Expert: Fr. Michael - 9/6/2007

Question
Our family is Catholic, and my oldest daughter attends a Catholic high school. She told me that her religious instructor (not a priest) told her that there were people who were not descendants of Adam and Eve.   She told the class that because Cain was marked by God in order to not be harmed by others, the others were not descendants of Adam and Eve.  To whom is this teacher referring?  If that is true, I asked my daughter, then these people would not have had original sin.

Answer
First off, you have to realize that most of what passes for "Catholic" today is not.  Most of those institutions having the name "Catholic" on the door are really part of a New Order, whose doctrine, service, sacraments, and morality are not anything recognizable traditionally as Catholic.  It is entirely out of phase with anything that the Catholic popes, councils, and Saints of some 1900 years would have recognized.

One of the offshoots of this terrible condition is that many "religious instructors" in those institutions make up doctrine as they go along.  There is nothing Catholic about it.  Undoubtedly, this is not the only deviation that your oldest daughter is getting.

Your question as a parent should be to this instructor and to the principal.  After all, your daughter's education is *your* ultimate responsibility, and if that school is teaching false information, you need to find one that isn't.  If the school were teaching geocentrism and alchemy in the sciences, wouldn't you take such corrective action?