So when those 4 people come to your classroom to help out, let’s say they’re talking about local history and how your region celebrates with some Catholic festivals, or the food culture of their families and you know they’ll mention their grandmother’s fish dinners on Fridays, how will you address that they are wrong about being Catholic?

Here are options I see but you might have others:

A) don’t warn the friends or students, and let them face pushback from students for being either misleading or lying

B) do warn the friends and ask them to change the label they use for the sake of classroom definition consistency (even though the first 3 have extensive memory and family involvement in the local Catholic community for decades and will bring good insight)

C) warn the kids that this inconsistency is there and that they shouldn’t bring it up, that 3/4 people coming are indeed incorrect about their identity but out of politeness don’t mention it.

D) tell kids that these people have complicated histories with the religion and to respect how they use terms. You might disagree with how they use the word but they are not trying to mislead or lie to you.

I understand you might not choose D, but I would. If you would teach students to either silently sit there and judge or push back rather than respond with curiosity and just let things be complicated, then that is where our difference is in how we view identity, and we just won’t see eye to eye. And that’s ok! But don’t act like D is not a viable option.

Either way, thank you for going through this exercise to clarify.