UNIVERSIDAD DE GUANAJUATO

Licenciatura en Enseñanza del Inglés

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE ABOUT INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

When catholic religion is inherited but not professed

PROFESOR DOUGLAS GOODWIN

Autor: Eduardo Hernández Rangel

Contenido

INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EVENT...........................................................1ANALYZING THE EVENT......................................................................................2COMMENTS ABOUT THE CLASS..........................................................................4

Intercultural communication event

My wife and I share our lives but not at all. Both grew up in Catholic families and her

parents and my parents have always followed the traditions of their grandparents. I

guess all of them are very Catholic, almost extremist. In my case, when I was around 16

years old, I started having many doubts about how Catholicism is professed and taught

by the church, the priests, etc. When I was 18 years I refused to go to church because

from my point of view was an issue fulfilled of doubts on my mind, dishonesty and a lot

of incredible but not trustful facts. I believe in God but in my personal and particular point

of view. On the other hand, from the Catholic perception my wife seems to have a very

marked reverence for all the issues Catholic religion has. She believes in God and

professes and practices all the Catholic religion covenants, she has done this exactly as

her family has taught her. She believes in catholic religion, but she tries to ignore it when

I am close to her in order to avoid a confrontation or differences between us.

My son is ten years old, and he attends to Church’s events. He was baptized as a

member of the Catholic Church and now according to my wife he needs to have his First

Communion. He attends to church every Friday and he has been since last year

because is a mandatory requirement in order to have a Communion. It seems to me that

my son has been spending a lot of his valuable time studying the bible and attending to

all of those meetings. However, my wife argues that he needs to do it because it is a

catholic tradition and since both profess that religion; they have to commit themselves in

conquering the goal of my son having his Communion. This is not important for me.

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He is going to have his final exam next week and if he passes it, he will be ready to have

his First Communion; I really hope that. I talked with my wife and my son and I

expressed “if you fail the exam, there is no reason for you to attend more bible lessons

and waste one more year, we can enroll you in some kind of private lessons and then in

my opinion that will be more meaningful than praying every Friday afternoon”. After my

argument, I noticed that my son does not seem to be worried about that exam, also, he

expressed that if he does not pass the exam, we would like to be enrolled in a course

and then he will give up attending to Church. From my particular point of view, my son

is now constructing his own ideas about Catholic religion. How ever, we would like to

please his mother.

Analyzing the event

Most of the time, when people take on the family’s customs is because they grew up

with these habits and values. Even thought, a few of them do not follow the same

traditions and the acculturation process is interrupted. Acculturation, in this case, is

faced just in one stage of their lives while the person is exposed to the customs,

traditions and values. They tend to accept or assimilate the situation but sometimes with

certain doubts that are remarked when they separate from the family. In this case, my

family inculcated me the customs, traditions and values about Catholic religion, and I

lived with when living with them. When I realized that professing the Catholic religion did

not convince me at all, I started to believe in my own set of values and of course I

constructed my own point of view about faith. Assimilation was not part of this

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inheritance and finally I misplaced my traditional family values, including the interest to

profess it. In the case of my wife, she respects all the customs related to the catholic

religion. When she has a chance, she attends the events related to Catholic Church; she

tends to confess with the priest in order to get atonement and feel free about her sins.

She instilled the religion values to my son but he is having a lot of doubts at the same

time. Ethnicity and identity about that religion group are strong and for these reasons I

do not oppose to that but I feel they are wasting a lot of time trying to fulfill the

requirements to obtain the First Communion. My wife is influencing my son and an

assimilation process is being carried out and undoubtedly the grade of acculturation is

going to be higher. I am against professing Catholic religion especially in the case of my

son because he did not have the opportunity to choose his religion; of course if he wants

to profess it I would have to accept that fact. I am being prejudiced about how Catholic

priests profess their faith and that is the reason I do not like Church.

In conclusion, intercultural communication in that group of people is given in plenty of

situations. They convey messages in order to transmit their values, customs and

traditions and all the member of the group understand the utterances. They have learnt

to pass the culture to their descendants to generation from generation even thought

plenty of doubts are around that religion.

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Comments about the class

I am enrolling in this BA program in the modality of "Materias libres" and I have the

advantage to take any subject I want. This semester I chose Intercultural

Communication because sounded very interesting because I wanted to learn about the

considerations I have to take into account about people from different parts of the world.

Unfortunately, my expectations were not fulfilled, maybe because my expectations were

incorrect. However, in general terms, I liked the topic because it permitted me to know

about what the main implications that define the behaviors of a culture are. Now, I know

if I want to learn a specific culture or the behavior of a specific country, I should study

the concept related with that people about Intercultural Communication. Some

recommendations about your class are that please take into account that we learn in

different ways. That is important because we can learn with activities oriented to the

class or maybe investigating about the topic, doing a presentation or something like that.

Most of us the students have spatial intelligence and videos are good but shorter. I sure

you are going to take into account my recommendations and I will hope to see you next

semester.

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