine - that's her choice. Whether any of her relations will turn up to the christenings/first communions/weddings she invites them too is another matter. As for the Church, well. All the running is done by society on this one, so ...

The granny was quite a good-looking one, as far as grannies go. Late 50s, good figure, smelt good, weighed 62kg but not exactly my cup of tea. Worth it, just to see the looks of horror as this much-feared MOTHER-IN-LAW of my wife's sister ended up on my lap. The stuff of family folklore already. The tigress turned out to be a kitten :)

Anyone with common sense knows that it's not an event put on for random guests anyway, so quite who would care about random relatives is beyond me.

And the Church has openly, repeatedly spoken out about these excesses. Anyone with common sense certainly would follow the teachings of the Church rather than society.

How did you know?


Is that how you knew it?

Imagine the scene: 2025. June. Delph's daughter walks down the aisle with the man of her dreams. The church is half-full ... as only HIS relations turn up.

Rage away all you like Delphy, you won't beat the entire world and you'll miss out on a whole load of fun. But you'll have made your point, won't you?

Why wouldn't the others turn up?

Are you saying that they would stay away because they would be reminded that it isn't about showing off?

Ziemowit:
She asked me to guess her weight - I said 69 seemed a good number, the lady said 62kg
It's all about weight distribution ...

Delph - you don't go to theirs, they don't come to yours. Try it. I'm all for quiet, boring weddings myself (not).

I see nothing wrong with meaningful gifts - silver crosses, bibles, etc. But handing over 300zl in cash is as tasteless as it gets.

I'd rather party than think about the cannibalistic things that it actually (disgustingly) stands for..........also the Christian robbed this tradition from an earlier Egyptian religion anyway, so it's completely null and void for me.

I've been asked to one this year here in Poland, but there's no way in Hell I'm stepping inside a church. Polish church services last for ages, why so long??? When I was a kid, (parents used to make me go), if mass lasted longer than 25minutes the priest would get a complaint............ I'll give the kid a card with cash for sure. There's no way he'd be happy if he got a bible. He's communion age, kids in Poland can't even read properly at that age :P

Plus he can buy a gift he wants with the money...if that's a silver cross then OK, his money, but I reckon it'll be an xbox game or a football jersey. Both far more useful than a bible, unless you run out of paper to light a fire. (^_^)


.....errr.............nope :P
Sheeple follow those teaching.

Being Godfather at communion a couple of weeks ago cost me a laptop...fcuk sake.

my kid wants to go to Vapiano restaurant. That is good for us. There will be four of us. I can't deal with church crap. I do it because it is mixed in with the Polish culture.

Got to say Delph, gold was the preferred gift so at 300z's for 2+2 thats a steal. I am off to a Bar Mitzvah in less than two weeks everything in ' 18 '. Kids these days want the cash, gotta move with the times.

youtube.com/watch?v=Rxe9UuWjufY


You trained him well. Modest kid !

Honestly, it's quite sad for me to see religious ceremonies being treated like this. You know me, I'm no fan of the Catholic Church, but it seems that they really have been trying to put a stop to it being treated as an excuse for a lavish celebration. I was actually speaking to a religion teacher about this, and she told me that she's trying to really emphasise the religious nature of it. She seemed very disappointed that parents are willing to do ridiculous things like order limos and so on.

I'm never quite convinced with these things if it's about the kids or about the parents though - but hey, I guess as a non-Catholic, I'll never have to worry about being a godfather!

It very much seems that in modern day Poland, it's become very much primarily a chance for people to show off about how successful they are. Last year I saw one first communion group on their way back from church with a very clearly professional photographer and another pro with a video-camera. And that was in Plock!


Always had you down as a consigliere anyway.

I hear you loud and clear, you are 100% correct. The real victims here are the parents who are put into debt by the expectations of their kids. What do you do ?

If you have got it spend it, if you don't borrow it.

I have the issue with my kids now and holidays, they want to go off to exotic places. I want to go to the comfortable slipper.

I think the best thing to do would be abolish communion for kids, let them make their own decisions when they are old enough. Take religion completely out of the schools and if parents want their kids to be religious let them teach them themselves.

I certainly won't be baptising my kids and they won't have communion or confirmation. I was made to do all these things and I won't make my kids go through the nonsense.

If they grow up and want to be religious I'll have no problem with that, but it'll be their decision and their's alone.

Why religion has very positive aspects for the moral spine of kids.

I disagree. Religion is not needed for a person to be moral.

Yet, all western morality comes from Christianity. Europeans weren't exactly a beacon of brotherly love and peace before the Church begun to spread it's influence beyond the alps.

No it does not, morality is older than 2000 years

I said, western morality.
And there can be no morality, or for that matter, civilisation, without religion.
"Atheists don't cry over anything that is abstract, they do not believe in things likely to make others willing to fight for them and they do not offer anything but the slow entropy that is inherent in mankind's institutions without any professed dogma. It is not so important as to answer whether or not God exists. It is that people who do not care one way or the other are not the stuff of which strong civilizations are constructed. Men without God tend to simply act anarchically on their passing impulses and do not cultivate restraint. Societies are best flavored with a bit of passion that is not always sensible, yet it is stubborn. The beginning of decline in every human civilization starts with men finding they have nothing left to worship or believe in other than themselves and their own civilization. It is a short distance from this last conviction to complete dissolution." - Lewis Mumford

Mumford is mostly forgotten and is ten shades of awesome, by the way.

.......comes from christianity which is 2000 years old. Do you believe that there was no morality in the west before then?


Really, you believe that?

I never said that Christianity was the source of our civilization. Rome is the source of our civilization, Hellas being the source of our culture (there's a difference between the two). Still, it is partially thanks to the Church that we inherited the heritage of the Latin world, particularly the institution of the family, which was the building block of Roman civilization and what made the latter superior to the chaotic structure of Greek civilization, but that's indirectly related to the faith of the Christian religion.

You did in post No 21


Morality is independent of religion

Fear of God is the only legitimate morality. The original *sin* of mankind is to love the world more then God exactly. The point of a religion is to rectify this tendency in the human soul, a tendency caused by the original fall. You cannot be "saved" and be a humanist at the same time.

Surly love of god would be a better starting point if you are going to insist upon a theistic foundation


That is just psycho babble nonsense

This is a clear demonstration liberals cannot into logic. Here we have a very basic problem of how to sustain a given moral system without the belief in a superior dimension which transcends the human point of view, the latter being perforce relative and thus contrary to the notion of an objective morality in principle as it is in fact, and the liberal brain twisting this concept around, reducing it to a cartoonish, black and white caricature, where it is the purveyor of moral objectivism that is made out to be the real relativist, rather then the other way around, as it really is

That is just nonsense, you said clearly that western morality comes from Christianity which is nonsense as you conceded.

You are now tying yourself in knots with more rubbish that doesn't make sense