In groups brainstorm ideas to do the tasks below

· Your state government cannot interfere with your right to believe as you wish. It cannot unfairly limit your right to practice your religious beliefs. What responsibilities might go along with these rights?

· Suppose you believe in a particular religion. You attend a church, worship in your home, or temple in your community. List and explain what responsibilities you should have in the way you practice your religious beliefs.

· Suppose there are people in your community who believe in different religions or in no religion at all. List and explain what responsibilities they should have to protect your right to practice your religious beliefs.

· List and explain what responsibilities you should have to protect other people’s right to practice their religious beliefs or not to have any religious beliefs.

· What might happen to the right of freedom of religion if no one fulfilled the responsibilities you have discussed?

WRITING

For and Against Essay

Read the articles in 24 and 25 again and find in them the argument for and against teaching RE at school. Suggest your own arguments and provide them with justifications/ examples. Finally, write the essay on the topic “Should Religious Studies be an obligatory part of school curriculum?” in about 350 words.

LEAD-IN

1. In pairs explain the meaning of the word “weird” and find out what the ‘weird’ phenomenon is. Exemplify your answers.

2. Look at the list of phenomena. Decide if they are weird or not. Against each put a tick V if you think they exist, ? If you don’t know and X if you think they don’t exist.

Aliens	The abominable snowman
Ghosts	The Loch Ness monster
Magic spells	Good luck charms
Lucky numbers

Compare and discuss your answers. In your discussion make use of these expressions for introducing examples to illustrate the point you are making.

For one thing ……. Just to give you an idea ……Look at the way………

Take the way (he) ….. Just think of….. Let me give you an example……

Choose the adjective/ adjectives below which best describes / describe your attitude to weird phenomena. Support your opinion by using appropriate expressions from activity 1.

Cynical	Romantic	Skeptical	Sensible
Open-minded	Foolish	Superstitious	other
Hard-headed	Naïve	Indifferent

READING

5. Below there is an article which is a factual account of a ‘weird’ happening. Read it through and find out what the ‘weird’ phenomenon is and why it is called ‘weird’.

The summer of 1985 was windy and wet. In southeast Ireland, where I live, that’s normal. Ireland has been Christian since the fourth century, but has an even longer tradition of pilgrimage. The countryside is decorated with wayside shrines.

The shrine on crossroads just outside the village of Ballinspittle is typical. It consists of a life-size concrete statue of the Virgin Mary (mother of Jesus Christ) in ground-length white plaster robes, her hands raised with fingertips touched in prayer, her head looking upwards, slightly tilted to one side. She stands in an ivy covered cave about twenty feet above the road with a 100 watt halo of little lights above her head. Passers-by, if they feel so inclined, join the plaster child in a personal act of worship.

Seventeen-year-old Clare O’Mahoney felt no such inclination. She was walking past on her way home that Monday, thinking of the disco she had been to in Bandon, when the statue began to rock backwards and forwards, as though someone were pushing it from behind. Alarmed, she went to fetch her mother, Katherine, who saw the same thing and climbed up to make sure that nobody was interfering with the shrine. The next evening several dozen local people turned up and reported that the monument was ‘swaying to and fro’ or ‘shivering’. On Wednesday the crowd grew to hundreds, including police sergeant John Murray from Cork, who saw the head and shoulders ‘shrug’. And by Thursday Ballinspittle was besieged by thousands of pilgrims who blocked the narrow roads with their cars. They were rewarded when, at 3.30 am, the Virgin seemed to open both her hands in benediction.

August was wet and even by standards, producing the heaviest rains this century. But despite the floods, an estimated quarter of a million people came to witness the phenomenon.

I went to watch in early September, intrigued as much by the crowd as by the chance of observing a paranormal phenomenon. By now it was necessary to park half and hour’s walk from the shrine and to stand with a mass of pilgrims on a roped-off slope some fifty yards from the statue. Prayers were broadcast every twenty minutes and there was the constant distraction of flashing cameras and torch lights wandering over the grotto. But the atmosphere was electric. Six or seven thousand people were gathered there for the same purpose, to witness a miracle, and many did. Myself included, I think.

It was a cool night with constant gentle rain, the sort of weather the Irish describe as ‘soft’ and hardly seem to notice. There must have been a good proportion of tourists and casual sightseers in the crowd, many like myself non-Catholic, but there were enough church-goers who knew the rituals to lend real cohesion and energy to the prayers. And between the rosaries and the responses there was a growing hum of people telling each other what they could see: ‘Look, look, she’s moving her head.’ ‘She is!’ ‘She did!’ ‘I didn’t see anything.’ ‘Oh God, her face, it’s changing.’ ‘I think she’s going to fall!’ ‘Mummy, can we go home now…?’

I found it a little confusing. I had brought my binoculars and, through them, could see nothing untoward, just a plaster statue with crude features and a very vacant expression. But then something happened to change my mind.

Around midnight the crowd thinned a little and the loudspeakers took a rest. There were still thousands of us there and the air was charged with interest and emotion, but some of the early tension had dissipated. We were more relaxed. Or at least we were until there was a collective gasp, then wonderful confusion as everyone compared notes. And the wonder was that we had all seen the same thing. The statue had, very deliberately, looked down and round to her left, slightly spreading her hands in a gesture of acknowledgement.

I am left, as one always is in such things, without easy answers. Debate about whether or not the statue ‘really moved’ is pointless, though Jim O’Herlihy in Blarney has a series of photographs, taken in several different positions. I have visited the grotto on other occasions since, by night and day, usually on my own – and have seen nothing out of the ordinary. There are few reports these days of anything much happening in Ballinspittle.